* This is the first installment of two in my “Learning to Learn” series for the start of school.
Like many students, I remember sailing through the early grades without needing to study much. I am a visual learner, which facilitated my ability to memorize spelling words and terms. When I reached high school, though, I had to regain my footing: I had to invest more time in studying elevated concepts, especially in order to respond to challenging essay questions. I made a few missteps along the way, and my mistakes helped me hone my study skills. In time, I became a more confident and capable learner.
Parents and students today, though, generally have less tolerance for the gradual building of study skills. We live in a much faster paced world. Impatient students seek shortcuts, and technology offers many. We have now all grown accustomed to accessing technological shortcuts. Leveraging technology appropriately can eventually yield a stronger academician, but first . . .first, our children must learn how to learn, and unfortunately, true growth in academic competence requires patience, both from the students and from their parents.
As we face a new school year, a reminder of what is required to achieve optimum success in high school is warranted.
First and foremost, students must put in the hard work to learn the basic content of their coursework, which means that they must complete their homework in a meaningful way and that they must strive to gain a full understanding of its content, no short cuts allowed - no copying answers from the internet or their friends, no joint completion of assignments, and no ChatGPT. Then, students must gradually learn how to apply their knowledge.
Parents and their children often complain to me when their children face a high school assessment that covers material that the teacher (allegedly) did not teach and that the textbook (if there even is one) did not address. Occasionally, these complaints are valid, and the teaching is subpar. More often, however, these parents and their children fail to understand that what the teachers are asking their students to do is to apply critical thinking skills. The teachers are knowingly giving the students a question that they have never before seen in order to evaluate how well the students can reply to the question based on what they have learned.
As parents, we have faced many unknown situations independently, without Google and without receiving prior instructions or guidance, whether as high school students or as adults (who cannot locate their phones). For me, these high priority dilemmas included in high school how to trim my accumulating post-pubescent weight, how to convince my parents to extend my curfew on prom night, and how to reengage the chain on my bicycle in the middle of my journey or, more recently, how to eliminate a stain from the sofa or how to make a recipe without a key ingredient. To address each of these predicaments, I gathered up all of the knowledge I had learned from prior experiences and developed a strategy. Sometimes I was successful; sometimes I faltered. Either way, I grew from these experiences.
Today’s teenagers, though, are battling these daily crises with a constant resource in their pockets. They are not troubleshooting, developing strategies based on experience; instead, they are Googling. It’s no wonder then why our children may be less resilient and less prepared to become proficient learners. They are used to the quick fix.
Learning is like Connecting the Dots. In order to realize the big picture, we can’t take shortcuts; we have to patiently connect each line, and we may even need our eraser.
As an academic coach, I do not hasten the process as much as I make my students more aware of the context of their lessons, which helps them visualize the big picture perhaps a little faster but almost always in crisper detail. And I can accelerate the students’ understanding of how to successfully apply their newfound knowledge.
As we face the school year ahead, let’s instill in our children a hunger to learn without shortcuts and the patience to persevere. The world is spinning fast. We just need to slow down and enjoy the process.