A Challenging Education

Why Rigor?

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project 

Recently I was reading a discussion posted to a Classical education group. The OP was a parent of a student in 7^th grade trying to frame a good educational plan for her child while not over-stressing him. Her question was simple yet complex: Why is it important to provide a rigorous education for one’s child? What is “rigor”?

Rigor is too often defined as simply “challenging” (lots of AP classes) or maybe just college preparatory. A rigorous education is more than just being academically busy, though many programs and students treat it that way. I see three main components that help define a rigorous education for any student.

1. Thorough

Education is a luxury. Over a lifetime we fortunate few will enjoy a window of opportunity to focus specifically on our own education. While our earliest years should feel like play, as we mature in our education, we must gradually learn that education is a thing we do for ourselves rather than being a thing done to us in the form of a lengthy check list of chores before certificates of completion are offered.

Statistically, most do not mature much beyond “consuming” education primarily by completing check lists and seeking certifications with few distinctions or preferences for the quality or intensity of each part, provided each required category is completed. Even students who have limited interest in an academic future will finish half their high school courses as dual enrollment to save “time and money” at the college level. Once at college they’ll often find those dual enrollment classes weren’t much of a challenge after all and credits need to be repeated.   

A rigorous education is one that exceeds base levels and goes beyond check boxes. Students read the whole piece of literature, not just the summary. Learners master a topic at level rather than just cursorily “cover” the topic workbook style for a given period. They might “take” French for the expected two years in a check-list model or, with rigor, they might learn enough that they can navigate and converse in the language with relative ease. Both approaches take two years, only one matters in the long run.

A rigorous education is thorough enough that each level is a proper foundation for the next for as long as the learner chooses. If she comes to completely understand the mechanics of English in middle school, she can stand on that foundation to master even more interesting things in writing or foreign languages in subsequent years and eventually enjoy a wide variety of options professionally in the future as a writer, speaker, journalist, or interpreter.

The check-box education may result in the same certification of completion in the same number of years as a rigorous education. Only rigor builds a foundation to stand on and as you build and climb to even higher goals. If you have the choice between a heart surgeon who was at the top percentile of her exclusive cohort or one who enjoyed a program that allowed 100% to pass with minimal effort, you wouldn’t hesitate to pick the first one as you grow to appreciate rigor in education.      

2. Challenging

A rigorous education must always push a student to go just beyond his current skill levels, whatever those levels might be. This is why a student doesn’t need to be academically gifted, per se, to deeply profit from a rigorous education to the same degree that an academically gifted student will. The goal is to constantly challenge yourself and perpetually try things that are just beyond your reach. If you plant a sapling tree but leave it tethered, supported, propped, and protected, it never becomes robust enough to weather storms. Challenging yourself in your own education helps you weather the storms to come as they certainly will.

There is no real distinction in the outcome of an unchallenged gifted student and a well challenged average student who braved a rigorous education.  

Real challenges in education even at the college level are now rare. Public education is not designed for rigor. Private education is only a little better. In both approaches, education is diluted to increase the commodity of students who check their boxes and get their papers. Profound topics that once challenged human minds for centuries are now efficiently reduced to short summaries followed by multiple-choice questions in a pass-fail course with unlimited tries. Challenging doesn’t “pay” anymore for most schools.

Unusually, rigor works at The Lukeion Project because students who achieve mastery at a lower level are ready to climb to our next steps. We don’t list our classes as “9^th grade English” because a student must go back to basics or even surge forward to the levels that challenge them so they can build up.

3. Comprehensive

A rigorous education doesn’t decide a student’s path prematurely. A student with a strong interest in dinosaurs or chess at age 10 is still led through a robust selection of literature, art, music, writing, philosophy, public speaking, and foreign language along with more typical STEM topics and even basics in the garden, kitchen, and shop. We need well-rounded electricians, astrophysicists, and journalists, please.

Why is Rigor Important?

In terms of overall life satisfaction, being genuinely challenged by a subject and then enjoying a sense of achievement by overcoming that trial is a true boost to ego and self. Nobody looks back on a check box education as being intrinsically rewarding. Ever hear a grandparent entertain the family with harrowing tales of doing the bare minimum or going through the motions or just staying busy until time expires? A big part of feeling confidence is the assurance that, having overcome challenges before, we can overcome them again.

A person gains the confidence to continue to bigger challenges when she has a history of prior success over actual challenges. In a world of participation trophies and easy wins, we have a generation of deeply depressed young people. They’ve not overcome anything difficult before and, as adults, don’t know how... and are terrified they can’t.  

Every student’s rigorous education should, ideally, be crafted for her and well-suited to him. Rigor means that the next level up should be difficult to reach without strong effort. Top grades should not be granted to anybody that merely followed the instructions but no more. There’s a level above that! Rigor means that excellence—overcoming the challenge fully—is not a check list but a genuine victory.  

Don’t Let the Goldfish Win

Work Your Attention Span

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

It used to be when somebody wished to insult your ability to pay attention, they would say you have the attention span of a goldfish. Naturally this inspired a number of studies that found the average attention span of a goldfish is in the range of 9 seconds. That is indeed a very short period of time. Observing the life of a goldfish, you seldom see them enjoy good literature, long conversations, introspective journaling, nor expressions through painting or drawing. 9 seconds is just enough time to remember that some food was sprinkled in the fishbowl or to swim a different direction to avoid your grumpy goldfish roomie. Neural research has also been done on average humans. Dr. Amen of Amen Clinics, who knows more about brains than almost anyone, estimates that most people in the U.S. have attention spans in the range of 8 seconds long.

The Goldfish are Winning?

As we examine all the splendid things people have done with their brains over the course of history, we must come to the logical conclusion that the average length of the human attention span was once much, much longer because our lives depended on it. Carefully guarding livestock, conscientiously weaving cloth, crafting, sculpting, cooking, writing, gardening, preserving, and inventing new ways to do all of these things better require much longer attention spans than 8 seconds at a time. Spoiled by the luxury of not living minute by minute to survive, most of us have more free time than our ancestors.

With free time came entertainment. A zillion things to grab our attention but very few things hold our attention. The luxury of the modern world makes it possible to survive a distracted lifestyle, mostly unharmed by our lack of attention. Some of us can afford to bounce back and forth between entertainments while we wait for our food to be delivered or our appliances to do the hardest chores. An attention spans less than that of a tiny fish seems like a setback in human progress. How do we do better?

Read Don’t Watch

The current generation typically doesn’t enjoy reading that much because it is difficult for them to maintain focus long enough to become engaged in a good story, much less good information. The average reader needs around 30 seconds just to read this far in this blog. Many will have stopped reading or have gotten distracted several times already. Consider the implications of how much educators might expect students to accomplish in a single assignment!

Around a third of people under the age of 20 consider themselves avid readers but admit that they typically read eight or fewer books per year even though they are enjoying a period of life that is uniquely suited to reading books as students. Self-described avid readers from older generations easily consume roughly twice as many books per year even with a more demanding schedule. Today, average high school students in literature courses with comparatively moderate reading assignments are overwhelmed by what would have been considered light reading five or certainly ten years ago. Most high school students never complete a single book and even fewer college students. Literacy is sliding backwards.

Reading for pleasure is the best test for a strong attention span. If you’ve never developed the habit, you should. You will at once encounter two surprising facts about yourself. First, you’ll discover that at first you will struggle to read for longer than a minute without getting distracted, even when you are reading a subject of interest to you. Extended reading is a muscle that must be worked and developed. Second, you’ll discover that once you can start reading with intensity, your life will be greatly improved. Deep engagement in excellent storytelling is deeply rewarding. Watching a story or hearing a story doesn’t work the same part of our brains as reading a story. Challenge yourself to consume entertainment in book form instead of screen or audio form.

Screen time (short-form entertainment, apps, games, TikTok, movies) have been designed for—and are much to blame for—the attention span crisis. Programming produced today is intentionally built around our 8 second attention spans to recapture our focus every few seconds with sounds, lights, and sound. “Older” movies from even a decade ago are considered unwatchable without the constant flash and glitter so there’s your answer about why companies remake so many classics. Recorded media is a little bit better (music, podcasts, books “on tape”) but still must multi-task instead of focus attentively. To extend your attention span, read rather than watch and if you must, listen with focus.    

Green Entertainment

I hope you like this term because I just made it up. Green entertainment always builds longer attention spans. How well does your soccer match go if the goalie has an eight second attention span? How does your hike progress if you can’t recall which direction to walk after a short break? How’s the chess match with your sibling turn out if you are staring at your phone instead of planning your next move? All of these are unplugged “green” entertainments.

If you grow your attention span simply by engaging in team sports, mentally stimulating logic games, gardening, hiking or a zillion other engaging tasks, you also enjoy the side benefits and gaining new skills, gaining physical strength, and maintaining appropriate distance from the snack drawer in your house. Want to double all of that benefit? Engage in green entertainment without electronic input of any kind. Yes, this means you leave earphones and devices at home. If you bring your phone “just so you can play some music” you’ll fall back into engaging mainly with your phone instead of your teammates or task. Engage your focus fully instead of splitting it with recorded media.    

Memorization Isn’t a Dirty Word

If you hang out in modern educational circles for even a few minutes, you’ll get hit with snarky comments about any educational approach that forces children to “merely memorize” material. Initially this was a reaction to approaches that never ventured beyond basics when the basics were the periodic table, the U.S. presidents, or the mathematical formulae of algebra or geometry. Sure! What’s the point of memorizing these things if you go no further? At some point, memorization was dismissed entirely, not because it is a thing that won’t serve us well as we educate ourselves throughout our lives, but because memorization became impossible in a world in which students have a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

Memorization is an excellent way to build your own attention span, but it is also a necessary skill to master anything complex. I assigned memorization tasks to my elementary age children to build that muscle. Do they still remember those poems, presidents, or geography? Probably not but when they move into the logic stage around age 13 and the rhetoric stage around age 16 or 17, they will prosper greatly having built that mental muscle and never letting it atrophy throughout life. Learn how to fill your brain with the intellectual ammunition you need to pursue more complex subjects.    

The Search for a Life Well Lived

Write Well, Speak Well, Think Well

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Completing a good education, we are told, must be the main goal for everyone under the age of 22. We can easily believe the lie that getting a good education is just a matter of ticking boxes, formatting a transcript, and getting into a “good” school at a price we are willing to pay. We look forward to college tours and narrowing down the list of possible majors in college only to repeat the process, albeit at more expense for four more years. Walking the college graduation stage means we’ve done it and “off we go” to obtain that career we’ve chosen or a seat in a graduate program where we repeat that check list a third time. Is this a good education? Will this give us a life well lived?

The opportunity to seek gainful employment after each level in this process passes the vaguely defined notion of a “good” education today. Soon, nobody cares if you made top scores in high school but watch for highest marks in college and then beyond. When is the goal reached? Eventually, most who have ostensibly obtained a good education wonder if life is more than earning institutional certification to continue to work hard.

Eventually we must all think about life as more than keeping a decent job with good prospects for promotion. This can cause a little confusion. The main impetus that occupied our first twenty-two or more years fades quickly as we “finish” our education. Is this it? Now what? We can presumably pay bills now but how do we go beyond that to have a good life? How do we discover the most direct path to that goal?

Defining a “good” life is the real riddle. It has been the subject of much philosophy and theology stretching as far back as we have written records. By comparison, choosing and then training for employment is easy. Keeping a job and becoming successful in that job is practically a no-brainer even though we use a quarter of our life on that one thing. Having and enjoying a good life is a profound mystery that few people solve to complete satisfaction having, in their view, run out of time before they “arrive” at that destination. Advice is mainly ignored by each new generation as though earlier ages didn’t quite work out the answers properly enough for their modern tastes.

A good life is subject to individual definition after decades of living with or rejecting different modes. Each person must evaluate where to place energy and passion. Some stay forever focused on the pursuit of good looks and good money. Others prefer slower investments that yield life-long relationships and a support system of friends and family. Others prefer intellectual challenges and are happy with a good library, garden, and book.

How Do We Live Life Well?

My deepest apologies for my inability to summarize a well-lived life in this short blog. I wish all of you many productive hours searching for this answer in trusted, wise, and virtuous sources as well as novel ideas (as each generation prefers). Instead, I suggest three basic skills that will help you the most in your search. They aren’t the absolute secret to a life well lived but they are the best tools to pack for that journey: learn how to write well, speak well, and think well.

Write Well

The main thing that prevents people from expertly expressing themselves in creative writing or formal academic writing is inexperience. Usually, they’ve been asked to play a complicated game but are never taught the rules. Some trendy pedagogical approaches today insist there are no rules! Write whatever comes to mind! You tell your truth! Such writers quickly discover there are rules to be followed and good examples to emulate if one hopes that other human beings will be interested in what they have to say.
Many students miss the most basic fact, namely that writing is meant to convey meaning to others so that they not only understand you but might even come to agree with you. How does this apply to a life well lived?

Long before there were pricey college degrees and peer reviewed journals, there was The Great Conversation, the exchange of ideas that has been going on for thousands of years that have to do with God, relationships, truth, knowledge, life, hope, despair, and how we must live. Every great thinker, writer, and doer of deeds not only consumes materials written on these topics but also takes part in the conversation about those subjects. Nothing is new under the sun. No fresh idea is truly fresh. Ideas have been in refinement for as long as people have written words and thought thoughts.
If you want to earn the highest academic accolades or learn how to fix small engines, being able to communicate in written form is a top tool for a life lived well.

Speak Well

The other day I was having a friendly conversation with a friend who runs a humble country greenhouse. He has never considered himself well educated since he set foot neither in college nor any formal classroom. He easily discusses thoughts on a wide variety of topics and speaks skillfully. He would be as comfortable in a boardroom, lecture hall, or a greenhouse full of tomato plants chatting with a customer. He enjoys the close support of family and community, and the competent success of all his efforts is easy to see. He is enjoying a life well lived! His ability to speak at ease with anyone and everyone on all subjects is as useful a tool in a greenhouse or at a campfire in the Rockies while he serves as a hunting guide. His clients range from adventurous millionaires to widows on a fixed income looking for garden advice.

Learning to confidently and boldly speak to others is a worthy tool for the job of building your own meaningful life. Just like there are rules and correct approaches to writing, verbal communication also has rules. The aim is to fully understand those rules and integrate them with such polish and practice that both tasks come quickly and easily to you. There are classes like rhetoric to help you learn how to overcome the fear of public speaking, attract interested listeners, and persuade them that you have clever ideas. The best success in speaking well is by doing more of it.

Think Well

Humans get so busy working on what they must think that they never master how to think skillfully. Expert use of one’s brain incorporates the ability to evaluate, study, memorize, and master new concepts without the need to have others teach that material to you or at least being judicious about the help you do need. People who know they can learn anything with a bit of perspiration and persistence, do. Not only are such people seldom bored, but the richness of their life compounds yearly, monthly, and daily. Their words are interesting to read or hear because they love to learn new things. They need no permission and seek few accolades, but their lives get richer daily. Those that can think well do so because they’ve given themselves the ability to learn new things, the humility to recalibrate when corrections must be made, and the confidence to employ their brains well, even without lofty credentials and costly degrees. 

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; refusing to set aside trivial preferences; neglecting development and refinement of the mind; attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Limber Brain

 Stretch Your Mind

 By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Some students never get a break! I’m not talking about the variety of students who have especially bad luck or suffer an especially bad time with academic subjects. I am talking about students who choose to or are expected to maintain a year-round academic schedule. Thankfully, you’ll survive as long as you remember to limber up and stretch your brain.

The year-round approach works well for some and poorly for others. What’s the secret? Those that successfully “do school” year-round, or nearly so, tend to maintain a limber brain. Those that enjoy the positive results of year-round education habitually incorporate certain non-academic habits in their otherwise academic lifestyle.

Work-Life Balance

This is the minimum addition required to make year-round academics possible, but it is the most overlooked. Nobody, no matter their age, thrives in a situation in which they work all day and some of their evenings as well. A schedule that requires full attention all day followed by hours more work at night is necessary from time to time but never full time. The brain and body require balance, variety, and stretching as new experiences break the monotony of hyper concentration needed to master new concepts. Reserve portions of every day to do different things besides academics. This will sharpen the mind and improve retention. Becoming an excellent student is more than just overloading yourself on academic subjects.

Game-play

Games of all kinds have come to occupy more and more entertainment time in our schedule because there are options for every personality and taste. Games that are especially helpful for keeping your brain limber (neuroplasticity) require logic and reasoning. Excellent game choices require you to play a comparable or slightly superior opponent so that you stand a reasonable chance at both winning and losing on a regular basis. Pick a game that isn’t too repetitive so that you learn to just take shortcuts. A good game requires you to make incremental improvements in your skills as you continue. Chess ticks all these boxes but there are other options available that suit your interest. Avoid over focusing on any game that requires you to work alone. Limit those to occasional interactions. 

Exercise

Some of us shape our whole schedule around sports and exercise. Others of us? Not so much. Everyone, regardless of preferences, needs exercise. My favorite type of exercise tends to be working in my garden or taking care of outdoor animals like my chickens or goats. Others consider such things “chores” rather than exercise but no matter. I work myself to the point of exhaustion while enjoying some excellent veggies as a reward. Exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or specialized or even competitive. Pick but don’t omit. Look at your DAILY (not weekly nor even monthly) schedule to add some exercise. I especially recommend doing something outside early in the day and towards sunset for a bonus benefit to your brain and sleep options.

Music

There are few physical activities that are more effective for fostering a limber brain than becoming proficient at a musical instrument or training yourself to use your voice effectively. The tricky bit about learning to play an instrument or singing is that it can take some time, expense, and commitment. Sometimes we are expected to get started on an instrument before we are ready to make that commitment. This can build a mental wall that blocks our success. Timing is everything. Some are asked to start so early they lack the maturity needed to practice. Some are told they can’t learn a new instrument because now they are too old with the assumption that all great musicians started very young (look up Wynton Marsalis if you want a good example). Contrariwise, those that develop a passionate desire to pursue music into adulthood are often discouraged because “becoming a musician won’t make enough money.”

Parents: fostering the love of music in your younger child is like nursing along a tiny ember into a fire. Go easy but be ready to help when interests arise.

Music, especially the ability to create it for oneself, is one of the most satisfying skills one can develop! Obviously buying a grand piano for a disinterested child makes no sense but waiting a few years and trying again with an inexpensive keyboard might make sense. Not everyone is going to become a musician just because they develop a passion for playing drums or flute at age 10. Keep going anyway. Now you have a passionate young musician in your house (maybe it is you) who has developed a special skill to stretch the mind.    

Movement

As far back as we can look back into history, human beings have loved to dance. Depending on where your ancestors lived and what they believed, there might have been some social constraints about how, when, and where dance is ok, but all our ancestors – at least in theory – danced every chance they got.

If you randomly gathered 50 teens in a room today (at least modern America) and asked them to dance, you’d likely enjoy limited success at first. Many of us have been robbed of an activity that served as a core behavior to the rest of the human race right up until the last couple of generations.

Adding rhythmic movement to your regular schedule will drastically improve your mood, your ability to learn, and your neuroplasticity. In Harvard’s study of the effects of movement on the human brain, they cite an early look here:

In a small study undertaken in 2012, researchers at North Dakota’s Minot State University found that the Latin-style dance program known as Zumba improves mood and certain cognitive skills, such as visual recognition and decision-making. Other studies show that dance helps reduce stress, increases levels of the feel-good hormone serotonin, and helps develop new neural connections, especially in regions involved in executive function, long-term memory, and spatial recognition.

All work and no play leads to a crunchy, stiff and stuffy brain. Make it limber through balance, music, movement, and games.

Learn as Much as You Can

You'll Have it to Use

By Dr. Susan Fisher with The Lukeion Project

There is a recurring trope circulating among the old and crusty about things they learned in school and never had to use in real life. Two of the popular topics are math like algebra and oddly enough learning to play the recorder. As is the way of social media, these tropes are met with a cadre of people who agree that they have never once in their adult lives used algebra or have played the recorder. Then there is the other side that will tirelessly list out the myriad ways in which they have used algebra and what their nascent recorder learning ultimately did for their music careers. The two sides then have a useless argument and ultimately everyone leaves until the next time the trope comes around. What always amazes me about these futile internet fights is that both sides seem to miss the bigger picture. And that is, whatever skill you learn, be it algebra, the recorder, or something else, you will use it because you’ll have it to use.

Huh?

Hear me out on this one. Say I decide to start learning Portuguese today, which honestly sounds like a fantastic idea because who wouldn’t want to learn Portuguese? Once I begin learning that language a whole host of things seen and unseen will open up for me. I’ll be rewiring my brain. I’ll become able to converse with people I would not necessarily have been able to converse with before. I will get a richer understanding of my own language and culture. I might start thinking about visiting Portugal or Brazil or Guinea-Bissau or Mozambique when I might not have considered it previously. Those are just a few of the obvious things. More subtle things will happen too. I will start noticing Portuguese-related things in the world that I missed before and that will open up a host of other interesting things. The list goes on and on. Most importantly, I will have a skill that I will be able to use. This is the important part because none of us knows where life will take us.

People who scoff at learning different things because they can’t see a practical application for them in their lives are working under the false assumption that they know exactly where their lives will take them. It’s a great idea to dream and plan for a specific life path but talk to anyone who has been around a few decades and they will tell you that things rarely go exactly how you plan them. In fact, often they go much better. You will live beyond your wildest dreams or imaginings and do things you never thought you would do.

Back when I was teaching Latin in private school, I had a student whom I adored but was self-admittedly the consummate goof-off. He did fine, but not great, despite having the ability to do so. The fact was that he just didn’t see Latin as having anything to do with his future plans. All my talk about rewiring your brain, beefing up your logic skills, how cool it is to learn about another culture and how that can give you real insight into your own, yada yada yada fell on completely deaf ears. Well, three years into college he emailed me and told me he was taking Greek because he had a calling and was heading into ministry. He said it was going okay but that he really wished he had taken Latin more seriously because it would have helped so much with learning Greek. I didn’t say, “I told you so,” even though I kind of wanted to, because he already knew it, plus that’s just mean. What I did say, though, was, “Isn’t it funny where life has taken you?” Not ha ha funny, but ironic. He knew what I meant, and he agreed. He had no idea just three years before that Latin of all things would be a skill he would need for furthering his life’s work. We just can’t see everything that is going to happen for us.

Returning then to the old and crusty people on the internet. How did they get so crusty? Surely people with more years of life experience should know that life rarely takes us where we think we’re going. Are they failing to see how the different things they learned over all their years allowed them to do the things they did? Are they missing the connections? Probably. After all, so many of the benefits of what we learn are unseen. What’s more disturbing, though, is the thought that their failure to learn things, because they saw them as inapplicable to their lives, actually kept their worlds small, their paths boring, and their opportunities few. In short, they didn’t use skills because they didn’t have them to use, and their lives have become an internet crust-fest about elementary school recorders.

Ultimately the choice is ours in what skills we learn and how well we learn them, and there certainly isn’t enough time to do everything. But it pays to keep in mind the fact that the skills we learn, whatever they may be, will be of use to us because we will have those skills to use. And no matter how dull, weird or inapplicable they may seem, they will bring us interesting and meaningful opportunities. To completely mangle a wonderful poem by Robert Frost, I personally am choosing the path less crusty: not scoffing at learning new things but embracing them and learning them well, even if I don’t see a direct application for them in my life. For I know it will make all the difference.

 

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

Robert Frost

 

The Summer Brain

A Season for Creativity and Inspiration

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Now that we are ending summer months in North America, we can all either reflect on a pretty good summer or we can wish for better chances next year. Depending on each student, family, academic approach, and region, summer means different things. For our brains, summer can be sustained all year, depending on how we allow it to engage with the world. Even for families that choose to “do school” all year ‘round, students should learn how to enjoy a summer brain. What's different about summer?

Engage with Nature

This used to be easy advice for everyone except those who suffered involuntary limitations. For my generation, engaging with nature used to be firm parental instructions to go outside and stay busy “until the streetlights come on.” Threats of backbreaking household chores used to be sufficient to keep younger people from venturing inside before the time was right.
Based on unscientific polls in my own classes, around half of my students have a strong desire to stay inside all year long. Aside from those that enjoy team sports and outdoor practice, only a small percentage of the rest feel compelled to go outside and enjoy (or suffer) all that the great outdoors has to offer unless (and until) they are deprived of one thing: technological entertainments. What a sad situation we are in. More people than not prefer to view other people’s lives in short fake (but entertaining) videos on social media. This means it might take some motivation to exchange indoor habits for outdoor ones.
Engaging with nature doesn’t need to be strenuous or painful nor, necessarily, buggy. Just find a good spot outside every day, get some sunshine (yes, you need some), and find some fresh air. Once you get good at the basics, expand the amount of time you are outside.

Engage with the Present

We spend most of our lives scrambling to get the next thing done. Especially as a person matures and experiences more complex periods of their education and then early adulthood, making and then completing lists becomes all consuming. There isn’t enough time in the day to finish most lists. Sometimes we get to set aside to-do lists for just a little while for a holiday or vacation. When your brain is overly stressed, try engaging with the present for at least a little while. The best way to do this is to try something creative like playing an instrument, creating art, completing a project (garden, woodworking, sewing). These activities force us to focus exclusively on what is at hand which, just like summer break, serves to refresh our brains by enjoying something that is exclusively for now rather than later.  

Engage with Exercise

The best part about summer is that you can find exercise that requires no special skills, tools, equipment, or anything else. Grab a friend, dog, or family member for a walk. Grow some glowers or a garden. Join an informal or formal team for some friendly competition. Learn some dance moves. Mow the grass. Go build something. Nobody feels good if they spend all their time sitting on a couch. A summer brain knows that the best way to get unstuck physically, emotionally, or even academically is to get moving.

Engage with Friends

In the last five years something truly unique in human history has happened. While it is historically important, it is socially devastating. Humans are no longer maintaining a variety of healthy relationships. Even during typically very social periods of our lives, extroverts are becoming more introverted. Introverts are becoming isolated. Academically focused students excuse their lack of social interaction by insisting they have their studies but to their detriment. Friendships and relationships are even more important than a nicely filled out transcript, though one need not preclude the other when accomplished cleverly. Humans must find their tribes or suffer from loneliness.
Kasley Killam, author of The Art and Science of Connection, suggests the 5-3-1 rule. Engage socially with at least five people each week. Intentionally foster friendships with your favorite three people by connecting with them a minimum of once a week. Spend at least one hour a day enjoying a quality connection with others.
What this could look like for you is that maybe you get involved with a sports team, a band, a dance class, or maybe a club in which you have quality time interacting with at least five other people. Parallel play (like watching a movie) or sitting on a bench staring at your phone next to a friend doesn’t really count. Find a way to interact cooperatively with at least five others.
Intentionally foster friendships with at least three people each week. Hanging out is best, phone calls are good, interacting on social media ranks low but will do in a pinch. These minimum of three will be your support system. Yes, siblings count! If you are an extrovert, you’ll have a hard time keeping it to three. If you are introverted, you’ll be hard pressed to find three. Shoot for three as a goal because that’s how many people most of us can manage well.
Finally, tally up at least an hour of socializing daily. It doesn’t need to be formal (though it can be). Maybe just a good discussion at the dinner table is enough to feel connected with other humans. If you don’t have the luxury of a family that takes meals together, don’t forget to link up with a bestie or sibling or relative daily just to talk things through. You’ll feel better when you do.  

A Blank Page

Educational Choices Are Actually Yours

Amy Barr, The Lukeion Project

The start of a new academic year has arrived. Some hate getting back to academic work as they are forced to abandon the relative freedom of summer activities. Others are keen to get back into the swing of things as they look forward to new challenges. Most see their yearly academic schedule as inevitable, something that must be done, boxes that must be checked, and time that must pass one way or another. Which kind of student are you?

I have found through over 30 years as educator that students who have some educational autonomy will have a better attitude towards each new academic year. Conversely, students who feel they are locked into a parade or generic classes and subjects tend to have less enthusiasm about the work at hand.

A person who works a factory job completing a repetitive chore may accomplish much in a single day but seldom looks forward to his task. Even if he manufactures something he loves, his enthusiasm for it will not last long. Humans quickly get bored with repetition and with a lack of personal challenge. Most humans avoid undertakings that offer no room for improvement, no challenges, no changes.

When I was in high school, I worked for a nice pizza restaurant. I picked that job because I loved the pizza there and thought it might be fun. Wishing to earn enough money for college, I spent most of my evenings for a full year making or selling that pizza. I saved carefully and did indeed pay for my own education with that money. I am glad I had that job, but I went from being a pizza-loving teen to somebody that still dislikes pizza many decades later. You can have too much of a good thing.

Most of us gravitate towards projects that allow us to improve and eventually excel if we choose to put in the work. Good health (both mental and physical) depends on the ebb and flow of seasons, changes, and challenges. If everyone gets the same grade no matter how hard they work or if every day looks the same no matter what you do, boredom will lead to apathy. Apathy will lead to resignation. Looking back at my high school pizza job, I know that my boredom was not just eating too much pizza but the constant sameness.

As you start a new academic year or semester, you might feel you have been given few choices about your classes because certain topics must be covered in the short span of a few years. That transcript is not going to finish itself! You may begin to see what is in store and learn to view it through the lens of sameness and respond with a bored yawn.

You may also see what is ahead and realize that your education is a blank page that you get to illustrate and fill out how you like. Yes, you need an English credit each year of high school. NO, that English credit does not need to be the same one that everyone else completes. Foreign language? Math? History? Science? Writing? Yes! Everyone needs those. Learn to tick those boxes and finish those requirements in ways that challenge you.

Your academic plan is all your own. Prepare yourself for a future that interests and engages you. Even if you do not feel you have a ton of choices over the types of things you are expected to study this year, retain control on how you prepare, the amount of effort you expend, and the level of mastery you achieve. You have more control over your current circumstances and your future than you might imagine. Even small investments towards excellence now will fill out the blank page of your education in ways that only you can control. Everyone has the autonomy necessary to become truly excellent at many things. Start today.Your education is not something done to you or for you but by you.