Friday, April 30, 2010

It Takes an E-Village?

The other day, I found myself in the kitchen debating the best method for frosting a cake. Having rummaged through my entire collection of cookbooks and having yet to find the answer I was looking for, I took my search to the internet. Two minutes later, I was face-to-face with hundreds of articles ranging from the best tools to use to frost to cake to the highest rating frosting recipes.

I sat back. Oh, how things have changed in the past twenty years! Information that was once only accessible by book, magazine or word of mouth is now instantly available all in one place, within a few minutes. Instead of having to take the time to call all my friends, my mother, and the local bakery in search of assistance, I was able to access an entire community’s worth of knowledge with just a few taps on my keyboard.

Such successes, I like to share. So when I told my mother about the cake frosting advice I received from all across the country, she decided to take the opportunity to remind me that unlimited access to copious amounts of information wasn't always such a breeze:

Many years ago, right before I turned three (and about a month before my brother was born) my mother decided that it was time that I was weaned off my baby bottles. This, she emphasizes, is not an easy feat – but she figured it had to be done.
The other mothers in her “group” said it was easy. Just take them away! Offer solace, and move on.

The first morning she tried the quick-and-painless band-aid method, I cried. And cried. And refused to eat or drink all day. Pregnant and tired, my mom relinquished my bottle and called her friend.

“It’s not working,” she fretted. “Do you have any suggestions?” Said friend recommended offering one of my comfort toys in exchange for the bottle. You know, quickly snatch said bottle and replace my empty hands with my bear, Grungie.

The next morning, as quickly as an eight-month (plus) pregnant woman could manage, my mom casually offered me my bear and a sippy-cup full of juice. I shook my head. I refused both items. Then I cried.

Exasperated, my mom called my grandmother, who shook her head and said she couldn’t remember what she did.

The next afternoon, as I was happily sucking away on my bottle and watching sesame street, I saw an advertisement for Care Bears. Yes, recall those? One in particular caught my eye – the one with the sun on his belly and small red plastic heart on the pad of his foot.

I wanted him. I pointed, stood, and even did a little dance.

The following day, my mother had a plan. She went to the toy store and bought the bear with a little red plastic heart on his foot. That afternoon, we stood in the kitchen. It was snack time. As I reached for my bottle, my mom intercepted my grab and whipped out the bear, then offered the sippy-cup.

Silence filled the room. It was our first (of many, my mother reminds me again) stand-offs. I looked at her. And the bear. Then, back to my bottle.

My mother likes to claim we stood, wordless, for about three minutes. That’s all it took, she says, for me to completely forget my bottle – that bear, a few stressed calls to a friend and grandma, and three days of trial and error.

Happily, she will admit that parenting (well, she calls the studying and advice gathering “research”) is much easier today. Unlike her experience in the 1980’s when she had to call people for advice, parents now can just go online to experience the cyber version of utilizing a village to raise a child. Instead of spending three days and two phone calls, if I was two years old today, all my mom would have to do is google “how to wean a child from a bottle” – or, if she wanted to post her question to a parenting blog or communal forum – all she would need to do is ask “how should I wean my daughter off of her bottle?” and surely, she would receive dozens of replies.

Recently, I found this website: Peachhead Families

PeachHead is a site dedicated to connecting Los Angeles families. Want to know what to do with your high school student during the summer? Ask here. Want to post an inquiry for a private SAT tutor? You can do that, here, too. Or, in need of some parental comic relief? Read kid-tips, short stories, and other tales from parents across the city via PeachHead.

See? You’re just a few search words from having all the info you need to raise your kids. Now, if only there was a website that would actually tackle potty-training in-person…

Thursday, April 22, 2010

So, You Got Into College – What Now?

Getting into college seems like the end game for students. After thirteen years of school and private SAT tutoring, you finally “get in” somewhere, and it’s all over right? You did all the hard work, went through the stressful college application process, and now you are set for life and it’s easy from here…right? right???

Wrong. College is not the end, it is the beginning.

No matter if you got into your dream school or if you were forced to go to your safety school, what you do in college will matter just as much as the name on your diploma. Getting into college is just another door in life that opens, but it is up to you step through it and make the most of it. To that end, I have two main suggestions:

1) Get good grades in college. There is a huge misconception that your grades in college don’t matter. They do. Excellent grades can get you into the Honors’ program at your school, allow you to transfer to a better school, get you into a more impressive grad school, or land you a more exciting job when you graduate. The best part is that it is a lot easier to get good grades in college then it was in high school. If you show up to class, do the reading, and put in honest effort, good grades will come a lot more easily than they did in high school (because a lot of people in college don’t do these three things).

2) Get involved. College is an amazing opportunity to try out different extracurricular activities without the high school burden of having to look impressive for your college application. It is a great way to meet people, learn new things, and explore the person that you want to be for the rest of your life. Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone and join a new club or try a new activity.

Getting into college is a wonderful thing - make the most out of it!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Pavlov and the Workspace

Remember Pavlov and his dogs? Well, here’s a little refresher. Every day at feeding time, the dogs would hear a bell, smell meat, and salivate. After only a few repetitions, the dogs began to salivate in response to the bell alone, without the presence of meat. The dogs had become conditioned and were now associating the sound of the bell with their food.

Believe it or not, this same sort of conditioning happens to all of us in our daily lives. Repetitive actions lead your brain to associate certain activities with the environment in which they happen. If, every day after school, you sit at the same desk to do your homework, your brain will begin to associate studying with the desk. We all know how hard it can be to shift into study mode, especially after a long day. So, make it easier on yourself by designating a workspace that you can use regularly.

But, where?

Not in a place that your brain already associates with another activity. Separation is the key to maximizing productivity. Trying to get work done in your bed, for example, is never a good idea. Your brain automatically switches into sleep mode when you get into bed, which explains why you might doze off while reading here. On the flip side, if you are somehow able to overcome your tiredness and condition yourself to work in bed, you are likely to run into some trouble falling asleep as your brain now links the bed with being mentally active. Likewise, your brain associates the kitchen and dining area with food and eating. You’ll find that getting work done in these areas can also be tough. Don’t be surprised if your focus is interrupted by hunger. Alas, snacking is a fabulous way to procrastinate and a detriment to your productivity. Conclusion: your workspace, be it an entire room or merely a desk, should be reserved solely for homework, studying, or other such activities that require a high level of concentration.

A few more tips to creating a more productive workspace…

Make sure it’s well-lit. Your brain interprets light as an indication that it should be awake and active. Setting up your workspace near a window is great because you can take advantage of the natural light and fresh air (and, we all know how much the brain loves oxygen!).

Get rid of clutter. A tutor once said: “An organized desk equals an organized brain.” So true! Remove any items that don’t relate to what you’re currently working on. This will help you stay focused and on track.

Minimize distractions. Be sure to face away from any movement that might catch your eye (e.g. people walking by or the television screen). Also, log out of your email account and silence all rings, beeps, and buzzes (just temporarily!). These brief interruptions can add up quickly and really impede productivity.

Now that you know how to set up your ideal workspace, you’re ready to hit the books and scan through those notes from SAT tutoring!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Make the Most of Your Time in School!

I woke up at 8 a.m. to the joy of a cup of coffee, and then I started working on an assignment for school. It's now 4:32 p.m., and with the exception of this blog and an email here or there, I have done nothing but homework. Even though it's a gorgeous day outside my window, I'm trapped inside because I'M A STUDENT and I have HOMEWORK.

For some students, school is a rigid environment full of stupid rules, boring lectures, and grades that won’t mean a thing someday. The busy work detracts from the time students could be spending doing things they enjoy. In some regard, students are like prisoners who are eager to get out and participate in the REAL WORLD, and I say this as someone who is experientially qualified to make such a comparison!

You see, I used to work as an advocate for prisoners’ rights. One day in maximum security prison, I was meeting with a young man to learn more about the medical neglect he was suffering at the hands of prison officials, and he said something to me I will never forget. “Ms. Feinstein, I’m scared.” I responded, “I know you are scared, I would be scared too if I were going to lose my eye because of an incompetent medical team, but I promise you that I’m doing everything I can with our attorneys and a physician to make sure you get the treatment you need.” He responded, “No, not about that ma'am. I’m scared about the future. This is my second time in prison, and now that I know what it’s like OUT THERE, I’m scared. My first time in prison, I was counting down the days until the end of my sentence. But then, when I was released into the real world, I realized that I had no idea how to survive out there. You see, in here, it’s easy, I mean it’s hard as hell, it’s painful, it’s dehumanizing, but it all makes sense. Out there, it’s extremely confusing.”

When we are so eager to get out, we often fail to pay attention to the valuable lessons we are learning within. And despite the senioritis mentality, the world outside the classroom can be a bit more challenging to master than popular perception would lead us to believe. In the real world, lessons have to be sought from the minutia of everyday life, garnered from interactions with and observations of other people, and acquired through enduring the consequences of your own actions and decisions. The rewards are often presented on two-week intervals, and rarely are they a direct result of individual behavior. In addition, freedom, while exciting, can also be scary and overwhelming. If you don’t believe me, just read Lois Lowry’s The Giver, in which we learn that freedom requires us to make choices, and that living in the real world requires us to give up a life that is simple, predictable, and manageable.

In my opinion, school and prison should be the breeding grounds from which we are released as confident and capable adults into the world who can survive, thrive, cooperate, and contribute to universal well-being; but this process won't happen if we don't take an active role in our own growth and development. As students, our goal should be to achieve our full potential as people, to make the most of every educational moment, and to gain the tools we need to survive in the real world. In order to accomplish this, we need to learn how to make good decisions (like advocating SAT tutoring), discover our passions, explore how we learn best, and take any opportunity we have to learn from others’ mistakes. Although at times it's hard to keep these things in perspective, it's important to remember that even when we see no immediate purpose for something we are learning, it is generally beneficial to us in some way. For starters, had I paid better attention in geometry class, I'd probably be more efficient at packing a suitcase or the trunk of a car!

Friday, April 2, 2010

What Moves You?

It’s hard to imagine how forbidding an outdoor pool looks on a December morning when it has been raining all night and the wind is whipping the water up and over the deck. Now, try to place yourself there in a slightly damp swim suit from your workout the night before – arms and legs bare, standing with your toes curled over the edge, staring down at the frigid 5 am water.

There was a time in my high school swimming career when I managed to fit in four hours of swimming, an hour of weights and running, six hours of school, and a lunch-hour lifeguarding job – in order to get everything done, I had to do things like swim at 5 am. My parents quipped that they had a part-part-time daughter. The fact that I regularly left the house at 4:30 am and returned past 9 pm meant I rarely ate dinner with my family, hardly slept, and considering that swimming was a year-round sport – I often got called motivated during the summer, fall, and spring – and just plain crazy during the winter.

Nonetheless, every December I would get the same question. I’d swim for hours before dawn and arrive at school a little tired, weathered, and damp. Snuggling deep into down jackets, my friends would joke that there must be gold at the bottom of the pool. At least, that’s what it would take to get them to even consider my morning routine. What is The Secret, then, they would ask. The Motivation – where does it come from?

For the longest time, I never really knew how to answer. I knew that my health, my school work, my job and my sport were important to me, and I also knew that I have always wanted to do everything that I needed to do, so I could be as good as I could be. But for some reason, that didn’t really sound like much of The Answer that people were so curious to hear.

Years later, I think I’ve finally got it. Last week, I had the opportunity to hear Richard Lavoie speak about motivation in respect to education. Surrounded by teachers, parents, private SAT tutors, and other intrigued professionals, I eagerly sat through his stories and presentation just waiting to hear The Answer. How do you motivate kids to do well in school? Bribe them? Reward them? Punish them? Praise them? Well, maybe. The sneaky thing is though, while it’s The Answer, it’s not necessarily Your Answer.

According to Richard Lavoie, each person has a motivational profile that is comprised of varying levels of importance of the following eight categories:

Status
Inquisitiveness
Affiliation
Power
Aggression
Autonomy
Achievement
Gregariousness

For better or for worse, individual profiles tend to be different. In a classroom of 20 students, while one motivational technique (like the idea of “winning” a spelling bee) might work for one student, it’s quite likely that it has little convincing power on the rest of the group. While this might sound daunting to any teacher trying to manage and “move” an entire class, the great thing is that most people identify strongly with at least one of the eight categories above. This means that most students in a group will be encouraged to learn their spelling words – a technique that highlights one of eight motivators.

The tricky part, I think, comes in the identification of your own Answer. Looking back at my life in high school and my current situation as a professional adult, it has become clear to me that Autonomy is a hugely dominant on my list. Give me a project to do on my own? I’m thrilled. In high school, it was clear that I would do anything so long as it included me being independent. Clearly, the measure of Autonomy in my motivational profile can only truly be measured by its ability to get me into a bathing suit and into the 78 degree water at 5 am during a December storm.

While I apologize for not being able to reveal The Answer to universal motivation, the redeeming value is the reminder that we are all different. We may be one of a kind, but without someone curious enough to devise a way to travel in space, bold enough to become president, or social enough to create the NFL - life would be boring. After all, someone has to get into the pool at 5 am – and trust me – there isn’t always gold at the bottom.