The "Why"

   

     I am often asked why I do what I do.  So here is my "why"....

     I HATED school.  Oh, K-2 were kind of ok, but after that, it was all downhill.  Middle school was awful, High school was even worse.  Math was torture. The system did a great job on slamming my self-image into the ground.  Even in college, I found it tedious at best.  I was a "C" student in high school, barely.  Yet, when I got to college for my A.A.S. degree, I was on the Dean's list my first semester.  I always kept in the back of my mind the question.."Why was I able to do that in college, and not in high school? After all, it's the same brain!"  More on that in a minute.

     Fast forward....I'm teaching PE in a Catholic school in Brooklyn, NY, and LOVING IT!  The energy from the kids, it was awesome. The sense of fulfillment was amazing!  I did that for 4 years before I moved into sales work for the next 12 years.  Eventually, I came back to it, in a public school setting, and that's when it really hit me.

     My memories of how traumatic school was for me were triggered by seeing it in student after student.  I began by substituting with ESE (Exceptional Student Education) classes. These were special diploma students in a high school, the group noone really wanted to deal with. I found I had an almost instant rapport with them.  I have stayed in this niche in the high school setting ever since.

     What really hit me was how these student suffered so much in the system.  Angry and over the whole school thing.  It touched me, motivated me to pour out my heart for them, to learn ways to help them as much as I could.

     My biggest challenge, and it still is, is to keep my balance, when I see the system trying to be more important than the child.  Yet, day after day, I fight for them. Both in the system, and in my private coaching practice, I fight for them.  I delight in the possibilities of changing the world, one student at a time.

     My second niche was a natural offshoot of the academic one, self-image work.  It came from the repeated work I had to do with these students because of the harm the system and their labels did to their self-esteem.  I then extrapolated that to work with adults, and again, using my own "suffering" how much I was was held back in life due to my own low self-image.  I couldn't let that happen to others if I had the tools and skill to prevent it.  So I launched into it with the same passion I has with the kids.  Accepting second best is so unnecessary.  Being sad or anxious all the time isn't what we are created for.

     My purpose is to change the world, to contribute to it wonderful becoming. My purpose is to save as many students as I can from the pain of school.  There shouldn't be any, nor does it have to stay that way for students of ALL ages who are experiencing it.  There are easier ways to learn. There is an amazing person that is YOU.  There is no higher purpose to suffering with a low self-image. Nothing meritorious about it.  Every day, I rise with joy and anticipation of who I will help that day.  To that, gratitude is always added.  Gratitude that I was able to find my way out.  Gratitude that I learned tools so effective, I wish I knew them when I was a kid.

     I know this may seem a bit like rambling, but it is my hope it gives a glimpse into my heart, and into my "why".

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

     I was coaching with a teacher recently about how I can support her in teaching students with learning disabilities.  I asked to see her class roster, and as I was going over it, I recognized a name.  I asked her how this particular student was doing. She said, "At the beginning, he was doing well, low B's to high C's.  But lately, he is failing. He doesn't do his work, he is missing assignments, and he is starting to skip class".

    I wish I was surprised, but I wasn't. Sadly, it was bound to be happening.  You see, when I had my first interaction with this students about two months ago, I asked him to fill out a belief survey. I always do this, because it is a foundational step in the work I do. I MUST know what the student believes about themselves as a person, as a student, about school, etc.  I remembered one of his responses in particular. He believed he was dumb, and a poor student.

   Now the really sad part is, according to the teacher, he had the capability. He showed it.  To him, though, that didn't matter. His "thermostat" was set to dumb.  So once he saw the good grades coming, his thermostat kicked on. "I can't be doing this well, after all, I'm dumb!".  So the self-sabotage begins, as the teacher described its manifestation.

   Beliefs, motivation strategies, and the like are the foundation of my work for one very important reason, they are fundamentally VITAL! This is where the rubber meets the road, right here.  The number of peer-reviewed research regarding beliefs and academic performance is growing.  Students such as this HAVE to have those negative beliefs changed, and the sooner the better.

  In my private work, I use tools such as Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) to address this because they are extremely effective and rapid.  Only once such negative beliefs as what this student is experiencing are eliminated, only then can tutoring and other academic interventions have any chance of succeeding.

More next time....

The Difference That Makes The Difference

 

   

   


     I am often asked, "What is the difference between what you do and ordinary tutoring?"  While that is a multi-layered question in my opinion, I will attempt to address it to some degree here.

    A key distinction in my approach is to seek the answer to the question, "What is the difference that makes the difference?"  In other words, why are some students so successful, while others are not.  Assuming for the sake of the discussion all things are equal (no organic or physiological issues, etc), the students all have, by and large, the same brain.  So why such a difference?  This achievement gap is the subject of MANY studies, and all sorts of things are seen as the answer. Here, however, I wish to offer a simple answer.

    To me, to seek the true source of this difference, we need to look at each student as an individual.  This means looking to unlock the potential in each student.  If I look at two students, one great in Math, the other terrible in Math, I GUARANTEE a large portion of the difference is how the subject is communicated TO THEMSELVES, namely, how the information is PROCESSED.

    In NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), their essential foundation is in something called "modelling"  Modelling is looking at a desired skill or attribute seen in another person, and getting "in their head" to discover the recipe for how they do it, then install that in yourself or someone else who desires it.

    A key component in my work with students to to elicit how they are processing information. How do they process what they are good in, and compare and contrast that to how they process what they have difficulty in.  Once that is determined, the work begins to "alter" the processing of the difficult thing with processing strategies of what they are good at.  Follow that?

     Therefore, the difference that makes the difference isn't in a magical curriculum, not in luck, not in "I guess Johnny just isn't a good student", or anything else. It is in the student's own self-communication, his/her own processing. There is no where necessary to look but within. This is, perhaps, the most hopeful message ever told to students who are struggling, and their parent who suffer emotionally with them.

      Until next time......

To get a free report that describes the foundations of this work, go to my website, www.easeoflearning.com

The Elephant In The Room

    Ok, so here is the elephant in the room...when talking about disabilities such as ADD/ADHD...."Well, Johnny can't focus, he tries and tried. He must have ADHD"  And the medicating soon begins in many cases.  Here is the golden question that, when I ask it, I have yet to get an affirmative response. "Well, has anyone TAUGHT him HOW to focus?"   "No?  Hmmmmmm"   Now understand, I am not saying there is never an organic reason for having focus issues.  What I am saying is that, shouldn't there be an attempt to train the person HOW to control their mind before they are labeled and medicated?

   Often, when a workshops and presentations about such things, there is usually a list of famous people in history who we THINK had ADHD, or which ever other label.  Now, think about it for a second.  They had this challenge, and yet were highly successful.  How? Well, here is another "elephant in the room" theory... They were successful because they had NO LABEL!  They were just who they were, period.  No stamp of disability, no label providing limitations, and frankly, no medication.

   I know this views will ruffle some feathers.  In my coaching, however, I need to look at it from this point of view. I can't look at a label, as a limitation.  I have to see it as, "This is how the child is. Now, how can I help them get to a different result?"  How can we expect people to focus, or be socially capable, or successful in school for that matter, if they are not first TAUGHT?

The System Comes First

 
   When I first started martial arts training when I was 16 years old, I was drawn to Bruce Lee's philosophy. In a nutshell, he was against styles and systems of training, in that they would come first, forcing an individual to conform to the system.
   I was reminded of all this yesterday, in a school meeting. I cannot go into any specifics, but I can say it certainly roused my passion against the "classical mess" as Bruce would put it.  I saw, clear as day, the system coming first, before the student.  Quite frankly, it made me ill.  As I thought more about it, I realized how many students are alienated, how many are counted as an "acceptable loss".  So many students, especially those with "learning disabilities" are thrown off the cliff by the system.
   I put disabilities in quotations for a reason.. Please understand, it is not to downgrade any one's learning challenges.  To me, in my experience, the labels are often just another aspect of the system. The student's come to accept it, and then, well, you know the rest....
   I so often get great results with students so labeled because I take them as individuals, not as parts of the system.  I unlock them, I use their strengths to their advantage.  It should be about the individual, after all.  The disability is often that the system never got around to figuring out how to teach the child, period.  Again, I am not saying that there are not genuine, organic disabilities that affect learning, but there are not in the numbers I see.
   The late Dr. Don Blackerby, from whom I learned a majority of what I do, laid out presuppositions that the system uses.  They are negative assumptions, and I still see them rampant.  What the system fails to see is the emotional component of learning.
   I recently counseled with a high school student who confessed to me that she had an abortion over the summer. She is now an emotional mess.  Tell me how any of the latest and greatest curricula or methods will make any impact at all until her emotional state is cleared and balanced?  They won't, they can't.  So simple of a concept, isn't it? Yet so often overlooked.  This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the educational system of all.

   Here is a video I did about ADHD and the NLP (Neuro-Lingustic Programming) Logical Ladder... I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful!

Motivation, the unspoken variable

   The latest and greatest curricula come and go. Now, it's the Common Core Standards.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for higher expectations and higher rigor.  We need to catch up with the rest of the world. There are also the best ways of delivering it, Marzano, Bloom, etc.  These too are valuable in and of themselves.  However, there is one fundamental assumption all of these make, and to me, it's a fatal flaw. At least Marzano comes close. In his methodology, if you make the material relevant, then at last the student MAY comply and do the work.  This, then, is the assumption, that the students WANT to do what is asked, and WILL do the work.  Big assumption.  The truth of the matter is, research for all of these methods is done in a controlled environment, that's what research is. Schools are not controlled environments!  We can't assume the students will do the work, we have to get there on purpose. We have to elicit the motivational strategy of the student and plug into it, map it across to the academic subjects.  That is one of the fundamental keys to the approach I use in my work.  I have seen grades skyrocket with just this alone.
    It seems so simple, yet it is almost always overlooked.  If we trained teachers in how to do this (which I do, by the way), just imagine the results.  There wouldn't be nearly as much behavior issues or resistance. There is a growing body if research linking motivation to academic performance.  The more focus that is put here initially, the better the other "latest and greatest" things will work.

Hello and Welcome!

  Welcome to my new blog! Here I will be sharing my thoughts on learning and the myriad of components that are involved with it. From time to time, I will also blog on related topics such as self-image, success, etc, as the muse strikes me.  I hope you enjoy the posts!

   You may be one of the many parents who suffer as their children suffer in school academically and are traumatized by learning disabilities and emotional issues, or an adult learner going through this yourself.  Maybe medication is not the route you want or has not been effective for your child. Ease of Learning uses alternative learning and emotional management techniques that get results without the use of medication. We teach children how to learn, get over trauma, help parents deal with negative emotions; while helping students improve grades, behavior and focus. We work with students of ALL AGES relating to learning disabilities including ADD/ADHD. Please see our site to explore our methods and call us to discuss a customized learning strategy to help you or your child…..