Can't or Can?

Attitude Starts at Home

By Amy Barr with The Lukeion Project

Parents, I’ll keep this brief. All of you are busy. This week’s blog is all about modeling the attitude that helps propel a student through the most challenging academic trials. Since some of your children have not yet met many challenging academic trials, here’s your primer. The first month of academically challenging classes will be taxing but we have tips.

Survive the Drama – Everyone Hates New Challenges

It is your first week at a new job. You have a lot to learn, you don’t know anyone, you forgot your lunch, and you don’t know where to eat. As an adult, you struggle and stress tremendously when starting this new challenge, but you will likely wait until you get home to complain about getting lost while looking for the break-room and all the scheduled meetings. Sure, you are excited about new opportunities and certainly the gains in income, but starting new challenges is, well, yucky. This scenario is no different when you first start educating at home, only the lunchroom is sometimes easier to find. 

When your student starts a new academically challenging class there will be complaints. Everything is new, they want to do well but fear they won’t, and they don’t know all the answers nor understand all the expectations, they aren’t sure yet where to go. Yucky. We get it. For all of us, a good snack, hydration, and supportive words will help you and your student survive this dramatic start.

Praise the Effort, not the Smarts

Your student is putting in the time. All the signs are good because flash cards are in use, assignments are getting read, tasks are being completed. Praise all of this excellent activity because a growth mindset affirms that one can only get good at something after putting in some effort. You are fighting against the far more normal mindset of the undeveloped mind, namely that our talents are somehow already “fixed in place” (as in set in stone, stationary) at birth. Logic prescribes this isn’t so.

Don’t wait until that fabulous grade arrives on the first big exam to say, “well done.” The goal is steady consistent effort. Ever-improving grades are a nice bonus side-effect of putting in determination and struggle.

I like to use one of my son’s college experiences as an example. He’s now a gainfully employed physical therapist but his first class for his first semester of college was much the same as every other student who has grand plans for a medical career: anatomy and physiology. A&P lost half of the students before the drop deadline. Students who had luminous academic scores in high school were clawing towards scores in the low C range, the minimum to pass a course that is needed to move on in medicine. Another half of the remaining students didn’t pass and changed their majors. My son was pleased and proud to earn a low B (and retook it his senior year for an A).

An academically challenging course that was a career-do-or-die offered no chance for glamorous rewards but needed determination and grit. That score didn’t look particularly “smart” on paper, unless you too have been through this type of class. The work that really matters may not always look smart but sticking with it? That’s the prize!  

Don’t Foster an Addiction to Do-Overs

A trendy policy in public education right now is the habit of constantly allowing re-dos and retakes and do-overs and mulligans. In all the history of education, this was never normal, primarily because there is zero motivation for a student to study for anything. Enter that quiz and keep whittling away at a quiz score until boredom hits or you’ve toggled through all the multi-choice options and game the system. Consequently, we have millions of students who not only don’t need to study but now certainly can’t study if needed. Why would they?

This approach was introduced when personal devices became a major part of every classroom. Educators could put together a short multi-choice computer graded quiz online and leave it sit. Students can keep retaking the quiz until scores go up, the only goal (learning? Not so much).

The only type of quizzes that work for eternal re-dos are fairly basic by necessity. There isn’t time to grade, regrade, and re-re-grade complex assignments and projects with a room of 40 students. Material is kept at an artificially rudimentary level so it can be completely computer-graded. Now we have students who never learn to write under any type of pressure.

Offers of unlimited retakes give a student no pressure to surpass basic levels but why? If you must prepare a 20-minute well-researched speech to a group of esteemed peers, you prepare fervently. You never know what question the audience might ask! Nobody feels that level of concern over, say, an email in which you casually assemble your points and add important links then answer questions at leisure.

That stressful speech—just like a one-chance-only quiz, exam, or timed essay—pressures you to prepare. You want to present your case knowledgeably. Research, preparation, memorization, and practice naturally help. The reasonable response is subject mastery.    

Unlimited re-dos do not mimic real life. Mess up the quarterly report, your boss isn’t going to repeat the meeting. Tangle up holiday plans, you don’t get a second week of vacation to fix everything. Forget your college midterm, you don’t get to reschedule a week later after a second study period. Forget to pay the bills for two months? Good luck. 

Your Child Can Do This

Unless the faculty educating your student started teaching yesterday, he or she has had a lot of experience getting students from very limited experience in a particular subject to the point of proving very decent mastery. Constantly model confidence that your student can overcome, persevere, work hard, have determination, and ultimately succeed. Setbacks are expected! Occasional hurdles are required! Failure here and there? Normal! Failure is a teachable moment rather than shame but only if we allow natural heights of success and valleys of failure.

Set Things Up for Success

Provide tools, time, and encouragement. Subtract distractions. Avoid too heavy a load but don’t be afraid to challenge your clever and competent student. A greenhouse plant will quickly perish in the sun and wind unless you acclimate that rose. A common thing that sabotages success at the start of each new semester is the desire to get in “one last” break. Some students can manage the stress of hurrying through the first couple of weeks of classes for a trip. Most can’t. Set things up for success might mean keeping things boring until your student gets on their feet.    

Don’t Fill in for Them

Unlike faculty who might have your student for just one semester, our program hosts students often throughout both their middle school and high school years. This means that we can see how they did at the start and compare that work to what they are able to do four, five, or six years later. Unless you are a homeschool parent (and many of you are, so this is a big benefit to home education) there will never be an educator who has the opportunity to see a student start with, say, Latin 1 and finish with Latin 5. All of this is preface to the following absolutely true statement: no student whose parents “fill in for them” ever make it to Latin 5 …or even Latin 2.

It is out of love and concern that we parents are tempted to help by doing a bit of this assignment or that assignment as good examples of how to get the assignment done. It is often very difficult once you help a student in this way to stop because all the prior struggles were lightened and all the necessary coping techniques were never mastered. Never do any of your students’ work.

Make It Ok to Not Be Perfect

Perfectionists struggle more than any other type of student. This form of self-torture will make even the most capable and clever student miserable to the point that they often give up. When questioned, perfectionists will claim their approach is the preferred one! Why shouldn’t one strive to be perfect?!

The problem is that there’s no such thing as perfect here on earth. We are all but shadows of the real thing if ancient Greek philosophy is to be observed and we have all fallen short according to the Bible.

Perfectionists often give birth to other perfectionists. Your task may not just be to help your child navigate towards a healthier relationship with struggle and failure. The fight might start with yourself and how you model perfectionism at home. The next time you mess something up—if you are like me that will be before you go to bed tonight—do your best to model healthy recovery with a little humor and old-fashioned live-and-learn attitude.

 

Janus isn’t just for January

Get Started...Again!

Dr. Sue Fisher at The Lukeion Project

It’s that time of the year again – a few weeks into January and the glow of a new beginning is starting to wane. Perhaps you have already broken your New Year’s resolutions or have missed that first assignment or even that first class and are feeling a little glum. This year, the semester was going to be different after all, but now it feels like some of the same old same old is creeping back in.

This year more than ever before there has been a preponderance of articles in the news and online about why it’s okay, perhaps even healthy, to break your New Year’s resolutions. Things are a bit crazy after all, so why shouldn’t we give ourselves a break. There is some wisdom in this, since beating yourself up can be counterproductive, but is it truly healthy to throw in the towel this early into the year or the semester? Is all truly lost because of one set back? Even just asking yourself the question can make you realize how silly this line of thinking is. Perhaps a healthier way of looking at resolutions and new beginnings is to look at the Roman god for whom the month of January was named.

The god Janus is one of the oldest gods in the Roman pantheon, dating back before the founding of Rome in 753 B.C. He was the first god invoked in religious ceremonies – even before the Jupiter, the king of the gods. He was kind of a big deal. Janus was the god of beginnings and from that, thresholds, and doorways. What many people don’t know, though, is that not only was the beginning of the year sacred to Janus, but so was any beginning – the beginning of a month and even the beginning of the day. 

In short, every morning is a new January. You blew your New Year’s resolution? According to Janus you have today and every day beyond to start again. Are you going to argue with the wisdom of the one who out-ranked Jupiter? I didn’t think so.

The god Janus doesn’t just stop with letting us know that new beginnings are plentiful, but he shows us how to walk into them – how to cross those thresholds into a new way of being. This is seen in how Janus is portrayed in art. He is generally shown with two faces – one that looks forward and one that looks back. To move forward you often need to examine where you have come from and what mistakes you have made. Identify these things but don’t stay there feeling glum and looking backward. Use what you have learned to face forward and step into a new beginning where you leave those mistakes behind.

As for the occasional four-faced Janus sculpture, well I’ll leave those other two heads to your imagination. Those two extra heads can be parents, teachers, or friends who help you make the step from past troubles to future successes. Or perhaps they are voices of pros and cons as you weigh out the best way forward on your own. Or maybe something else.

The important part is recognizing that what is behind you is behind and the future you face is yours to step into and every day is New Year’s Day.

 

Tell Yourself Valuable Things

You are What Your Team Says You Are

Amy Barr of The Lukeion Project

Does teamwork make the dream work? Often our team is our family. Occasionally we get to work with a group of our own choosing, such as with friends. Most often we are teamed up with others without much personal choice involved like when we volunteer to help to clean up after a big storm or when we join a league to play a sport, or we are part of band or dance group. Even if we live in isolation and can’t remember doing much of anything as part of a team, each of us still works as part of a very small team: we have to work with ourselves.

Some of us don’t have to imagine what it is like to have “that” teammate who constantly complains or interjects doubts.

“It’s too hot to do our best today!”

“We haven’t practiced this very long so now we are going to do a terrible job!”

“I’m not very good at this, I am probably going to mess this up terribly for everyone else.”

“The odds are really against us so why try?”

Ask any coach or director (of any kind) and they’ll likely tell you the most important part of their job is keeping a team’s spirit positive and productive. It only takes one person with a defeatist attitude to bring progress and success to a grinding halt. Employers avoid promoting grumblers and complainers even if those complaints are genuine. No matter what the task might be, productivity is destroyed by Wally Wet-blanket who pollutes everything with negativity.

“But I am only raising accurate concerns!” screams Wally (or Wanda) Wet-blanket who assumes he (or she) is the very first person on the team to realize that conditions are not ideal for swift and easy success. Most humans are naturally pessimists without assistance from negative teammates spelling things out. Statistically accurate complaints need not be expressed in most team situations (except in those horror movies where everyone weirdly agrees to hide in the basement instead of running toward the busy well-lit road nearby).

Good teammates defy reality! They cheer everyone else on to success despite the odds. They shout to struggling teammates, “you got this!” They celebrate each step toward victory with congratulations:
“Yes! That’s better than last week. Good work.” 

We hear these encouraging words and eventually come to believe what our teammates tell us. We become what they think we are. Maybe we really can do this!

Put two otherwise equal teams into a match and the one that shares a positive encouraging team approach will succeed over the group that wastes energy niggling about every obstacle and flaw.

The smallest team you play for is yourself and you maintain a constant dialog with yourself, even while you sleep. Maybe you say things like, “You aren’t very good at learning new things.” Perhaps you say, “You are not good at sports (or languages, writing, or math).” Sporadically you say, “everyone is much better at this than you are so you should give up.”

Hopefully you say, “Yes! That’s much better than last week!” or possibly, “You got this! Just another couple of practice sessions!” or maybe, “Sure, you are hot and tired, but you can finish well so don’t give up.”

A match between two otherwise equal teams will always be won by the team that cheers its members to victory. You face each day with a choice. Which team would you rather join? Wally Wet-blanket believes he is justified in spouting negativity about why it is unlikely he (his team) will do well, or he’ll mumble relentlessly about how unprepared he might be, or he’ll moan about issues outside his control. Since we are our own team, we become who we say we are. If we say we are not up to a task, we will not ever be up to that task.

Decide instead to tell yourself valuable things like, “I will give this situation my full energy and I’ll succeed better and better each time,” or “I practiced this so I know I can do it,” or “I really am capable at being good at this!” 

Let your internal dialog be the place where there never is heard a discouraging word.You are what you say you are. Start saying you are excellent.