Student QOL

It’s a nicely consice collection of recommendations, with two-page summaries for each one: 1. Space learning 2. Interleave worked examples with practice 3. Combine graphics w/ verbal descriptions 4. Connect abstract and concrete represent ations 5. Use quizzing to promote learning 6. Help students plan their time. 7. Ask deep questions.

The students who are successful, by contrast, look at that challenge, wrestle with feelings of inadequacy and stupidity, and then begin to take steps hiking that mountain, knowing that bruised pride is a small price to pay for getting to see the view from the top. They ask for help, they acknowledge their inadequacies. They don’t blame their lack of intelligence, they blame their lack of motivation.

You feel like you are burnt out or that you are on the verge of burning out, but in reality you are on the verge of deciding whether or not you will burn out.

We’ve created this fantasy world where everyone is just 30 days of courage boosting exercises and life hacks away from living an amazing life.

it’s clear that you’re not likely to encounter real interesting opportunities in your life until after you’re really good at something.

If you avoid focus because you want to keep your options open, you’re likely accomplishing the opposite. Getting good is a prerequisite to encountering options worth pursuing.

If critical periods aren’t quite so firm as people once believed, a world of possibility emerges for the many adults who harbor secret dreams — whether to learn a language, to become a pastry chef, or to pilot a small plane. And quests like these, no matter how quixotic they may seem, and whether they succeed in the end or not, could bring unanticipated benefits, not just for their ultimate goals but of the journey itself. Exercising our brains helps maintain them, by preserving plasticity (the capacity of the nervous system to learn new thing), warding off degeneration, and literally keeping the blood flowing. Beyond the potential benefits for our brains, there are benefits for our emotional well-being, too. There may be no better way to achieve lasting happiness — as opposed to mere fleeting pleasure — than pursuing a goal that helps us broaden our horizons.”

It took me a long time to get away from validating my life according to something that didn’t relate to my true hopes and goals. At the time, I really did want to devote years of my life doing things that no one would notice, in hopes of obtaining letters behind my name that no one would care about. As ridiculous as I knew it was, I still wanted it! It was hard to let go of… until I finally did.

Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level.

“Deliberate practice,” Ericsson declares sternly, “requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable.”

“the most notable differences between the practice sessions of the top-ranked pianists and the remaining participants,” Duke and his coauthors wrote, “are related to their handling of errors.”

students have been taught to place way too much importance on having the courage to follow their passions and change the world, and not nearly enough importance on having the persistence to first build the needed ability to both find concrete projects that matter and accomplish them.

I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, but I take umbrage at labels placed on our children.

What are you noticing? Here are some of the things I notice I see the impact that our current grading systems have on students’ feelings of self-worth I see how children use shifts in (math) identity as a mechanisms for maintaining self-worth. I see how school reinforces a view in which your worth as human being can be mapped to your linear hierarchy I see how school reinforces the view that you intelligence and smarts are fixed attributes I see how one of the primary activities of school children is to avoid looking stupid and to maintain one’s standing in the hiearchy