Why do we learn what we learn in school? The specifics are worth a debate, but behind the Readin’, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmatic we are learning how to learn. Or at least we should be? This website contains some Dad Thoughts™️ on developing brains, productivity, and learning. Perhaps you already know all this. It’s obvious, isn’t it? I thought so, but there are a lot of people who might be struggling a bit. So let’s have a read, and confirm what you already know, or maybe learn a thing or two.
Ana, via Dad
I’m reading Erasing the Finish Line by Ana Homayoun. Ana has made a career out of helping students learn the “essential skills” that everybody needs, and nobody directly teaches. Since she does this in the bay area, she makes good money from all those rich parents.
She begins by noting the science that brains are developing “executive function” throughout childhood, high school, and even early adulthood. Here are some of my notes on that:
Core Brain Executive Functions:
- Inhibitory Control. Maintain attention to task, persist, keep focus despite distractions.
- Working Memory. Hold information in mind and create logical/creative connections.
- Cognitive Flexibility. Adapt and think critically; come up with non-obvious solutions
Higher-Order Functions:
- Planning. Organize, prioritize, break apart larger projects
- Reasoning. Efficiently process information to determine a best path forward
- Problem Solving. Break available information into manageable tasks. Determine next steps. Solutions-oriented approach.
She suggests the essential skills, then, are these:
- Organizing - Dad on Organizing
- Planning - Dad on Planning
- Prioritizing - Dad on Prioritizing
- Starting and completing tasks - Dad on Doing
- Adaptable Thinking
I’m only on chapter 3, so I don’t know what her answers are yet, but I like these topics, and I like talking about these topics. I’m chatting with folks at work these days about how they do these things.
There is no perfect way to do these skills. There are many ways which work. But there are a lot of common themes that everybody figures out, eventually.
Even if you’re good at this, there are fun and interesting things to try. There might be something better!
I started with AI on Homework and then proceeded to the “Dad on” pages, above.
-Dad, February 22, 2024
Does this sound familiar?
Here’s a quote, where Ana wrote about a student (Nira). Maybe she sounds familiar? 😀 From Erasing the Finish Line, Chapter 3:
Because she did eventually get work done and did well in her classes, it was easy for her and her teachers to overlook her executive functioning deficits in organization, planning, prioritization, and time management. I’ve seen this many times with students who get good grades—maybe they are labeled as smart or gifted or whatever unhelpful labeling used at the time—and their poor organizational skills are overlooked or deemphasized. Some of them keep it all in their head, and given their academic performance up to that point, adults mistakenly believe they had it all handled. Honestly, the keep-it-all-in-your-head system can work for some kids—up to a point. Almost without exception, as workload and expectations increase, those same “on top of it” kids tend to accumulate missing assignments and careless errors, all of which impact their overall school experience.
During Nira’s high school years, her parents worried about how much time and energy it took her to complete her work. Like many students whose anxious frenzy and consistent distraction are hidden behind consistently high grades and test scores, her disorganization and time blindness contributed to her anxiety. For example, she might not recognize how long a writing assignment or science lab project would take to complete to her level of satisfaction and then put it off until the last minute. Because she held herself to high standards, she wasn’t satisfied turning in something less than what was, in her mind, “perfect.” Putting work off to the last minute led to staying up late and skimping on sleep, followed by a host of other health challenges. It was a debilitating cycle.