Category: Executive Function

How post-its can help you get on top of school

Here’s a new video all about how students can use stickies or post-its to get organized. This is great for you if:

you aren’t great with details
you forget what you have for homework
you procrastinate
you forget to turn homework in
you don’t like to study or don’t really know how
you aren’t naturally organized

Trust me, it’ll help. Enjoy!

One solid tip for organizing papers & homework

Here’s a video that just might have some great insights for you. It’s about one of my favorite systems I help students develop. I call it “the queue.” It’s a simple, powerful method of tracking everything important, homework or otherwise, in one centralized place. As one of my students said, “it feels harder in my head when my important papers are all spread out in different folders.” Most of my students are able to apply this easily and consistently, it works!

How to set it up:

1. First, set up your entire organizational system. This may include 3-ring binders (typically the worst system for right brained learners, but some work with it just fine), an accordion folder or a simple folder system (my favorite approach.) Color code and label everything, etc.. 2. Get a different looking folder. Perhaps it’s red, a great ALERT color. Perhaps it has a distinctive design. Either way, make it easy to visually identify. 3. Label the folder. Write QUEUE in huge letters across the front. Put your name on the front and back. 4. Put post-it “flags” inside the folder so they are ready to go.

How to use it:

1. The queue is for all papers that are current, or “active.” It can include: —Homework that needs to be done —Finished homework that needs to be turned in —Study guides —ANything that needs to be signed, etc.. —Anything important, active and current 2. Flag it with a labeled post-it. ex- “MATH TURN IN!” 3. Simple. Do it or turn it in. 4. When you get home every day, the first thing you should do is, at least, open your planner and open the queue. It would be best if you planned the night as well.

When done:

1. Throw away returned papers if you don’t need them. 2. Archive papers that are sentimental or that you might need. 3. If you still need it for another reason, throw it in your class folder.

Note:

As with ANY system someone suggests, tailor it to your needs. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it! If you want to tweak it, by all means do so. The point is that students take ownership in developing customized systems that work for their brain, NOT that they use a “tested” cookie cutter solution (especially for outside-the-box learners).

Planner haters

I hear comments like this regularly:

I hate planners. I don’t need a planner. I just don’t like to use a planner.

I know, I know. You really don’t want to use a planner. But you do need to figure out some way to manage the details. Seriously, I’ll break it down and help make it simple and straight forward. I know because I do this with students all the time and it works. The nuances I will describe will make a BIG difference. Look, students who aren’t naturally organized tend to get overwhelmed with details, and planners are all about details. Therefore it’s important to have a simple and clean system. Unfortunately, the systems we are often taught are too complicated. Anyhow, forgive me because this is a long video, and trust me, it’s boring. In fact, I almost put myself to sleep. Just kidding, but it is in-depth and should prove extremely valuable. Plan on pressing pause a lot as you get your planner “front-loaded” for the school year. Trust me, this upfront effort will end up saving you a lot of time and frustration throughout the year. Check out the video. Here are some of the most important takeaways:

Print yearly planners, post them for reference, tape one in your planner. Tape your schedule in there too while you’re at it.
Use a monthly planner with lines in the boxes.
Get your entire schedule into the planner now, for the entire year. This is called “front-loading.” It saves a lot of time and hassle in the long run. Hi-lite every single day off. Enter birthdays, appointments, and activities that you know about, now.
Thin out the planner. Get rid of every single page you don’t need. Keep it simple.
Get a desk calendar to put on the wall. Enter only bigger events into it – you don’t need as many details on this one.
Use shorthand in order to fit your info into the smaller boxes. Write assignments on the day they are due. Put the time first when applicable.
Learn to “backwards plan.”
Dog-ear to simplify finding the right page.
Self-advocate. If they expect you to “use the same planner everyone else uses,” tell them you’ve tailored a system to your brain and that you need to do what works for you.
The one thing I forgot to mention in the vid, sharpie your name on the front AND back so it comes back to you if it gets lost.
Get off to a strong start with front-loading your planner thoroughly. Try not to get into the swimming upstream pattern. It’s extremely difficult to dig yourself out. So take an hour and do this! You got this, you rock, good luck!

💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate? 🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Please subscribe, like & comment to support my work. 👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest. ✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers. 🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video transcript:

Hey, this is Seth with SethPerler.com. Did you hear about the buffalo who sent his boy to college? When his son left he said, “bison.” Haha, pretty good, huh? Cheesy, I know. How’s it going? So I’m here today talk to you about planners for people who hate them. If you hate planners, you’re in the right place. There are lots of websites and videos all over YouTube about planners that talk about how to use them, but they’re all for highly organized people by highly organized people. And the thing is that these left-brain, linear sequential structured, naturally organized people love these things. They like to feel organized because it gives them a good sense of control. They feel good when they have these systems, and they’re able to take these systems and run with them. They’re able to do tremendous amounts of detail with all this stuff. Guess what? If you’re watching these videos, you’re probably not that person. This is for students who hate planners. You are not into it. It’s not that you don’t like planners, it’s that you don’t like feeling like you have to manage minute details that don’t matter to you. That’s really what it comes down to. A lot of times the way that we’re taught to use these things is not congruent with what we need. So let me set out the way for you to do this. By the way, even if you hate planners, you do have to learn to use them because like anything you want to do in life, this helps. And I want you, and everybody wants you, to be able to live the life you want to live. In order to do anything you want to in life, you have to do things you don’t want to do, including planning. You just have to have some way of being able to manage tasks and time. Again, you have to be able to manage tasks and time. We have to be able to chunk it down into small enough items that don’t feel overwhelming. Me, you, right-brain people, disorganized people, people who are creative outside the box thinkers: we’re not good with perceiving time or time management. The details can be very overwhelming. So I’m going to show you what I do with my students. I’m telling you this because it works, and I’m going to tell you in the simplest way possible. It’s going to be a bit of a long video, but get ready to press pause because if you’re looking for how to use a planner in a way that works for you, I’m going to explain some details to you that are really going to help. First of all, what you want to do is print out your yearly calendar. This is the calendar for the local school district. You’ll want to print one to four of them. You want one for the refrigerator, one for the bedroom, one for the office, and one to tape inside your planner. You’re literally going to tape it inside there. We’re going to cut off the edges like this, cut off all the edges, trim it down so it will fit in the planner, and then tape it in there. Middle school, high school, college, whatever complex schedules, tape it into the inside of your planner so that it’s always there. This is called front-loading. Everything that you need for the entire school year, get it done now so you never have to think about it again. You want to front-load your planner and get it all done. Plop all the important dates in there. The next thing is right-brained people don’t like a lot of stuff. You may have a lot of stuff, but “stuff” is overwhelming. So what you want to do is get rid of every single page from your planner that you don’t need. In this case, I literally took out 11 pages from the planner making it now very thin and very manageable. As far as this calendar is concerned, you want to take all of the pages off up until the date where you’re at. Right now is August in 2014, so we want to get all the rest of the pages gone. Bye-bye, it’s all gone. If you want to get a monthly planner, this is a great example. The only thing I don’t like about this planner is the metal because it can get crushed in the backpack and make it annoyingly difficult to open. Left-brain, linearly sequential structure, organized people don’t usually have that problem. We do. If it gets crushed in your backpack, you’re a very right-brain person and that may be a bit of a difficulty to you. If you can find one that stapled rather than a spiral that might be better. So all I have here is July through the end of the year, I’m going to get rid of July, I don’t need it anymore. Now, I have August through December. Open up to August. Here we go. This is monthly again. This is not weekly. Okay, you want to use a monthly calendar preferably with lines. The only problem is that you have to learn shorthand. So I’ll discuss shorthand in just a moment. Now we basically have about six pages in this planner. You can also get an academic calendar that is like this. Why don’t you want to use a weekly one? Well, here’s an example of a weekly one. By the way, I often will cut the planner and dog ear it right from the planner itself. I’ll just cut it with this scissor so that you can open up right to the page that you need. This one happens to be monthly and weekly, Anyhow the point is, the reason you don’t want monthly and weekly is it’s too many blocks of time. Look at that, the thing is like a novel. Again, if you’re a left-brain person you’re probably not watching this point, which is great because this is not for them. This is for right-brain, outside the box, divergent thinkers and you don’t want to be having a novel for your planner, you want the simple six-page one I was showing you before. There are only 9-10 months in a school year, basically half of August through May. There are 36 weeks plus the 10 months of the school year here. So that’s 46 pages to manage, plus these planners give you a lot of clutter in the back. Although it might be cool to have the periodic table and geometry stuff I guarantee you, if you’re watching this video, you are not the type of person who reads this stuff. You don’t read the school rules at the beginning of the book. Rip it out or just don’t use these ones. The other thing is that these are visually cluttered. The planners that schools will give you are usually visually cluttered. You may have to advocate for yourself and tell the school, “I’m not using this,” and you may run into some problems with them. They might say, “you have to use this one because this is the one that we use because it’s the way we do it.” Advocate yourself and tell them you’re working with the coach and say the coach said, “don’t do that.” It’s a lot of colors that the visually distracting and have famous quotes that frankly are also visually distracting. I do not recommend these for the students that I work with. All you need is simple, black and white, clean, easy to see, a planner that serves the purpose of planning. That all you want. Alright, in your planner you’re going to want to take your year calendar, and you are going to want to highlight every single day off for the entire school year. What that means is that your planner is going to look like this. You’re going to go through the calendar with a fine-tooth comb and highlight every day off. This is November of 2014 and in this school district, they have the 14th off and they have the entire week for Thanksgiving off. This all done and it feels really good for students to be able to see this. Trust me. I do this all the time as soon as we go through the entire year, get the whole planner done. It feels really good to know that you start saying “wow, that’s a lot of days off,” and you can really look forward to these days off. Also in terms of front-loading, we’ll write in the days from the previous month the 31st or 30th of October and so on in a different color so that visually it stands out. And then you can pick when you’re ready to use November or when you’re done with October etcetera. You want to do this for the entire school year. And then the only problem is you don’t have as much space as you do on the weekly planner, they give you tons of lines. So what you’re going to want to do is learn to write shorthand, and here’s an example of the shorthand. I will put a photograph of this on the blog post so you can go ahead and look there for photos of everything. Hopefully, you can see this. So for example, for Math “M: page 65 1 through 21 high,” so it’s very short. “LA: the draft is due.” Science, “SCI lab 14 is due,” “4 p.m. Dentist.” Any time you put something in your planner, you want to put it on a date it’s due, not the date you’re given the assignment. Now, what you can also do is backwards planning. You put, for example, you have a test this day, you write it in on the day that you have a test, and then you backwards plan and write in the days that you intend to study for the test. Now if you’re a right-brain person chances are if you write in that you’re going to study four times, you’re probably not going to study four times. You want to account for that and plan for 5 or 6 times that you’re going to study and just know that you’re not going to study a couple of those times and be okay with it. A lot of times it’s better to over plan. It depends on your personality but consider that. You’re going to put it on the day that it’s due, or that you’re doing the activity, then backwards plan. The other thing is that anything that’s associated with the time, like in this case there’s a dentist appointment at 4, you want to put the time before you write what the item is. That’s because visually the eye is going to see the number, and you want to be aware of the time first because that’s a priority and it’s not flexible. Always put the time first. Finally, you want to color-code your calendar. You don’t need to, but a lot of people you might want to have some kind of coding system because it makes it easier visually. You are probably a very visual person and this makes things easier for you as well. You might start with the weekends or holidays, and you’re going to go ahead highlight all the days off for the entire school year. I’m starting with weekends. There’s all my Saturdays. In this case, the school start on the 21st. So you’re going to highlight all your days, get it all done. And then any time there’s a big event, like here, you can write huge. The cool thing is that you can still write on top of that. So for Halloween, you can put an icon of a pumpkin or something, and you still have room to write on top of it that says, “6 p.m. Soccer“. Highlight all the days and get everything in your calendar that you can. If you have things that are odd about your calendar, for example, if you have a late start day or certain weird times of classes on certain days, or if you have extracurricular activities, get everything on to the calendar that you possibly can for the entire school year. If you know that you have a certain activity that goes every Thursday night from 6 to 8 until November, get it in the calendar now. You want to front-load as much as you can, it’s a lot of work at the beginning but saves you time and frustration for the entire rest of the school year. You really want to get into the habit. One of the worst things that students experience is the “swimming upstream syndrome.” You start to get a little behind, usually, this starts to happen around the second or third week of school, but it doesn’t become evident until about the sixth week of school. So you’re starting to get behind around the third week, and then around the sixth week, suddenly something happens: a report card comes out, a grade gets back to you, you have D and F, and big red flags come up. You do not want to get into that pattern, help yourself out. I do recommend you put these on your wall. These are really cheap go ahead and grab a couple and throw it on the wall in your bedroom or your office, but I don’t recommend using them with thumbtacks because you want to be able to pull it down every once in a while to work with it. If you’re doing a lot of work, like if I was highlighting this, I wouldn’t actually do it on the wall, I pull it down and do it on the table. Having these little nails and a hammer and put it up and then hit it into the wall. It’ll stay there for the entire school year. I think I covered most of what I was going to say if I forgot anything, I’ll go ahead and get it in the show in the show notes on the blog and I want to thank you very much for your support. And I want to wish you an awesome school year. You got this. Of course, you’ll have some ups and downs, but it’s all good. You got this. Please CLICK below to share.

8 Quick & easy ideas to start school off right

Make no mistake, the patterns that are set in the first 4-6 weeks of school set the tone for the entire school year. If students hit a wall 6 weeks in, and red flags start popping up, chances are they’ll be afflicted with S.U.S.S. for the rest of the year (Swimming Up Stream Syndrome. Not fun). Therefore, it’s critical to hit the ground running and be prepared on day 1.

Here’s how:

(Take what you like and leave the rest) 1. Print 4 copies of the school’s YEARLONG calendar. Tape 1 in the planner, post one in your study space, one in the desk or locker at school and one on the fridge or other convenient reference spot. Refer to it often. 2. Enter ALL relevant info for the entire school year into your planner BEFORE day 1. This includes job hours, extra curriculars, birthdays, etc.. Box out every single day off with a highlighter. (If you are a college student, print ALL syllabi BEFORE day 1 and enter every single relevant detail into your planner. All tests, projects, assignments, etc.. BEFORE day 1.) 3. Print 3 copies of your SCHEDULE. Put one in your planer, post one where you do homework, and 1 in your desk or locker. 4. Clearly label EVERYTHING possible with your name- on a sticker or with a sharpie. 5. Get a MONTHLY planner. Not weekly. Create a simple shorthand coding system and use it. 6. COLOR CODE folders and composition notebooks, 1 color per class. 7. Make a CATCHALL folder to centralize important stuff, homework to do and homework to turn in. 8. Create a SACRED STUDY SPACE. Just as it sounds, this is a space that you have intentionally designed to be the ultimate space to focus and be productive. The more focused your study time is, the more free time you have. Good luck. And feel free to leave a comment below with any great ideas you might have. It gives all of us ideas we can adapt to our situations!

WDS & Fizzle

I know, unusual blog title. Here is a video about a conference I go to every year called the World Domination Summit, a podcast I am crazy about called Fizzle, and some thoughts regarding the world our kids are growing up in. Hope you are having a phenomenal summer. Seth

Final exams- a different way to study

Yesterday, I was working with one of my students and we spent some time on a different way for him to study. He loved it. I have taught many of my kids this method and it’s really powerful. There are a few things that we traditionally associate with studying: note cards, reading your notes over, memorization, etc.. But there are so many more ways to integrate learning. This one involves a digital recorder. (I use the Olympus 801 . Digital voice recorders cost between $30-$100. Try to get the ones with multiple “folders.”) Here’s the gist of how I teach students to use these: 1. Usually there are 5 “folders” on these recorders, often labeled A, B, C, D. Each “folder” stores multiple recordings or “files.” I like students to dedicate folders to different classes and to keep one folder for miscellaneous thoughts, notes, reminders, or ideas. An example:

Folder A: Miscellaneous ideas, random thoughts, reminders, school or non-school related.
Folder B: Language Arts class
Folder C: History class
Folder D: Science class
Folder E: Foreign Language class

2. Think of good ways to use record information so you can use it to your benefit:

In the case of the student yesterday, he was studying for a Biology final. We took his written notes and he recorded himself asking questions like this, “name and describe the 4 types of gymnosperm plants? (he pauses) Cycads, ginkos and conifers and gnetophytes. Cycads are…” Now he can listen to the recordings while he is cleaning his room, going to school, even while he’s gaming :).
For novels, I often teach students to make recordings of important information as they are reading. As they record, they can cite page numbers, quote characters, etc.. For many students this is much less disruptive than stopping to take written notes. Then, when they begin their book reports/reviews or other projects, they can go through the recordings and type pertinent notes into their outline.
Recorders can be awesome for getting story ideas out verbally before typing them up.
For foreign language, they are great for practice with vocabulary, etc..
For math, the recorder is often only useful when memorization is required, for example with new formulas.
You get the point-come up with your own creative ideas for any class.

3. Listen to the recordings anywhere and everywhere. This is great for kids who need to move around. They can put on headphones and listen while they walk, do chores, etc.. They can listen in the car, as they fall asleep, at the bus stop, etc.. Recordings can be deleted as the learning becomes integrated. I also teach students other powerful methods, such as drawing their notes or visualizations, but these are outside the scope of this quick article. Just remember that there are many creative ways to learn, and don’t be afraid to experiment. The point is to develop a style that works rather than just relying on traditional mindsets. If you like what you read, please share it with someone! Best, Seth Side note: I do NOT recommend recording classes, at least not for the students I work with. I tend to work with right brained struggling students, and they are not going to take the energy to re-listen to a recorded class. Just sayin’. Disclaimer: This article is meant to show one of many ways to “study.” This does not mean that the task or test is necessarily valid. You have to seriously consider this for yourself (some is truly valuable, some is meaningless, counterproductive busywork). Just because school assigns something doesn’t mean that it is more valuable than family time, play, self-care, etc.. If something feels off, listen to your gut because it knows best. Remember, education should ultimately help kids find their authentic callings, should help them craft purposeful and happy lives.

“I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” — Mark Twain

Hate to beat a dead horse…

I recently received an email from a teacher of one of my middle school clients. It opened, “The binder I ask students to maintain has sections for: (1) Literature Notes, (2) Writing & Grammar Notes, (3) Vocabulary, (4) SSR entries, and (5) Texts – the short stories and myths I’ve passed out.” I see this often- highly organized teachers who require students to maintain highly organized binder systems like this. While I appreciate the intention behind this, it is overkill and counterproductive for many kids. Let me break this down: Kids who are naturally organized often love these systems. They’re concrete systems, there is no confusion about what goes where. Everything has an orderly place. It feels good to these students to manage everything so precisely. But to the kids who are not naturally organized, this can be a very different experience. To illustrate how difficult this can be for right brained students, I’ve copied this email from my student’s mom. Note the word choice as it illustrates the magnitude of the needless suffering of this student.”Hi Seth, My son has been incurring the ire of his English teacher for not having his binder, so I wrote a brief note of explanation. I understand her concerns regarding the things he needs for class , including ongoing projects. I don’t think her needs will conflict with what you are doing but if you could touch base with her that would be greatly appreciated by both me and my son ( who is the brunt of her displeasure). I haven’t heard from any of his other teachers re this.” (note: we revamped his entire system of managing schoolwork and personalized it for his needs) This sort of stuff drives me crazy since it’s so unnecessary for a kid to suffer like this. If I had a magic wand, teachers like this would take a step back, really notice the incredible human being in front of them, see the opportunity to inspire, deeply contemplate what the student needs in order to fall in LOVE with the content, change their strategy with this aim in mind and start over with the student. By start over, I mean heal the relationship, take stock of the students strengths and build upon them rather than push and push and push for conformity. Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about pushing students beyond their comfort zones when it would benefit them, but it’s a very delicate balance. My strategy is to babystep students forward from where they are, not where they “should” be according to “developmental norms” or arbitrary expectations. Push too far and they become discouraged. Push the right amount and they are encouraged. And that my friend, is a difference that matters.

Two Types of Kids

Detail oriented and structured. Linear, sequential, step by step, left brained, focused, organized, good listeners, strong students, on top of things, responsible, concrete, practical, regulated, likes rules, facts, safe, on time, follows directions, knows the right answer, good with systems, uses planners, puts things back, good with folders and binders, turns in homework, studies.
Not good with details. Global, big picture, holistic thinkers. Right brained, random, distracted, disorganized, abstract, creative, daydreamy, emotional, intuitive, sensitive, artistic, questions rules, struggles with structure, not good with deadlines, vivid imagination, visual, risk takers, good with figurative language and metaphor, free, idea people, forgets homework, colors outside the lines, can’t fit inside the box.

Of course these are generalizations exemplifying the extremes. Of course there is a lot of grey area and overlapping. Of course we all use both sides of our brains. There are kids on both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between. Neither is better or worse, just different. But there is immense value in understanding that the vast majority of struggling students fit into category 2, and that there is a legitimate difference in how these students think, precess and learn. The strengths, talents and gifts of these students often go unnoticed and neglected, their strengths are difficult to “grade”. And it’s unfortunate because they are often deeply misunderstood, shamed and judged as lazy or uncaring. Sadly, our educational system is geared towards left brained learners, who tend to be perceived as “successful” while right brained learners can often appear “unsuccessful”. We need to take tremendous care in how we work with all learners so they can all shine bright. The time is now.

Clean Slate

New semester = clean slate. I work with a lot of students right before a semester begins so they can get a strong start. From grade school to grad school, here’s what I do with many students:

Backpack

Empty it, clean it out. Ask what they use each pocket for. This raises awareness that they are choosing “homes” for things such as books, supplies, folders, money, etc. I don’t necessarily care where they put things, I care that they have intentionally chosen the place, because it’s all about intentionality, conscious choices, awareness. I’m not a fan of backpacks with a ton of pockets- the simpler the better (invest in good material though). A place for books/folders and a pocket for supplies is my preference, especially if they’re always losing stuff. This backpack, not this one. If a backpack isn’t big enough, they’re probably using unnecessary 3 ring binders, pushing way too much paper, are probably doing too much busywork and not enough engaged learning. But that’s another story.

Folders

We go through every single paper and recycle everything possible-I don’t like the idea of making kids push paper for the sake of pushing paper. We sort remaining papers. I ask why they are keeping them and support or challenge their reasons depending on what would be helpful. Either way, I want them to be intentional regarding their choices. We often set up an “archive” box for sentimental papers or stuff they “might” need. I make sure folders are labeled with huge letters on front AND back, with name and subject. Finally, color code folders to match composition notebooks for each class, which are also clearly labeled.

3 Ring Binders

If you’re familiar with my writing, you know I’m not a fan of 3 ring binders for most kids who aren’t naturally organized. They require too many steps to manage papers that are often meaningless to the student, which is counter productive and unnecessary. We generally replace them with simple accordion files or cheap pocket folders.

Planner

Thin it out: get rid of all pages from earlier in the year and all useless pages.
Use a highlighter to box out every single day they have off for the rest of the year. This helps students get a better perception of time, helps get a big picture of the upcoming semester and makes everything feel more manageable.
Print and post all new syllabi.
Transfer ALL info possible from syllabi to the planner, at the beginning of the semester. (By the way, weekly planners are usually ineffective for struggling students. These students are typically global/big picture tinkers who do much better with monthly planners where they can see the big picture. They just need to learn shorthand to fit assignments in the smaller space.)

Computer

We set up Google Chrome to automatically open relevant tabs: calendar, school website, online gradebook, email, google drive, etc.. It’s worth taking the time to customize the browser.

SSS

Take time to intentionally set up a Sacred Study Space (SSS). Seriously think out how to design the ultimate work space with the student. Music or no music? Bright or dim? What are the preferences? White boards? Cork boards? Minimize clutter, have supplies within reach. Get a timer, digital recorder, extra note cards or any other items that help study smarter not harder.

Schedule

Help students structure study times, meal times, and other activities at the beginning of the semester when possible. The schedule can be changed, but having a plan makes things a lot easier. It’s also good to post a weekly sketch/schedule for students to reference. It helps them develop a better perception of time.

Logistical

If there is a class that needs to be switched or dropped, do it sooner rather than later! Same with tutors or other logistics.

Social

Review social goals they have, give guidance when necessary, ask them about their plan regarding social challenges. Again, it’s about intentionality. I don’t need to solve every problem or give “advice” on every issue. In fact that’s often counter productive. I just want my students to have to articulate what’s going on socially because it forces them to raise their awareness. It allows them to make choices rather than blindly jump back into the social environment in school.

Emotional

I do a temperature check with students about each class, about teachers, friends, organization, etc. to see how they feel about things. I help them regulate emotion in 2 primary ways: 1. Helping students choose an authentic attitude that serves them positively (reframing). 2. Showing them how to regulate stress/their nervous system (you can google grounding exercises, diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, etc.).

Physical

We discuss sleep, food and exercise. We look at their wellness goals and see if anything might help learning, focus, overall sense of well-being, etc..

Finally

For the next few weeks we make times to maintain everything so students aren’t swimming upstream. We flag important papers with bright post its, eliminate waste, update planners, etc.. We raise awareness in every area so they are learn to make intentional choices, so students are having actual experience writing their own script in life rather than mindlessly doing what they’re told. Good luck and contact me with questions or better yet, post your thoughts below.

Overkill

Yesterday I met with a new student who wants help with organization. I asked her to tell me how she tries to organize and she showed me her 3 ring binder. Any of you who know me know I’m not a fan of the binder for most of the kids I work with. It’s a simple matter of ROI (Return on Investment). For kids who aren’t naturally organized, it’s a lot of paper pushing investment for what’s often little, if any, return. And they know it.

Same Old Story

This case is the same story I’ve seen so many times before – total binder overkill. Here’s how it goes: It’s the beginning of the year. Very well-intentioned and naturally organized teachers across the country set their expectations: -Get a 3-ring binder. -Get dividers and label them, “homework, notes, tests, quizzes, worksheets,” etc.. -Use the binder to manage papers: On your small desk, carefully open this large binder to the right place, unclick the rings, put the new paper on the holes, click the rings closed, close the binder properly so it doesn’t mash up everything, somehow move the giant binder out of the way so you can use the desktop. -Repeat when needed. -There will be “binder checks” and you will literally be graded on how well you comply with organizational expectations, regardless of how it’s related to learning the actual content. It’s overkill. These kids don’t need to be spending their time managing minutia, there’s just no reason for it. Every minute in school is a valuable minute of life, and what we choose matters. Students just need one simple, plain folder or pocket per class. Sure there are some specific ways I set up the folder system to support their learning style, but basically it just needs to be simple and clear.

Serious Consequences

This issue frustrates me so much because of how defeating it is for kids. Binders seem like such a small thing but the consequences add up and it’s hard to connect the dots to see how the binder has anything to do with it. Kids struggle to try and do what they are asked, but it’s really hard for them to habituate the 3 ring binder details, so they end up giving up on it, feeling shamed, and cramming their stuff in their locker or backpack. Then they lose track of things, ask for multiple copies, forget to turn things in, are punished with zeros or partial credit, and they start the familiar, futile & overwhelming cycle of swimming upstream every semester. Sadly, the pattern grooves. I think that naturally organized people innocently believe that, “if disorganized kids would just do what organized people do, they would become organized people.” But it’s not about that. Yes, the brain is plastic and yes, the brain will literally become better at organizing when the right modifications are made. The real problem is in how the modifications are made. Of course some kids respond well to uber-organized binder systems. But the point is to help each kid develop a style that works for them, one that they can articulate and manage independently. If they can’t explain their system or can’t manage their stuff, they need common sense help, not cookie cutter demands.

Anyhow…

So I helped this middle schooler get rid of about 50 useless papers, organized the remaining ones sanely, got her set up with simple color coded and clearly labeled folders, one “catchall/homework/important stuff” folder, and we went over simple guidelines for how she might use them. You could see her demeanor change as we broke everything down into bite sized pieces. It clicked better in her brain. She became more relaxed and confident. No more overkill, just sane simplicity.