Video transcript:
Hey, good morning. It’s me, Seth with SethPerler.com, I hope you are doing great parents and teachers. This video really is more for parents, but teachers I’d be thrilled to hear from you if you want to comment below and share with parents. What do you think of this video and what advice do you have for them according to this topic? Parents, I’m an executive function coach based out of Boulder, CO and what that means that I help struggling students figure out and navigate this thing called school. What’s going on right now is it’s the end of the semester, and if your student struggles with school and it’s the end of the semester, the very end of the semester, and you are a bit concerned about knowing whether or not what your child is telling you is in fact what they need to be telling you about what they need to be doing to end of school year on a strong note. If you’re concerned about that information and its accuracy, this video is for you. This video is about that. So yesterday I was speaking with the local families that I work with, and we’re talking about what your child should be doing to wrap up the school year. And the first thing that I wanted to convey to the families that I’m working with locally right now is that they need clarity about that. They need clarity. How do you get clarity? What we’ll typically do is we’ll ask the child, “Hey, what do you need to be doing? Do you have any final exams you’re supposed to be studying for? Any projects coming up? Do you have any novels you’re supposed to be reading, do you have any papers you’re supposed to be writing? Because at the end of the year, so if you’ve been watching my recent videos you saw the one on PEPR, what’s going on with the end of the year where students not only have current work to deal with, but if your student struggles with executive function they’re also dealing with makeup work, late, incompletes, zeros, test corrections, and things like that. So they’re dealing with past work, current work, and then the upcoming work is huge. It is the end of the year stuff. But, you also have spring fever coming where they are less motivated to do the work. They want to be done with school, teachers want to be done with school, parents want to be done with school, and everybody is at their wit’s end with all the stuff. So if your child struggles and you’re a parent, and you’re concerned that, “Okay, well, it seems like they have passing grades right now.” But you know something could turn like that (*snaps*). You don’t want to end up a week after school is out getting the grades and finding out, “Oh my God my child just failed four classes. Now, we got to get him signed up for summer school, or retaking classes in the fall,” or figure out how to deal with the situation. So you don’t want to be dealing with that. So what do you need? So again, I’m talking to families about what your child should be doing the wrap of the end of the year. What you need as a parent is this clarity about these things, but going to your child to ask them for the clarity. “What do you need to be doing? What makeup work do you need to be doing? What kind of work do you need to be doing? What big things you have for the end of the year? Are you going to be able to do that when you feel less motivated cuz it’s spring?” And you can’t rely on your child to give you a reliable answer. What are you going to do? Here’s the one thing I want to recommend that you do. You need one thing. One thing – and that is clarity. You’re not going to get it from your kid, just because they don’t have the executive function to do that. It’s not that they can’t, it’s not that they’re just not trying or they don’t care or they’re just being lazy or they’re just too motivated. We want to stay away from those judgment-sort of concepts that shame them. They do not, most likely, your child does not have the executive function, the ability to manage all of the details of what they’re supposed to be doing right now. So if you cannot rely on your child to get that, where are you going to go? You are going to get it from two main places. The first place is the portals, which are not necessarily reliable either. You’re going to look at Schoology, you’re going to look a Google Classroom, you’re going to look at Infinite Campus, you’re going to look at whatever your school uses. And sometimes it’s very confusing because you might have one teacher uses Infinite Campus, Schoology, and their own personal teacher website or they might use two or three different things. And you might have a different teacher who uses different online portals so it can be very confusing to know where to go. This drives me nuts drives, it drives the families nuts, it drives the kids nuts. That’s really hard to get the clarity from the portals. But that’s the first place you want to go. Look at the portals, scour through the teacher sites and see what they’re communicating there. Then you have some teachers who communicate extraordinarily well online. They really make the expectations really clear. There are no questions. You can print PDFs up. You know exactly what’s going on, when it’s due out to be done. You can help your kid when you have information like that, but then you have other teachers who are vague, who don’t post regularly, who don’t give you a clear idea of what the expectation is, and then you can’t help your kid and you end up in the situation that we’re trying to avoid where you can fails the class and you feel like you you were caught off-guard and how did this even happen? So anyhow, the first thing you want to do to get clarity is to examine the portals thoroughly to get as much clarity as possible. And again, you can’t always necessarily rely on that. The second way you want to get clarity is by contacting the teachers either directly in person or through email, but typically through email. What I’m going to explain to you here is what I would email the teachers, and if you’re a teacher watching this and you have advice for the parents on what to write on this, please leave a comment below telling your wisdom for parents. So basically you want to email the teachers and say, “Hey, what’s up? Hope you’re doing well. Thanks for everything you do.” Look, it’s the end of the year. Keep your emails short, bulleted, easy-to-read. Teachers get tons of email. Make it easy for the teacher to respond to. Don’t write them a book, okay. “Hey, what’s up? We’re trying to get clarity. We don’t want to be blindsided, I’m writing you this email because we don’t want to be at be blindsided. We want to know exactly what’s going on. So, could you please give us clarity? Here’s the clarity we need. One, we need clarity on past work. Are there any missings, incompletes, zeros, late work, test corrections, or anything that we should be aware of? Two, we need clarity on current work. It looks like this is what you guys are doing, this is what the portal says. Is this true? Are we on target here or not? If not, what do we need to know about what’s going on currently? Three, what about upcoming work? (PEPR?) Are there any papers, exams, projects, or large reading assignments that my child should be working on?” Because with your kids, if your kid struggles with executive function then your kid is the type of guy do the night before the giant thing is due that they’ve had six weeks to work on. They say, “Mom, Dad, guess what? I have a giant ten-page paper due tomorrow. I haven’t started.” So you want to know about those end-of-the-year, long-term projects, or long-term things, that might be coming up. You know, if it’s an exam you want to know if there’s a study guide and so on and so forth. You don’t have to get that detailed in this email. But in this email, you’re going to be like, “What’s going on with the old stuff, what’s going on with the current stuff, what’s going to come? The number one question to ask in this email for clarity is, “what do we need to know so we’re not blindsided after it’s too late?” Meanwhile, I will put an email template in the YouTube description and on my blog at SethPerler.com that you can literally cut and paste in and modify for your situation, but it’s a template that will help. Teachers, if you have any advice for parents with the template and how they should phrase things or ask things in order to get the best responses from teachers, please add that in. So anyhow, parents again, do not just believe your child. If you are concerned and your child says, “Leave me alone, Mom and Dad. I’ve got this. Why don’t you trust me? I know what’s going on. I promise. I swear I’ll talk to the teacher about this. I swear I turned it in. I swear the teacher just hasn’t updated the portal yet. Yes. I’m fine. I’ve got this trust me.” If they’re saying that but there’s something inside you that’s going, ‘ah, I don’t know,’ you need to listen to that. Better to be safe than sorry. Get the clarity for yourself and figure out what’s actually going on. If your kid was right, awesome, reward the heck out of them, that’s fantastic. That’s what we want. But if they weren’t and you can avoid massive consequences on this and not in an enabling way, but in the supportive of way, you can avoid the consequences then that’s really good. You want to feel like you’re empowering your kid, you’re giving them clear expectations. You’re giving them the support they need and all that. Anyhow, again, my name is Seth with SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach based out of Boulder, Colorado. If you haven’t signed up for my blog or subscribed to the YouTube channel, check them out. And if you like what I’m doing, please share this video with somebody that it might help right now. That supports me, and you can help somebody out with his video. Take care, I’ll talk to you soon.
Video transcript:
well Alright how everybody? Hey guys, it’s Debbie Steinberg Kuntz and Steph Perler. And we’re just going to have a little chat because we’re hearing the same thing that the wheels are coming off the bus with grades. It is spring there’s lots of spring fever around and Seth Perler as you may know is an amazing executive function coach. She was in her bright and quirky child on my stomach and he’s got a course that talks about this exact thing. So I thought who better to ask and stuff Perler so sad hi there. Hi everybody. So what do you do when people come to you and I’m hearing from teens. Like I can’t get my head in the game. The wheels are falling off the bus the grades are in the toilet. Where do you begin? And what do you tell them specifically? Okay. So I guess it had the first thing that I think of it will force while what is spring fever, right? So and what happened to just a real basic what happens is is that basically for the students that I work with a lot of the students that you work with the students that start with. Where it doesn’t come early. Naturally. What happens is they start the semester off generally pretty strong but this in terms of the second semester, they just come up winter break their backs may be there reorganize maybe they’re restarting their planner. Maybe they’ve had some lectures from their parents about this mess is going to be different the kids like yeah, this mess was going to be different and so what happened they start off spring semester relatively well and Then about 6-8 weeks in Things Fall Apart or or parents find out that things are falling apart and grades of taking a nosedive is as much a missings incomplete slate work and things like that and pear and then the student spends the rest Messer trying to swim upstream trying to deal with the makeup work the incomplete the late work at the test corrections. And what have you also dealing with current work. So there’s two things late work current work also dealing with that what I call Pepper which is end of semester work which are long-term projects that these are the kids that on a Sunday the night before something to do on a Monday say Mom Dad. I got the giant project due tomorrow and the parent says when did you know about this and the kids as I’ve known about it for a month or the kid doesn’t usually say that in the 4th of my but that’s the stuff. They have this end of this mess with have been Peppers or things papers exams projects and large reading assignments like a novel which is often accompanied by buy a project or at or sometimes an exam but usually project are paper. So at the end of the semester last week is the last week is the final exam final project final papers and large reading assignments that are culminating in that time. It’s the perfect storm it is because so to read the repeat that you got your current work your makeup work your pepper stuff and you also have spring fever. So after spring break the kids are back in school the weather’s nice. They want to be outside motivation is even worse in the reason. This is so important for you and I to talk about two people. It’s because parents and teachers are not really can step. Rising. Perfect Storm those four things and how they combine to make a child feel who struggles with executive function how they combine to create so much overwhelmed that the resistance is just boom everything they can think of to resist mom. Leave me alone. I’ve got to get off my back. Why don’t you trust me? I’ll talk to the teacher tomorrow. The teacher just hasn’t updated the website yet. The teacher hasn’t answered my grades and I swear I turned her that. I know I turned it and I remember turning it in. Yes. I put my name on all that stuff happening in there. So resistant, I’ll do it in an hour. I’ll do them five minutes. I’ll do it tomorrow. I already did it was lying. A lot of students are literally lying. So I hear that story of us. So basically we’re at this point and I just wanted to set the stage. So that’s that’s what’s going on here with the with the spring fever Thought Justin Bieber all of these things combined. Right, right. So now we’re deep in the pressure cooker. They come to you. I’ve heard you talk about the dep this whole idea that you start off well and then things Jap and then I come to you for the Hail Mary. What are we going to do to wrap things up? And I know this is like fire course which were going to sell your dope reach out and we’re going to be watching at the dinner table as a family like 15 minutes tonight. I’m so excited but just in a nutshell, I know you’re so good at talking to kids directly about yeah. What do you say as I talk right now? So I I know whoever is watching. This is pretty much parents. There’s going to be some teachers watching this but in a moment you’ll hear me shift and I’ll sort of talked to the students so you can click play on the it after you’re done watching this if you want to show it to your student. We speak to the students, so So what happens is is that I get parents were hiring meets work with a student. Technically. I’m of service to the student first. That’s the way that I look at it parents second for the parents. Obviously the ones that hire me now student. Hey, what’s up? My name is Seth and if you are going through this to the Deb urine spring fever, you have a bunch of makeup work, but the light works you got a bunch of big stuff coming up exams and projects and stop coming up and so students I’m talking to you right now. I got two types of students out there. I have all students that I work with are resistant to all students. I work with don’t feel like it they’ve got excuses get off my back. Leave me alone, Mom and Dad. I’ve got this blah blah blah all my students are resistant. They procrastinate they put off doing their work and their their swimming Upstream trying to finish the school year trying to pass everything. Okay, all my students are resistant. So you listening to me right now are resistant. That’s fine. Now of my resistance to do. Do students. Listen to me right now of my resistance students. There are two types. I have the resistance students that really want it and really are willing to be honest with their parents. Even if they plied their willing to be honest about that. They’re willing to work hard. Even if it’s the struggle they’re willing to do the struggle. They really want finish the semester well, and then I’ve got the student that really doesn’t and really isn’t ready. I’m really isn’t willing to overcome stuff so I can’t help that students who is really stuck is really resisting. Who’s that went right? But if you are a student who wants to end school you’re on a better note, then you can do that. Now Debbie and I are talking about here is what can you do what specific things so I work with students day in and day out who struggle with these things. I was the student start with d How do I get the resistant kid who does want to end on a better note, how do I get them to end the school year on a better? So I’m going to tell you specifically how I would do that and it’s some variation of this first thing to do if you want to end on a better note is get crystal clear on what the heck is going on because the students that I work with are foggy day. What do you have for homework tonight that I really don’t know you have any tests this week? I can’t remember. I know I have something in this one’s so you need to get clarity number one. How do you get clarity there? A few ways one you rely on your mind. That is the worst way to get clarity but it is an important part of clarity and sometimes it works. It’s just not the most reliable way to get to if you have syllabi her syllabus prove different classes you examine the syllabi to see any big do dates or any big things coming out? Sometimes you’ll have that more. College students some high school students have it not many middle school students have a very good at syllabus it all online portal schoology Infinite Campus things like that. Now I know students is extraordinary really annoying frustrating and complicated to find me information that you need to find on these portals. Skip multiple teachers with multiple different sites, and I know it’s confusing. So that’s one way to get clarity when it comes to getting Clarity online that way will you want to do if your parents are willing to help you with this or you have a teacher and Mentor tutor or someone is going to help you with this have them help you get the clarity and what are you getting with Clarity with any of these things? What you’re trying to do is we’re trying to make a master list of all the things you need to be responsible. So that next one is you’re going to be looking online. The next one is you’re going to ask the teachers. There are two ways to Ask them online or in person if you ask them in person the problem is is that my students will say yes. I’ll talk to my teacher tomorrow next day, Did you talk to your teacher know I forgot. So how do we deal with accountability? I have my students email to teacher. Hey, I’m going to talk to you tomorrow during office hours or lunch or after school help or whatever. You have a couple minutes so we can chat and I can get clarity and that worm to say over whenever you need Clarity Clarity on what I need to do to end the year on a better note. So like it’s in the way they forget and they don’t know yet. What a lot of us know is do it while you’re thinking about it. If you do it when you think about it and email them then that sets up the conversation for the next day. It’s supposed you up for Success. Yeah, and people don’t want to email the teacher because they don’t want to stay there. It’s we just don’t want to take the energy to do it, you know will resist it. Now. Remember well, you know what be honest with yourself that’s another part of this process is the honesty with ourselves to say, hey know what I’m not great at remembering details, and I’m okay with myself and I’m not I don’t care if people say me in the world. I’m not shaving myself. I’m cool with it. I need to write stuff down. I need to take notes. I need to whatever but yeah, like you said yeah here it bright and quirky we call that being a scientist just know that your brain works that way, you know, can you try it one way that didn’t work. Let’s experiment try to another way and like you said set yourself up for success and I like the word scientist because it’s subjective. There’s no shame. There’s no I’m bad or there’s something wrong with me or I’m stupid or I can’t do a tour. So we need Clarity we can either go to the teacher in person or we can email them to tell them where we’re going to go in person or we can email them. They just say it in the email. Hey, I need 30. What do I need to be to be successful now some of you students are watching this right now and you’re thinking well, my teachers don’t want to hear from me that usually is not true. So you can let that one go but some of you were saying well, I don’t like my teacher. My teacher hates me or I feel like my teacher doesn’t like me. Sometimes that maybe true you may really feel like your teacher doesn’t like you made me really feel like you’re not connected to them and that the hard case but you want to Advocate anyway and say hey dude. Hey teacher whatever their name is I want to do. Well, please give me some clarity. I need to know what I need to do. So the whole point of what I just said was there all these different ways. I may bless them out. But basically the point is you step one is you have got to get Are on what you have to do to climb that Giant mountain of stuff that you need to do to address pepper current work and late work master-list. I love it. Now. You got a master list now similar to whatever was saying before with the scientist thing. You have to be honest with yourself that you’re not going to do it. If you’re more perfectionistic, you’re not going to do everything perfectly. You probably won’t even do it all so don’t worry about getting AIDS because what happens with my students as they want to do a perfectly and they end up not turning anything in at all sometimes so you don’t want to get caught in trap that I’ve just be like, hey, I’m going to eat soap Step2. I guess we’ll be the mindset having a mindset up. Look I’m going to do my best. I’m going to be strategic. I’m going to try to do everything. I’m going to try to get enough done. I’m going to try to do an enough makeup work enough current work enough the projects and maybe I missed a couple things, but I’m just going to do my best. Set up compassion to yourself. Look just doing my best every day. I’m going to chip away at it. I’m going to do a little bit. I talked about the 1% rule, but you just do 1% more. Why because when we say we’re going to 100% more I’m going to get an A+ whatever we set ourselves up for failure. We have to learn to take baby steps. Just can I do a little bit more today? Can I do one more problem? And I study for one more minute. Can I do one more thing on the study guide? Can I study? Can I revise this thing one more time? Can I add one more detailed sentence, you know, whatever. Can I just do it’s all about a little bit more so that I am not. Okay and I am out. Don’t you have your master list? They want to prioritize it we want to see what to do with the sooner things first. Exactly. So now we have this giant list and it is going to feel overwhelming. You can break it down into smaller list if you want. It doesn’t matter how you do it, but do it somehow but yes now we have to really get more clarity on it. So what I recommend my students do with a list of things is first to estimate how long it will take. So let’s say that tonight. I have met a math assignment to do I have to write a draft and I have to check my online grades. I have to reorganize my backpack let there were things to do we organize in my backpack might be 15 minutes check. My online grades might be 5 minutes doing the math might be 30 minutes whatever now am I going to be wrong in the estimation? Yes, because we are timeline. We don’t we aren’t realistic about how long things take but at least we’re getting some idea of how long it takes on your master list put a little circle next to each thing and write about how long you think it’ll take Why because that Juju concrete a concrete idea of the energy in the time that you’re going to need to devote to whatever the thing is and then you’re going to write what order you want to do things in and you want to be strategic like if you can do several small assignments that will take you 5 minutes each and you can get let’s say 200 points for that or you could do an assignment that’s good take you two hours and only get 30 points for you know, prioritize the one that makes more sense to prioritize knock out a bunch of anyhow, I asked this question Debbie when people are prioritizing I say, what do you want to do for the most important is the most important first the shortest first the longest verse the easiest first or the hardest person because people have different preferences now night. I want to honor their preferences, but sometimes I find that I’m pushing a student to do the easiest first because for two reasons one is that helps get the train rolling and the self starting forecast. The nation motivation getting started is one of the hardest things right to just getting the train going. Once you give the Penguins bodies are just starting to starting with the easier. First. A lot of times has the grey strategy the other good thing about doing the easiest first is that you can cross more things off the list. So I have some students and I’ll push them not to do this. I some students who will do the hardest first or the longest first or the most important first and it’s like a two or three-hour thing and then they don’t even finish that in a night and it feels like it got nothing done. A lot of times I’ll push but anyhow, you can do what you want. The point is I don’t really care what order students you going. I don’t really care just shoes in order choose how long you think they’ll take prioritize things? Look what you need to be doing and just do your best. You don’t have to follow the order but think of the order first think it through but you don’t even have to follow it. Now the next thing that I want to recommend which is related to the prioritization the next thing that I want to make So it’s so we have sort of the clarity that we have the mindset and now we have prioritizing herself is I asked units on any given day. What is your number? One priority is today. What is the most important thing? You need to get them today? If you got nothing else done tonight? What is the most important thing you need to get that now? It may not be the shortest thing. But we I do ask my students that every single day because it’s a very good clarifying questions to help you figure. It may not be the first thing you do is but it’s really important to know what’s the most important thing on any given day. So at least if you get nothing else when you get that today so everyday when I sit down at my desk and write down my Big 3, I want to accomplish and a big one. I mean, that would be great for the first one to really clear that that one is absolutely going to get that. I wonder if I have any of these planning sheets around that I used but yeah, so does that sort of its own and we have sort of the clarity on what we need to do to climb them? We have a good mind that the hay I can do this. I’ll just do my best and I’m not going to get myself up and then we have I’m now it’s prioritize electric I would order now we have the execution phase and I think this is a good place for us to wrap up. Debbie is on this execution face. So now we have this mountain to climb. How are we going to ask you. How are we going to do the things we have to do but don’t feel like doing we are resisting doing them where procrastinating we’re putting it off. We’re not realistic about it or lying about it. We’re making excuses for how do we do the things you don’t want to do that from dying to know? So what we need there’s a few things we need to do one is we need to have a an area to focus that doesn’t have distractions turn off the phone get realistic with yourself. You can stay off Snapchat for 5 minutes. You will not die like get honest with yourself like put the phone in the other room turn it off completely. So it’s annoying to turn it back on set a timer for 40 minutes and don’t check your phone at all for 40 minutes or 5 minutes. Whatever it is. I mean what you have to do so the idea for how the main overarching idea for how to do the stuff you don’t want to do is chunky and I’ll get to that in a minute. But like I said first we got to have the environment we have to have a place that’s why we have to put the dog outside. If the dog is annoying we have to let you know if it if it’s in the kitchen and people are cooking we probably and that’s distracting. We probably should move somewhere where there’s not distracted but not probably not in the bedroom on a computer with a bunch of tabs open that are distracting. Get real with yourself like so the first thing you have to do is have an environment where you can focus one on the other side of the focus is remove distractions. So wherever you want to study you should have to be optimized for Focus minimize for distractions optimized for Focus minimize the distractions. The number one you you want to do that and number two for sale start when you want to talk. So how do you eat an elephant Debbie Journey Of A Thousand Miles begins with a single step. Do not write an entire essay when you sit down right the draft write the outline write a paragraph our minds that I have to do this giant thing. So what’s the word for the phase inside right now? Hunky chunky chunky when can eat an entire alphabet. Do you eat at 1 by the time I know that’s a gruesome metaphor best. I like your motion Library like it’s just a bite like it has to be bite-size. So you have to jump down. So you had like Debbie was saying her list of three. I recommend that students only write three to five things down a day that they’re going to do why it’s not realistic to do more than that. So stop over 103 things and you’ll probably get more done thinking of day that do three then having a list of 20, you know, so just pick a few things chunk it down per day whatever you’re going to do that night and chunk down what you’re going to do and you really want to think through what you need to do. Now. I’m going to talk about some specific strategies with pepper that I recommend. So when you are writing papers, I recommend that you block out you chunk and this may sound counter-intuitive to what I just said, but I recommend that you junk a 325 hour block when you’re going to work on a paper. Why because if you think you’re going to sit down and work on your paper York. Page essay or something like that and you think you’re going to sit down for 30 minutes and get anything done. You’re wrong. You’re feeling yourself. I I’m wrong in thinking that about myself Debbie’s or anything about her that her so it takes us a half hour to even get started. If you’re like me. What’s that part of homework? If you set aside three to five hours of work on a paper. Imagine the first half hours just you getting the train boy. Like it’s been getting your stuff organized you cleaning your area you eating a snack you you know, texting someone to ask him about a detail on it. Whatever it’s going to take awhile just to get a tranquil and thought you want a large block because what you want to do is immerse yourself in it. Now, is it a stressful but no, you don’t want too stressful large walk. If you have 5 hours and you say Sunday night from 4 to 9 to stay per night. All I’m going to do is worry about this paper. If you’re doing that then then you’re going to eat dinner in between it. So during that 5 hours, you’ll take it at 45 minutes or an hour for dinner. You will get on social media. You’ll get distracted several times. You will grab a snack you will, you know, go do some jumping jacks or you’ll daydreaming totally forget what you’re doing for 50 minutes ago. I told you no account for that like it’s okay, but get a big block or so. So that’s papers the next one pepr papers. Damn, when you are studying for exams, you don’t want a 325 hour block studying for exams and you certainly don’t want to just wait till the night before and only study. Will you want us to call is called? Sorry everybody. I’m really tired. It’s been a long day. I’m about you want repetition. You you you want to repeat setting. So if you have a test in two weeks, I would rather see you study. Even though 15 minutes doesn’t sound like anything and what I said before for 15 minutes getting ready with a study guide or something or no cards or and I’m not a fan of flashcards the way they’re usually done but that’s another story. But what does study guide or something or study partner? Someone is testing you if they tested you 15 minutes a day for 14 days for 2 weeks before the thing and it was only 15 minutes you are going to get so much more out of that then if you studied all that, however much time that was collected Lee the night before so it’s called spaced repetition. You can Google spaced repetition if you care to but imagine You wanted to 3,000 pushups in a month and you wait 30 days and one day you do 3000 pushups. You’re just going to be so sore won’t be able to move the next day. You’re going to hate push-up. But if you did a hundred today in those 30 days, you would actually see that your musculature was more toned. They would become very easy. You do them more quickly you’d be stronger you feel stronger. So that’s the same type of concept you’re doing a little bit everyday with the stomach. Now the night before should you still study a lot? Of course not thing only study 15 minutes a night before the exam and on some nights. Can you study 2 hours and have a study group? Of course that you get a point that I’m just giving you a basic strategy on pepper because these I want you guys to think about these as you approach this as Hail Mary Time of the Year this spring fever time of the year. Then you have your projects projects are like papers. You want to devote a large 325 hour block want to chill you can put music on for a lot of projects new writing paper you off and don’t Music on cuz you use that type of thinking you need for writing papers different than for most projects, but if you’re glowing stuff together and you know, it’s it’s more or you’re making PowerPoint you’re doing the design party music on it sucks when you’re doing the research or do you really have to think you’re going to want to be able to focus but but you want large blocks for a project and then for the AR reading assignment now, this is something Debbie that you and I have both seen a lot where kids are in elementary school. They’re told you need to be 10 minutes tonight or 20 minutes tonight and that is not reality that is not what gets people to fall in love with reading that is having to jump through hoops to do a reading checklist or a reading log like things kids. Absolutely hate. That’s not what we want to do. We won’t you actually want to enjoy your week. So if you have a large reading assignments, like a novel that they have a 300-page novel, you’re going to write a paper on order project on you do not want to read 30 minutes a night. That is not it if you want to read you want to read groups of chapters. Maybe you read three chapters a night 7 chapters the night, you know how you want to read chapters chapters contain entire ideas that go together you want to end at at at at the end of a chapter not the middle of a chapter and you want to be immersed in the book. So when you’re reading a book and you’re reading 325 chapters, let’s say you can get pretty immersed in the story. I see a lot of students will read like the first chapter be like, I don’t like this book you really that’s not enough time to really even see if you like it. So we’ve kind of lost the art of reading that’s one of those magical things in the world. So just trust me on this guy’s try it out to an experiment with it, but forget about the CliffsNotes and forget about the SparkNotes and forget about you. Actually you can enjoy reading light give it a chance if you’re one of those students who like, you know, you’re you’re just you want to just listen to the audio. Look try it if you’re awake mad, and I know I have a lot of students who still are deeply in love with reading but I get a lot who also have lost their love of reading but large blocks guys and you can’t do it all in one night. You can’t do a night. We’re spending five hours on a project and reading 3 chapters and spend three hours on a lake be realistic the mountain you have to climb is big. I know it says it more than you can probably handle probably realistically. Yeah, so you just do your best and you just do the things you can you know, and if you think oh, I’ll do three hours and you only get 45 minutes then you still got 45 minutes then which is way more than Which is what a lot of resisting kids get stuck in is this pattern of doing nothing and procrastinating so much that they get nothing that’s so Debbie that that is kind of slow here where we look at, you know, we got this pattern with spring fever and it can really cause some severe consequences for us. We want to get Saturday you want to have a good mindset. We want to prioritize how we’re going to get up the mountain and then we want to be able to execute and do the things that need to be done in and just do our best to keep checking way to 1% more do the next day delivery. There’s going to be days when you guys aren’t going to want to do anything and you’re just like Mom Dad just just let me just not do anything today and depending on your relationship with your parents. Hopefully there is some days when they can be like, okay, I can tell you really do need a day off. I’m going to come back in an hour and push you anyhow, and see if we can get started but take some time, you know, take some space but then get back on the neck. Stay and get back to it. You know that you we all are adults to Debbie and I both we have days. I know I have probably two to three days the month Debbie that are like a washed I get depressed. I don’t even have a reason for it. I’m just I can’t rally I can’t and we’ll be human do you get those Debbie? Play absolutely and then you get to the point. Why am I even trying? Call ya if if you guys are having trouble with homework trouble with grades know that you’re not alone. And what’s up talking about. I mean, he’s just laid out a really awesome plan and appearance. I would encourage you to watch this with your kids, you know, pull that flew out the laptop after dinner, you know, just watch it for a few minutes and have a great discussion about what sort of plan you can put together after this just for the Post-it note and putting everything on it and prioritizing and it’s a really good plan. So you’re not alone. And what’s us talking about our life skills that are going to serve you for a very long time to come so stuffed can’t thank you enough and real quick before we wrap up tell us a little bit about your course if you want them deeper and I like literally this world has a lot of problems and when you get older you’re going to build a career on solving problems. All careers are designed to solve some problem. I am in a problem solving. Debbie is But I see that you because we need you we need kids with outside the box brains. We need kids who think differently and learn differently in processed differently. We literally the world literally need you to develop your strengths. So and I say this because I know that you’re resisting I know that you don’t feel like doing the stuff and sometimes you feel like what’s the point of all this. Why do I have to do this homework up when I’m ever going to use that. So the point is that developing a lot of these skills. It’s not going to always feel like you’re going to need them but they will develop you they will help you grow as a human being they will help you become more determined to more motivated than more so that you will have the skills to really pursue your passions and what matters to you and and even if you don’t know what that is now it these you are planting seeds for your future. Even if it doesn’t feel like it you are planting seeds. We need you. I need you the world needs you and I Really say too sincerely. We need you. So thank U students parents as far as the course. I have a semester-long course, it’s called you g y g upgrade your grades and although I one way I don’t even believe in grades on the other and it’s a necessary evil. How do we develop was called the executive function? How do we develop the skills? I have this quirky weird. Awesome big core that guide you through all of these steps to help your student and help you. There’s a student section. That’s about 35 super in-depth. I’m lessons why really break down how he coached students and then I have about 20 really in-depth parent lessons where I really exhausted. We break down all kinds of things so that you can better help your kid be successful in school, but not so that they just get good grades. Not so that they just take a test scores so that they can plant seeds to have a great present as good of quality of life. Now in in in a great future as all about quality of life is not about Conformity and jumping through hoops and just doing what they’re told and it’s about really helping them develop their best selves so you can click on it and find it there and Seth as always such a pleasure and for anyone who and for anyone who has the all access pass from the Brighton Court Summit. We’ve got talk from Seth in 2019. I believe we did the Sunday night overhaul and in the 2018 Summit we did a few part executive function master class, which was just so awesome so stuff you’re a fan of your friend and I just always love talking with you. Thanks so much for the opportunity. Good luck ever. Okay. Take care.
Video transcript:
Hey, what’s up are teachers and maybe some students out there today. I’m going to tell you about what is neurodiversity and why does it even matter? Why should we even care about this term is very important in my line of work. So I’ll be explaining that to you again again for the first time. My name is Seth Perler. That was so throw it out, I’m really glad that you’re here. I work with a lot of students who think differently they learn differently. They don’t fit in the box and I like people who don’t fit in the Box. I enjoy being around people who don’t who break the mold and who are complicated who are interesting and I’m going to teach you about no diversity, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re going to walk away from this video having a formal definition. That’s not how I roll what I want to give you and this video is I want you to walk away from this video with a Vibe with a feeling with a sense of what nerd versity is a strong sense of what it is. So why is it even important? To understand the term neurodiversity. The reason it’s important is because we’re in the business of quote educating students who want to educate people. Why do we want to educate people because we want them to have a great life one that I have a great life now and we want them to have the tools to be able to build a great future want them to have a high quality of life. We don’t want them to have an average life for a mediocre life. We certainly don’t want them to have a bad life or a stressful around happy life. We want to give people a great life and education is where we give people tools doesn’t always work. Of course not why doesn’t it always work? Well because we can’t always or we don’t always I meet everyone’s needs adequately. So the reason it’s important to understand our diversity is because when we don’t ask is because we want you to shine and have a great life and when we don’t understand their diversity when we miss understand human beings when we interpret things incorrectly then we address problems and correctly. Address needs and correctly when that happens. We can’t give people what they need than that diminishes their quality of life it limit their like it gives them less choices less opportunities. It it lowers our quality of life in the future in that is not what we are in the business of doing so that’s why it’s important. Now before I get further and I want to mention that it’s really important for us parents teachers and students anybody. It’s important for us to be aware of the intentions behind the words we used so we want to make sure that we’re being politically correct in a way, but we also don’t want to overdo it. So we got it. We have to use words to describe things. But there are some words in this whole number 2 verse this world of understanding this concept that can be misconstrued or taken the wrong way. So I’m just be sensitive to how we label people, you know label server purpose, but they’re not everything by any means so people can take labels way too far and think that a labeled They can read too much into it and then again misunderstand the student, which is not what we want to do. So neurodiversity. Basically this refers to neurologically diverse Brains Brains are very different. We are extraordinarily complex beings and we want to put terms within education. We want to put things into simple terms and think that we can quantify things in measure everything and oh my God, it’s so it’s so dangerous the way that we measure kids with grades and scores in in in the way. We perceive things sometimes so neurodiversity refers to neurologically diverse brain different brain that people think differently your experience of thinking feels different than somebody else’s experience of thinking learning differently we have different experiences that we’re coming from. We have different values. So nerd versity refers to that. We have different ways of interpreting processing feeling sense thinking learning. Now one of the problems with no diversity is that it’s invisible. Often we can’t we can’t see what’s going on inside somebody and I talked a lot about iceberg Theory where we see the tip of the iceberg. A lot of times. We might see falling and anger sadness. We see things on the outside, but what’s underneath the iceberg and when my work working with these students that’s what really matters finding out. What what’s the route of the stuff? What’s really going on behind the scenes? So with nerd of our students often times, they aren’t even noticed in the reverse. So and I’ll talk more about that as I go on but one of the problems that happens because it’s invisible is that when the student is winner diverse student is struggling in school that we want to Simply labeling. Yeah, you’re just lazy you just don’t try hard enough. You just need to work harder. You just need to be more disciplined. You just need it for yourself up by your bootstraps. You need to be more motivated need to be more regrets. You need to try. Hard do your past you have so much potential and we say all these messages and we are our intentions are good when we are sharing these messages or these these these sentiments but but often times the student starts to internalize this and they start to feel it safe to take it inside in and they start to feel shame and shame is a very corrosive thing really affects these kids very deeply in it as you probably know you adults like we can carry the stuff for years. I I doubt that there is an ad about watching this right now that doesn’t have some part of their life where they worry too much about what other people think of them. We are raised to fit in the Box to conform to do what you’re told and then were shamed if we don’t so Anyhow, I wanted to mention that nerd versity has you know, I’m sure if you’re watching my stuff and you follow my blog and stuff, you know, that no diversity doesn’t mean anybody bad. It’s just different bad is a shaming think just different if anybody’s dropping the ball at us adults not meeting the needs of nerd verse kids. So I want to talk about another similar term neurotypical and neuro a typical. So neurotypical is a term that came out of the ASD Community from somebody. I don’t know who was I should look this up in but I’m somebody apparently somebody with autism came up with the term neurotypical so we have no adverse. We have narrative. Goalie the neural atypical neurotypical would be sort of normal people now, there’s no such thing as a normal person but a neurotypical person that word. That’s why I talked about wear24 would refer to Buddy, who’s more typical neurologically now what we do in education is we tend to take this weekend to take this thing called education and we tend to want to standardize it. We want to say that they were the standards. We want to look at the sameness. We want to look at people being neurotypical. We we teach to the middle of the bell curve. Not the outlier the kids. I work with are the outliers. No diverse kids are outliers. We group people in our schools by that. We want them to be the same age the same grade level. We want to teach them the same chapter give them all the same homework. We want to cover the same material. We want to follow the creek elem. We approach education with this idea of standardization and sameness and that everybody should be at certain grade levels and blah blah and that is not wouldn’t our diversity is about so I wanted to mention standardization and how that influences so much of what we do subconsciously in our in our in our education world. Now the idea here is that if students that student should work hard and do the cricket lemon do what they’re told and cover the material and if that would happen then everything will be okay. They just apply themselves that they need you and they’ll be happy. But everybody is different everybody learns differently. Okay. So there’s another related Concepts. I want to mention in the stock today. And that is the concept of a synchrony and they think he is the same thing with basically states that kids do not develop synchronously. You can’t take a thousand third graders and they all be at the third grade level you have kids who are that age who are some are way ahead of other kids in certain skill areas and summer way below in other skill areas and you might have a third grader. Let’s stick with that one. Who is it is capable of 6 or 7th grade math who is reading at a high school level whose handwriting. Is that a kindergarten level who’s maturity and some situations like with peers that are not their age may be with older peers or without. Their maturity is off-the-charts taking a really deep intelligent conversations, but their maturity when it comes to not getting what they want with certain things. Really infantile asynchrony says that it’s not this line and you have all these domains and all these areas that you can measure and everybody is this supposed to be at the same place and if they’re not at the same place the worst thing to do is say it’s the fault of the student again in my opinion. It’s the fault of how we approach serving them about give kids who are all over the place if you have one kid and they may be in all of it right now. Do you have neurotypical kids who are relative generally speaking at grade level in certain areas sure. It’s that’s the definition of typical. But again, this video is about the number to verse narrow a typical a synchronous gets I want to mention a synchrony. I also wanted to mention that what we’re really doing here when we’re working with an human being or trying to educate them so that they can have a great future as we want to help them build the things that are going to help him. Have a great future we want to Open develop their strengths and their interest in their gifts and their talents in their passions and people have different strengths interest gifts talents and passions. But that’s what our kids are going to be able to build a career on is the things that they’re interested in that they care about that or purpose both of them better meaningful to them that incorporate their strengths for their talents were their gifts and stuff like that. And that too is diverse Isner diverse. I wanted to mention processing one of the things that happens with with people were processing information and there you have to take into account how somebody processes when you’re looking at their diversity because a lot of the students that I work with your extraordinary intelligent have processing issues and when somebody has a processing issue they can look if they could be shamed with the same thing. You’re being lazy. You’re not motivated. You’re not trying hard enough. They can look like they’re not trying and by Ben sometimes when they get older Frustrated attack with dying because they’ve tried so hard and all they’ve done is been shamed for it, but they can look like they’re not trying but they can be trying really hard because they’re struggling to process information. They can really be shamed them. I wanted to mention that and let’s see. Oh, yeah. I wanted to talk about Tui so to eat and hurt and it’s who we students are by definition. No reverse or neuro a typical or asynchronous to a to e student is gifted and talented in Samaria. So if you were to standardize people they would be gifted or the average in those domains and certain domains, but they also have learning challenges are learning disabilities. They might have sensory issues. They might have ADHD autism Asperger’s dyslexia dyscalculia. The rats traumatic brain injury trauma and may have any number of things that are affecting there are at their learning in their processing. So now. Tui it is kind of misleading because that assume that there are two exceptionalities, but there can be multiple of sex exceptionalities. In fact, you usually there are yea and sometimes things are undiagnosed are on notice or so, we have to take that into consideration to and then there’s a term called comorbidities which also kind of bored by comorbidities would mean that they’re more diagnoses going on at the same time. So anyhow, the point of all of this so far with this mirror diversity is people learn differently and people need to be taught differently. We cannot throw a standardized cookie cutter a curriculum at everybody and trailer. Teachers and play follow this cookie-cutter curriculum do it the way we tell you to do it and everybody will do just fine and look great on the test and all will be well that is not reality people learn differently. They think differently they feel differently. They processed differently. They need different things in our job. Is that all this to do our best to give them what they need to come do it perfectly know, but we can do a much better job than we’re doing right now. So what do we do about it? Well, what we’re going to do about it as we are going to teach people as if they learn differently so we can use any number of teaching method to do what’s called differentiation differentiation is in order to education term that implies that we teach or approach a teaching people differently. We make accommodations for people make modifications for people we care about the kids. We are teaching we listen to them. We ask them what they need. We usually don’t do that, but we can do that we can do Call creatively differentiated curriculum or creatively differentiated learning experiences and I like that term because it implies that we are creatively differentiating learning experiences for students so that they have some choice they are they have a lot of choice. They have input they have ownership they have buying in their learning and we don’t shame them. You know, what we can do that is not shame them look at what’s underneath the tip of the iceberg and I think part of the problem and part of the reason that we don’t train teachers to do this then and there are definitely teachers who do that sin a lot of the teachers that really differentiate well do it because either they’re gifted teachers or they’ve worked really hard and developing and honing that skill of differentiation and they’ve been empowered by their Administration which doesn’t often happen to creatively designed things that are going Me a highly engaging and meaningful. The thing is is that teaching like that is not cheap. It is not easy. You can’t cram 35 kids in a room and expect the teacher to have the resources in the time to be able to meet all the needs of a group of kid that is extraordinary leaner diverse and we have a model of Education that is designed to increase Revenue. We don’t see this cuz it’s behind the scenes but like Pearson, which is one of the standardized testing companies that is a 9 billion dollar your company and their revenue model. They’re at their model for profit is very simple. They’re selling test very low overhead very high profit. They do not want the story changed money influences politics and policy and and there’s textbook companies. They textbook. Is make a lot of money there these things called consumables. What is a consumable basically is a book that has to be thrown away at the end of the year. So you have to buy new ones are very expensive for school districts buying electronics for school districts, you know who sells very well you can put everything online and and that’ll just be great while that obviously caused a lot of problems because the place where the kids are supposed to focus has absolutely filled with distractions and they don’t have the executive function to to ignore the distractions. So they’re there the point is is that changing the way that we teach the stuff is really hard because they’re people profit from education even though we don’t see it. We don’t think I owe the text accompanying the curriculum manufacturer the tech companies even the food companies like Sysco like these are people who are let’s take the food company to it like that that are selling extremely low. Quality food extremely cheap food for as much profit as they possibly can. You know, it’s they want to keep profit. This is not about what do kids need can we really meet their needs no were still cutting funding it everywhere. We can and blah blah blah. That’s why there’s so many so many protests this year, you know teachers are trying to to live a good life to serve kids to have the resources. They need to have the time they need to have what they need to be able to serve these kids and heading out. so finally trappa neurodiversity forgetting everything I said, let’s go back to the beginning. What are we doing here? You’re trying to educate human beings to build on their strength. We’re trying to help them have strong enough executive function so that they can execute on the goals that are meaningful and purposeful to them. We are trying to create healthy and secure attachment with parents and teachers and the more the more dysfunctional of school is obviously the more dysfunction in Dysfunctional tell a friend you’re going to have with with the adults in these kids lives, but the better a school does at having mentally healthy teachers and the better we is families take care of our own mental health in the more we can have healthy and secure attached relationships relationships are everything is alternately with want to teach our kids how to have fantastic relationships. We want to Value their diversity of the CDs unique human being. So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to give them the executive function building on this strength developing their skills honoring that there are Unique individual and we want them to shine. We want them to have a great life now and have gay set them up to be able to have a great future. So again what I was trying to do here with give you a Vibe a sense. I wouldn’t know our diversity is I hope that I did that in this video. Again, my name is Seth with stuff perler.com. Really appreciate you if you have not subscribed to my blog you can subscribe there. I send out stuff every week never free course for parents and feel like myself. Please share with somebody today and leave a comment. If you’re on YouTube, you can leave a comment below and I hope that you go Shine Your Light today and have a fantastic day. I’ll see you soon.First, you are the best! Love all the help you provide EF-challenged kids! Question on your simple schoolwork system: How do you tell high school kids to manage carrying all of these separate folders/comp books? Most times they can’t go to locker til lunch and may have 3-4 classes to prepare for — that’s kind of why the zipped 3-ring binder is helpful — but the ONLY reason! 🙂 Most schools these days do not let kids carry around their backpacks (safety reasons). I’m afraid my freshman will leave his science stuff in math and then move on to Spanish. Any suggestions you have would be great! Thank you. — NicoleHere are my tips as explained in the vlog:
Video transcript:
Hey, what’s up, parents and teachers? It’s me Seth with SethPerler.com, I hope you’re having a great day. It is spring. Spring break is upon us. This is the time of ‘The Dip,’ a lot of things are falling apart; this is our final push for the year. We’re getting into what I call ‘Hail Mary’ time, and this is a difficult time. Good luck with this time of the year in terms of helping your students, helping support your students to navigate this final stretch Today I’m going to talk with you, you know those students that you’re working with whether your a parent or a teacher, and they just forget stuff all the time. They leave it in the wrong classroom, they lose stuff all the time, they spent all this time working on homework but it never got turned in and they got a 0 on it, those types of students. I’m going to talk today a little bit about that type of student and I’m going to read an email from a mom named Nicole to answer a question that she has about one of these students. So by the end of this video you’re going to have about eight ideas to help these students. I’m going to go rather quickly, but you’ll have some concrete ideas on how to help these students. I’ve helped a lot of students really figure out ways to manage their stuff in a way that they can handle it and that they don’t feel overwhelmed, and I’m going to go over some of those elements for you. Here is how the email goes: “First, you’re the best. I love all the help you provide executive function challenged kids. Question on your simple schoolwork system. How do you tell high school kids to manage carrying all of these separate folders and composition books?” So basically they’re saying, ‘what do you tell them to do in terms of carrying all this stuff?’ Most of the times they can’t go to their locker until lunch and they may have three to four classes to prepare for, and that’s kind of why the zip binders are helpful, but the only reason, and they put a smiley face because they know that I’m not big on three-ring binders. But the zipped one, because of that zipper on it, it helps them contain their stuff. “Most schools these days do not let kids carry around their backpacks for safety reasons. I’m afraid my freshman will leave his science stuff math and then move on to Spanish, etc. Any suggestions you have would be great. Thank you, Nicole.” All right, so I have eight ideas that I’m going to go over here. Number one: First of all, one thing that works for a lot of students has to have an AM and PM binder, or an AM and PM accordion folder, or an AM and PM zip binder or bag or backpack. Now, it may seem like overkill but you don’t want these AM and PM things to be two giant things. You want them both to be a slim-downed version. If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I really am very minimalist, very essentialist. I want my students to really have the minimum that they need. The more stuff they have, the more stuff they have to manage. Not only in school, but also in life. Their ‘stuff,’ like their email inboxes. So we want to slim down the stuff. We want them to have less stuff, we want them have what they really need to manage. So the first tip is that you can do an AM and PM version. You can tailor that and you guys can figure that out on your own, I’m not going to go into more depth on that. Number two: Next, color-coding is so so so important. I don’t want my students to be thinking, math, for example. I want them to be thinking ‘yellow. Okay, so maybe these two would be math, or maybe read is science,’ or whatever it is, but I want visually things to be very color-coded. I want my students to get their stuff in the right place, it’s a huge problem. Color-coding is one tip to help do that, and I really take this seriously. These kids are often very visual, they’re not often reading the words but they’re seeing the color. So use that. Number three: Next, labels have got to be huge and clear and obnoxious. If you have the type of student who leaves something in one class or leaves something at home, or whatever, you want to have clear labels. I can’t tell you how many times when I was a school teacher that I saw somebody leave a folder on the floor and two minutes later it’d be kicked all the way down the hall. Papers will be all over. That kid is never going to get their stuff back in a meaningful way. And if their name was not on it, it’s never coming back. If their name is on it, it’s a lot harder for people to kick around something on the floor that has a human being’s name on it. It looks more meaningful. So it’s more likely, I’m not guaranteeing, anything to get picked up and also to get back to the student. So somebody picks us up and they go, “Oh that is Seth Perler’s folder,” then the one of the teachers or parent in the hall or one of the kids to be like, “oh we’ll get that back to Seth.” Or if you put the name of the teacher like here it says ‘Miss Smith’ for example on the folder. They might not know who that is, but it can go back to Miss Smith the math teacher, and clearly, this is math. So Seth knows not to put science or social studies or language arts in this folder because it says math. You can even go so far as to put if it’s an A day or if it’s sixth period. You can go crazy and get all the details on here. I call that front-loading. You can go and get detailed with trigonometry. You can have a big giant ‘M’ or a big giant ‘MATH’. I do recommend putting your name on the front and the back. At the very least get your name on the back also. But you want big giant obnoxious labels, you can make it cool, you can make it graffiti, you can make it art, I don’t care. But get at the very least, get a big clear clear clear label on it because I have had so many students be like, “oh, yeah. I lost my planner,” and they’ve used it for 3 months but now it’s gone and they have to start a new one. Or, they’ve lost a folder with lots of work in it. Just get the clear labels. Have I made myself clear on that one so far? So that was tip number three. Number four: Next is the type of folder. So I generally recommend the cheap 50 cent folders. Now you’re going to want to buy two or three of these because they do fall apart, but who cares. You get two or three of them for the year, you label them all so that they’re done so you can just throw recycle the one and get the new one. I generally recommend these. I don’t like the plastic folders because for kids that are messier, they can go like this and everything can fly out of the plastic one. I like a cheap paper folder like this. Now, I do have some students that just use these simple manila folders and that’s it. So some of my students and I’m like “Look, can you just get it in here? Can we at least use these?” Now if your student is not using a zip binder or backpack or something, it’s more likely to fall out of this so you want to consider every detail. With some students I just, “Can you get it into this folder”. I use these for some students, I’ll use an accordion folder for a student who is not as motivated to use a folder. Are they going to really pull out an accordion, set it on their desk, flip back the front of the accordion and go through to get it? Some of my students do that, but not many. Or can you do the three-ring binder? That’s very few of my students that can successfully use a 3-ring binder to manage their stuff. So it’s not actually doing the job it’s intended to do, but it may work. Now as far as the zip binder that you are mentioning. I have had students break out or cut out the rings themselves and just used it, but you could probably find something else that zips. But that is not a bad idea at all. If you have an AM and a PM, small zip thing or something that is enclosed that can keep, you know, if they have three folders for the morning and three for the afternoon. Maybe the three in the morning are yellow with another color, maybe the three of the afternoon or blue with another color, whatever you want to do. But if you can find a container like that or two, that might make things easier. So again, the type of folder. You got your pocket folders, you got your manila folders, you got accordions, your 3-ring binders, and then your zip binders. Number five: Next, I’m going to talk about what you mentioned. This is number five. You mentioned the composition notebooks, right? So if they have six composition notebooks, one for each class, that might be a lot to manage. Here is a trick that you can do. You can have the front part of the composition notebook for one class, and they can flip it over and you can have the other side. Let’s say behind this sticky note for another class. You can also do this to divide it, or you can creatively divide it so that this is actually two notebooks. That’s probably enough room for one semester for a lot of classes. So this can actually be two in one. Another thing that I love is moleskins. I love them because it feels like an art book now. Let me show you the size comparison. Here is your composition notebook. And here is a moleskin, they are so small. So to have one moleskin per class, and again you can do art all over them and decorate it and put their label with their name so that it gets back to them. But it’s also it just it’s so small. These are so easy to carry that you can even fit them inside of a folder like this. They’re so small. There is another perspective of how small they are. So think about the moleskins, they’re kind of pricey for what they are, but whatever. If it does the job, who cares? Number six: You have to help them walk through the process of managing their papers in a folder many many many times. If your relationship with your child is such that they will allow you to help them do this on a regular basis, even daily for six weeks or so, that’s going to help the habit. To expect them to just do this then manage it and really be good at it, it’s not going to happen overnight it takes time. But at least if you’re doing the SNO, the Sunday night overhaul that I teach, if you’re doing that at least once a week and overhaul on the folder, get rid of everything they don’t need. If they still need to do something, pull it out so that it gets done and everything that just needs to be stored can go in here, but they need practice over and over and over walking through the process of managing the papers. Really their folders never should be very thick. They really should never need any more than 10 or 20 papers in here at any given time for most classes, unless the teacher is forcing them to hold on to the papers for some reason. Some teachers like to do binder checks and stuff like that, or folder checks or whatever. But really what they need in here is their current work. Some families that I work with, what happens is the parents will take everything out and archival for the kid until the teacher does the binder check, that way the kids only has to keep in here the things that are more current so that they can actually manage what needs to be managed and they can build the skill of managing the things in a rational way. Number seven: When to do it for them. Look, a lot of times I will organize this for them. I will see what doesn’t have their name on it, have them put their name on it. I will straighten out the papers, I’ll put it in a good order for them. I will remove things that are at the wrong subject and put them in the right for them. A lot of times I will do a lot of that for them (at times). So if my student is working on a paper, they’re working on their homework, or they’re working on really the learning stuff, the learning part of their classes, their homework. Then I often times will take this off their plate. Okay, and then at other times I will sit down with them be like “Let’s overhaul all your folders now,” and I’ll go through it in a really detailed way on a night when there isn’t as much to do as far as their homework is concerned. So there’s a time and a place when to do it for them. In your mind the question you always want to ask yourself is, “Am I enabling them? And am I giving them more of the learned helplessness experiences (which we don’t want), or am I empowering them in and having them focus on what they need to focus on?” So you kind of always want to be balancing that question in your head. Number eight: And my last one is baby steps and persistence. Look, like I said before it’s not going to happen overnight. You have to persistently help support your child to build these structures. I know they’re resistant. I know I get it. That is the number one problem that my students deal with is resistance in so many different forms. That is the number one thing you’re going to deal with is that resistance. How do we help them to do things like building this skill of organization, for example. Things that are good for their life, for their own future, for their own well-being. How do we help them build those skills when there is so much resistance? That’s the question here, right? But the final tip is baby steps and persistence. Just keep pushing on. Baby steps are everything. People want to see like, “oh, yeah my kid figure out this new system. Now, they’ve got it and it’s awesome.” It’s not going to happen like that. It does occasionally, but it’s extremely rare. That’s not how I get students to experience a change in their life. What I do that works is baby steps over and over and over. Let’s take the system and let’s see how we can refine it just that much more. Let’s see how we can polish your ability to use the system just that much more. Like it’s just bit by bit by bit and you have to trust me that this is what works with these types of students is these tiny steps, but persistently. Trying all the time trying to just take get them to the next level even if the next level is just a millimeter or fraction of a millimeter. With that, again, my name is Seth Perler with SethPerler.com. If you like this, please share it with somebody right now and subscribe. You can also subscribe on YouTube. You can hit the bell if you want alerts on YouTube, but please subscribe to my blog SethPerler.com where I send out freebies and updates every week, generally on Sundays. And if you want to leave a comment on YouTube or on the blog with what have you done about this? How do you help students who are losing things and do you have any tips and tricks that you used yourself or with children that you’re working with be able to manage their stuff? Go ahead and leave that in the comments if you want and have a fantastic day. I will see you next Sunday.
ps- Here is their case study page: https://mathformiddles.com/Video transcript:
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Hey, what’s up? It’s me, Seth Perler at SethPerler.com, and today we are going to talk about dyscalculia, which is a math disability. I’m so excited about this, we have with us today Adrianne Meldrum, who is somebody that I’ve known for a long time. She’s one of my favorite math nerds in the world as well as Kara Scanlon who I don’t know well but they are working together on some projects. They’ll be having a dyscalculia webinar coming up in April. Adrian and I have known each other for years, we’ve done a lot of work and support of each other’s missions and stuff like that. So I’m super stoked for this. This is for you parents and teachers if you are concerned about any kids who struggle with math, I want you to at least get it to listen to the beginning of this. After if you want to listen to the rest of this if dyscalculia might be something that that you want to take a look at. Seth: So let’s do a quick intro. Adrianne, tell everybody about you and what you do? Adrianne: Yeah hey, I’m Adrianne, I own Math for Middles, and I’ve been tutoring kids in math for a long time, since about 2006. And I was always frustrated because there’s always a certain percentage of my students that we would learn something, they would forget it, they’d come back, and it’s gone or they go to school couldn’t get it out on a test. Even though I knew they knew the material. I was really frustrated by that, I deep-d0ve into research and started learning about multi-sensory math, dyscalculia, dyslexia, and all of those types of issues, ADHD as well, and how they affect that. It’s totally involved in my teaching and now those are not issues for my students because I teach the way their brain is wired. So that’s a little bit about me. Kara: I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was five and I actually got diagnosed with ADHD about three years ago. It was always there but I didn’t need the extended time so it wasn’t a necessity for my parents to get that diagnosis and I was always playing sports hardcore, so that was my medicine at the time. So because of that, I have empathy for my students, I truly understand how difficult it is to learn. For me, it was spelling, reading, writing, but the math part wasn’t really an issue for me. So that’s where I can teach it, but I can be empathetic when a student doesn’t get it. Seth: So you work with kids on math nowadays? Kara: Yeah, I tap out at Calc 3. That’s when my brain doesn’t know how to make this not multi-sensory enough to engage, even though Calc 3 can be very multi-sensory. Seth: Cool, we’re going to talk about dyscalculia. Does the audience need to know what multi-sensory math is at this point? Adrienne: Yeah, I think that would be a good way to segway into it. Seth: Great, let me frame my question, what is multi-sensory math and why should a parent or teacher or even care that this concept exists? Adrienne: Yes, multi-sensory math is all about the sensory input that we’re putting in and we start with kinesthetic, touching things were manipulating objects for building things with our hands, models, in Legos are a plentiful resource for that at it’s most basic. Then we moved to representational. I think of just pictures drawings, you know, real simple drawings, they don’t have to be really detailed, and then we moved to the abstract. All of the instruction you experience Seth and that we experienced in school was all abstract, was all numbers. It’s a procedure, memorization. And that is how your kids are being taught right now in school, which is really likely, that’s how my students are being taught too, it’s going to be hard for them to master those math skills. And when we work with kids online, their first experience, and we jump right in with that multi-sensory, after about 10 minutes they say, “whoa, no one’s ever taught me that way before,” and it starts to make sense and they start changing that belief. It goes from ‘I’m not a math person,’ to ‘hey, I kind of like math,’ to ‘I’m a math person. I can do this work and it’s really exciting.’ And the progression they’re making is really fast, we just did an assessment with a student, he started out at like a third-grade level and in just nine months, he’s almost up to grade level. Seth: And how old was he? Adrienne: He is 14. So we’ve made a lot of progress. It’s exciting to his mom, she was telling me during the assessment that she was floored too because before he would fret and worry and spend all this time spinning his wheels that she was watching him. He’s just looking confident now even though all the problems were abstract like he would be at school. He was supported with that multi-sensory approach so he knows what to do and how it ties to the abstract. Kara: It’s a total mind shift too about his identity related to math. Seth: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s so important that because so often they have that limited belief that fixed the mindset, “I’m just not good at math, I’m just not a math person”. That’s really sad to see. So parents and teachers are watching, when I’m dealing with kids with math who struggled a lot, what I talked a lot about is what I call Bucket Theory. So you have this bucket, we’re trying to fill this bucket with math information, but these kids have holes in the bucket. So as we’re trying to teach them in math, it’s very sequential and gets harder and harder as the school year goes by, as years go by so they have all these holes and as they get into more complex math that they would normally be able to do if the holes were filled, it appears that they are not capable. Would that be a good metaphor? Adrienne: Absolutely, perfect metaphor. Kara: I was going to say, that’s what I see everyday. Adrienne: And yeah, that student we were describing, we were just looking at his graph last night, and exactly. We’re seeing holes filled, he’s maxed out on so many things that matter on the foundational and that I’m just so excited about his progress. Seth: Cool, so before we define dyscalculia, I want to just get people who’re watching really engaged and let them make sure if they’re in the right place. So what I’m going to ask you before a formal definition is I’m going to ask you what do parents and teachers who’re working with the kid with dyscalculia hear them say. So what would a parent say if their kid, they should be concerned what words are they? What are they saying to you? And in your mind, you’re going, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re kid has dyscalculia.’ What do they say? Kara: Even before what they say, it can be just hardcore avoidance behavior. They’ll say, ‘No, no, no, I just want to play basketball a little bit longer,’ or ‘No, no, no, I’ll finish my English homework first.’ Seth: So they’re avoiding math. Rejection of math. Adrienne: Yes, yes, absolutely. And I would say they’re frustrated because the kid can’t seem to remember math facts, and they’re like, gosh they’re eighth-graders and they can’t even do you know 8×7 or something like that? And I’m frustrated because we spend all this time practicing and it doesn’t even matter doesn’t, it doesn’t stick, so they’re frustrated. And then they also talk about, it’s like going on 50 First Dates, you know the movie where she keeps forgetting every day that she gets up. It’s like that. I put it into my kid. We got it. We got it. And they wake up, and it’s gone. We are kind of like ‘uh huh, yeah, we’ve heard things like that before.’ Seth: So they’re working with the kid, they know their kid gets the concept. They’ve done several problems, I see this when I practice with some of my kids, and they get to school the next day, they have their test, it looks like they’ve even mastered it, they really get it. And the next day, it’s gone, it’s vanished. It’s just a hole in the bucket so big like there’s no bottom in it, even or something. It’s just gone. Kara: I have a college student, he’s taken algebra three times, pre calc four times, he’s on calc 1 for the third time and he’s finally like, ‘I’m actually, like, I’m not going to study for 50 hours for this calc final. It feels really weird, but I actually know how to study efficiently and I understand the concepts are ready. So I don’t need to hunker down and do this crazy stuff because I actually already know it. It wasn’t teaching him everything from the ground up. It was just there a certain holes and he needed logical steps, that’s all he needed was just He said, ‘Oh, that’s why you go from there to there.’ The teacher doesn’t always explain that. Adrienne: Yeah. Yeah, I think another thing to that parents might not be aware that is happening, but I’m wearing a shirt that has five tally marks on it, there’s a phrase that we use a lot to describe does the kid understand the fiveness of 5. I’ve seriously had 9th graders before where they saw a dice pattern of 5 and she did not know that was 5. She had to count one by one that’s a huge red flag. And so even though she kept getting passed on, passed on, here she is in algebra, she can’t read the calendar, she’s counting on her fingers, it is hard. And so that’s what dyscalculia looks like. It’s they can’t do the basics even, but somehow they just keep getting passed on so parents are really frustrated by that because the school doesn’t know what to do. They just shove a calculator to them. She can do the calculator, but she had no idea what the number meant, but she had no idea what the number meant coming out on the other side. Seth: So is there a definition and if one of you would start with your definition and then the other of you can fill in the blanks if you would add anything, but is there a definition that would be useful to share right now? Adrienne: [Kara,] do you want to tackle that? She is my walking encyclopedia of learning, it’s amazing. Kara: For me, it just means that there’s no inherent meaning in the symbol. I take that definition from being dyslexic and I don’t have inherent meaning in letters. It just doesn’t mean anything to me people, will show me something and if I’m not like focused and want to read it, literally it’s just jumble on a screen. Seth: So your brain is not seeing a symbol of numbers, but are you talking about symbols like the division sign and the multiplication sign, any math symbol? Kara: When you say division sign, for most people, it’s probably like, ‘Ok, well we have a quantity and it’s going to separate it into different things, that’s why we divide. Well, for someone with dyscalculia, there’s no inherent meaning to that so they haven’t physically seen what’s going on or like tangibly done that, it’s just a little line with two dots. It could be a percentage sign, it could be a division sign it, it could just be someone doodling. You know, there’s just no inherent meaning behind it. Seth: Interesting, okay. Kara: This can be really frustrating for a teacher because for other people you can just say, ‘This is division, you do this, you divide it into these many groups, and you’re done.’ But for this kiddo, it’s like ‘What? I don’t get it.’ Adrienne: Yeah, absolutely, and I had students before where they have to specifically ask, ‘Is that a 6, or is that a 9?’ because in their mind, it’s not holding still and so it’s frustrating, or the division sign, plus sign and multiply sign all look alike because the dots are close enough that it could be a plus. So then they’re like, ‘I’m not really sure what I’m seeing here.’ I think a really good analogy for that is in reading when I’m reading, I’m sure you guys can relate to this, I see the word pencil and I can envision a pencil. Tyrannosaurus Rex, that’s the dinosaur with the little arms. But if I say the word ‘the,’ is there an image that comes to the mind? No. So it’s kind of similar on the math side. They see a quantity, but they have no image for what that is. And so that’s where the multi-sensory comes in, we’re building images that make more sense. Seth: And so that helps them build brain connections so that it makes more sense. Okay. Now, let’s move on a little bit to teachers. We have teachers watching. Say you have a teacher and they’re in the classroom, they’re trying to teach these kids, they’ve maybe never even heard of it or they don’t know much about it, and they’ve been trying these approaches that they’ve been taught in terms of how to work with kids and they’re not seeing the progress. So often one of the things that I talked about so much is the shame and I’m not saying that you know, I’d like to think all the teachers that watch don’t unintentionally shame kids, but sometimes unintentionally we’re actually doing this. Kids are our internalizing, ‘I’m bad at math. I just can’t do math,’ whatever but how does a teacher know if they haven’t been trained in this? How does a teacher know the red flags? And then what types of things do teachers who do know about it, what do they do differently from teachers who don’t so that teachers who want to learn how to serve these kids can have a couple tips for how to approach this. Did that question make sense? Adrienne: It’s a lot to tackle. Seth: You have a teacher in class, how do they identify them, and how can they improve them. Adrienne: Yeah. Absolutely. So I think some of the easiest ways to identify them is when you see a disconnect between the intellect of that student like they enjoy them they provide lots of interesting context to you know, they’re usually really good at conversation. Wouldn’t you agree our students are amazing at that right? But then you’re like there’s such a disconnect. They don’t seem to be able to communicate mathematically, and I don’t really get what’s going on. You can’t see it. These are the kids who’re habitually getting D’s and F’s on all assessments, and even though they’re doing their homework, they’re trying. So there’s something off there and that should be a red flag in my opinion. Often I think teachers feel like, ‘This kid is lazy, they’re blah blah blah.’ Seth: Maybe they’re thinking that they’re not putting in the effort. Adrienne: Exactly, but the truth is they’re putting in the effort. They’re working three times harder than the regular student to understand but it’s not working because you’re presenting it with just equations on the board. There’s a big disconnect. So what’s the easiest thing you could do? Go back into the earlier grades, look for the connections to the skill you feel that you need. So I’m going to use factoring as an example. Factoring is based on area multiplication when you’re a little kid, so go back draw on the board, if we’re doing 3 x 13, show them that you can break 13 into a 10 + 3, and then we’re going to multiply and talk to them about factoring is finding with the side lengths are of this area and build that bridge for them because they might not understand about what’s happening here. And so that’s one easy way to go back. Look what the time curriculum from the lower grades, build it up to where they are right now. And lots of pictures, if you can do a manipulative list, please do. But I realize like in high school you’re strapped for time. So a drawing is better than nothing in my opinion. What would you add to things that they can do? Kara: I love the going back, and notice how Adrienne immediately made it physical. So that’s the other thing, have toys in your classroom. I mean I was teaching a pre-calc class and we were doing maximization. So for example, you have a pizza box, and you have to maximize how much cardboard and volume, and that’s why I told the kids, ‘so when you open a pizza box, what do you see? What are the different parts that make up a pizza box.’ One of my students hadn’t seen a pizza box so I got one for that physical representation that had meaning and he could touch it and play with it. That’s great for geometry, there so many applications later and tell that if you understand how those pieces fit together is going to make calculus easier. For me, it might seem like a time suck, but it’s going to be engaging. You’re going to get the whole class engaged. Who doesn’t want to play with a pizza box? Especially if there’s pizza in it, little things like that. Maybe some of those kids didn’t need it that in-depth, but they’re still going to have fun, even if they’re not needing that you know, how can I bring up the content level? Adrienne: Absolutely, even the kids who are really advanced, I find that they struggle with understanding where it came from. They’re good at memorization and procedure. So even if you spend the time to go back to the concrete of how this works, they’re going to learn a lot as well and deepen their own understanding of math. Seth: Okay, we’re going to wrap this up in like 2 minutes. So we discuss some things teachers can do and I guess, I want to make real clear for my audience that you know, your kids in the class, doesn’t matter if they’re in 4th grade or 12th grade or what, they can have dyscalculia. So whatever percentage there is, and 3rd grade you’re going to have the same percentages as older kids. Often times, the older kids will not be identified and they will be way further down the line in terms if they have compensated so much, work way longer than they need to be, whatever. But you have a parent, they’re listening. They’re like, ‘oh this is kind of bad.’ What can they do? Should they go get a tutor? Should they go get any old tutor? Should they go get a tutoring program or a private tutor? So they check out your thing on April 4th, you’re having the webinar on it, should they research it, should they not take more math class, should they push their get into an easier class. What kind of thoughts should parents be having? Adrienne: Yes, so I would say one thing I’m going to caution you against is that any old tutoring isn’t going to work. You know, the big box tutoring people out there, franchises or whatever are just a waste of money because it’s more of the same. It’s exactly what they’re experiencing at school, and obviously, that’s the definition of insanity right. We’re doing more of the same but expecting different results. It’s not going to work. Seth: A lot of what I talk about is cookie-cutter interventions that don’t work. Adrienne: Right, so you’re going to want to look for a tutor/therapist that has background in this. Kara’s an educational therapist, she has training in making math real. I have training in multi-sensor math through Marilyn Zecher. The methods are similar, but there’s a little bit of differences but overall we both get results for our kids. Seth: So call the tutor on the phone and say, ‘do you understand dyscalculia and where are you coming from exactly?” Kara: Right, and ‘why do you teach differently,’ because someone can say, ‘yeah, I’ve worked with a kid with dyscalculia,’ but do they understand it. Because that’s going to tell you a lot because they might be doing the same thing they’re doing in school. Seth: Don’t just take it at face value. Adrienne: Be a little skeptical about it, look for that. Another method you could look around for someone that has bood in math. That’s another phrase for a guy who’s doing multi-sensory, but you don’t even have to choose to work with us, but if you want some help pointed in the right direction, make sure you come to our webinar, we would love to help you. Send us an email. We know people, we’re connected we can help you figure that out. So definitely don’t settle for just more of the same, that is our biggest advice there. Seth: And then what advice do you have for them? And that this is something we could spend a whole session I’m sure when they are trying. When they’re trying to advocate with the school and I hear this a lot that the school doesn’t get it. They may make some lip service but nothing is changing. So what should they say to the school? We can do a whole another one of them. Adrienne: Yeah we really could! You know, try to really work with the school. There’s been a few crazy situations Kara and I’ve been able to work out, because we are who we are. Sometimes we’re able to work it out. Kara’s working with someone right now where she is the lead teacher. She’s teaching this student Algebra 2. I’ve done that before as well where I’ve been teaching this 7th grader all the seventh-grade math, and the school was on board. They wanted to help, they realize that they lack the resources, right? So it’s difficult to get there but it’s worth the effort. It takes a lot of back and forth. But you can advocate for that. You can ask for a period where they go online to meet with us or maybe send a teacher through some training or something like that and get the kids the help they need. You’d be surprised schools, are more willing than you think. You just have to go in there with an open mind and not being threatened or highly emotional. Seth: Yeah, and hopefully they’ll be receptive and hopefully they can go in there armed with the knowledge. Hopefully from this right now or your webinar from the research on it. So we have to wrap up today any final. Adrienne: No, I just hope you can come join us. We just skimmed the surface. There’s so much more we can share. So come to our webinar in April, I’ll make sure Seth has the right link. We’ll go a little deeper for you and really help you get a vision of what’s really needed to turn the ship around. Seth: All right, thank you guys so much. This is Kara Scanlon and Adrian Meldrum and you find both of them online, again my name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach out of Boulder, CO, and we will see you soon. Thank you guys so much. Please CLICK below to share.Video transcript:
Hey, what’s up here and some teachers. This is suffice. For that, today. I’m going to make a pretty short one relative to what I usually do and I just want to talk about this concept about how do you know how far to push a student? And so anyhow, I’m an executive function coach out of Boulder Colorado and I help struggling students figure out and navigate this thing called school and education and wouldn’t I wouldn’t want to talk about is how old how do I help a student? How do I help push that man? And then I’m going to explain this to parents and teachers really particular parents because it’s a challenging balance for parents. But basically what I’m going to talk about it still topically how I approach this and then hopefully you can use this concept in your own family are in your own classroom to to help get so basically the word part one of the ways that I describe my job is being executive function coach has is here. You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make him drink and my job is to make him drink. So who’s this? Number one problem that I deal with with all of my students as resistance my students resist doing their homework self-starting following through asking teacher for help dealing with their inbox me their online grades studying actually reading advocating for themselves being forthcoming with their parents allowing their parents to help them. They are resistant. They resist everything. So that is the number one problem that all my students deal with this resistance. And if they do not figure out how to deal with this resistance if they do not learn some stuff dialogue to help themselves move through resistance than they are limiting quite literally limiting their opportunities and possibilities and choices in life. So they are quite literally and back in your life and in preventing themselves from having the type of future that we want them to be able to have so they have to learn have a different relationship with the with this resistance. So back to what I was saying, but philosophically what I’m doing is I’m trying to bring horse water and make him drink of trying to get these kids to do things that they don’t feel like doing like their homework, like using the planner establishing habits for creating a daily plan establishing habits for organizing stuff in a way that actually works maintaining the systems that they develop and so on and so forth. So I’m trying to help them do something that they need to do for their own long-term well-being and but in the short-term, they don’t want to do it. They don’t feel like it’s not fun not interesting. It’s not it’s not a preferred activity. So they’d rather avoid it and do something else and procrastinate procrastinate procrastinate does digging deeper holes for themselves and closing opportunities. So, how do I get them to drink? How do I do it while one of the main things that I do is baby stuff site. I talk a lot about baby stuff, but I might grow successes parents teachers everything that I do it is very rare. Are there big Tiffany’s very rarely are there big giant Leeds that they take it happens sometimes but that’s not what I’m working for. That’s not what it what my objective is. My objective is Bit by Bit by Bit micro success by macro 6000 millimeter by millimeter move them forward bit by bit by bit.. So that’s what works and what happens is is that you have a positive impact just like you have a negative cascading effect if they start missing a few homework that they start getting behind it. Like it all snowballs Wildcats snowball in the positive direction as well, but it requires a lot more effort and a lot more patience and lot more persistence in a lot more value of the tiny things that that matter a lot more noticing of these tiny things. Anyhow, here is the concept that I wanted to set you up first for this concept that that I use lasso in my mind what I’m always trying to do with my students like this is always in the back of my head whether we’re working with Planters weather. We’re working with homework weather. We’re working with writing. Paper whether we’re working with writing an email and advocating for themselves to and communicating to a teacher whether working with being forthcoming with their parents about something. I am always always always always calibrating engaging where the kid is with her. Comfort zone. And what I want to do some want to push them past their comfort zone because when we don’t push them past their comfort zone often times, we are enabling them or we are disempowering them. We are not we are not empowering them to see what they’re made of we’re not empowering them to grow. They are staying stuck. So what the one thing that I do is I push them past their comfort zone. There’s a threshold so I want to push them past their comfort zone. But I don’t want to push them beyond the threshold if I push them beyond the threshold I push them too far. They’re not going to work with me. Then I can listen to me. They’re not going to want help for me. They’re not going to be open to hearing my ideas. They’re not going to allow me to support them. So if they’re going to withdraw or they’ll get frustrated or whatever. This is this what happens with parents my parents will for sure pass the threshold and they shut down all the excuses are coming out and they are not willing to take action. But if you don’t put them out there cover Zone again born an eight and a bowling world. Where were in a place where there were not pushing them their stock. They’re able to stay comfortable they able to live by their excuses in the end if we push them pots are we losing we’re not able to help him because those shut down somehow I’m not let us listen to this gray area is where I as a coach do my best work. Where are you a teacher do your best work? And where you use a parent do your best work but where the pendulum off and swing from side to side and parenting because the emotions get in there so much more easily in the end of your old patterns in your family dynamics that you grown up with any dysfunction that you’ve grown up with and all that all of our all of our subconscious pattern patterning and that type of stuff we were triggered with parents that are essentially if we are going to support them and I’m not going to go into details of all these ways with backpacks and homework I just want to get this one concept you philosophically what you want to be thinking parents teachers me. We want to be thinking is how do we push them past the comfort zone in a positive way with something that they need to be doing for their own future well-being developing skills and habits and routines for their own well-being how we push to pass that comfort zone but not pass that push them past that threat. So the gray area between the comfort zone and the threshold is where we are able to help them learn skills and habits and routines in mindsets and and and systems that they need in order to launch a great life in order to be able to have a happy and successful future that is full of choices and opportunities and possibilities. So finally to wrap it up one more time. We want to push them beyond the comfort zone. And before the threshold in in that gray zone is where we can be most effective in my opinion and he had just wanted to share that one contact with you. I hope you’re having a great school year. It is March right now and this is full on dip time like the kids. If you haven’t seen my video on the dip the kids are this is the time when students are really struggling to Tuckahoe for themselves, and now they have to swim upstream for the rest of the semester. So check out the one on the dip if your child is experiencing that and everything is falling apart. This is the time when it’s falling apart again, if I try to not nip awesome if you’re not sure if they are you better check their online grades and get clarity from teachers, see how they’re doing. Anyhow, that’s all I have. I hope you are doing amazing and I will see you next week.