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How Parents Can Help Children With Emotional Regulation.
This is going to be an unconventional blog post. None of these are my ideas. Instead, they all come from Dr. Laura Markham and a podcast interview she did with Shane Parrish’s The Knowledge Project....
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Start Early
A few dozen times each year, a parent emails us asking, “When should my child start preparing for the SAT?” Or occasionally, a freshman worrying about their first experience taking final exams will...
View ArticleA Personal Message From Greg Smith About Black Lives Matter
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” James Baldwin Institutional racism must be faced. We must strive daily to make today better than...
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Summer Learning in the Time of COVID
During a normal year, making good use of summer involves a mix of reviewing last year’s content, previewing next year’s content, expanding your math comfort zone, patching holes in your upside-down...
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I’m still learning; we’re still learning.
Last year, I published an in-depth look at willpower – how it works, how to get more of it, and how to strategically reduce your reliance on it. The article proved to be very popular, but among all...
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How to Patch Holes in Your Math Knowledge: 3 Steps
Every math student collects knowledge gaps as they progress through school. Sometimes you don’t understand a concept when it gets taught, and the class moves on before you figure it out. Sometimes you...
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Designed to Differentiate
Today, I want to offer a message of realism regarding the standardized tests that are used for private school and college entrance: the ISEE, SSAT, HSPT, SAT, and ACT. This message will probably sound...
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Growth Mindset Patriotism
“This country is a constant work in progress. We’re born with instructions. To form a more perfect union. Explicit in those words is the idea that we’re imperfect. That what gives each new generation...
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Leveraging Rivalries to Help Build Community
Dear readers, Today, I’m excited to introduce Josh Lappin, who has written us an excellent guest post. The driving metaphor here is about basketball, but even though I don’t follow sports, I still...
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Going Back to Home School
The summer of 2020 is drawing to a close, and like so much this year, it feels, well, strange. The usual back-to-school routines of restocking school supplies, buying new outfits, and eagerly awaiting...
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Busy Pencil
Here’s a story problem from a practice SAT that’s designed to overwhelm your working memory: Jake has identical drinking glasses each in the shape of a right circular cylinder with internal diameter...
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Does Learning Require Taking Risks?
Researchers at Johns Hopkins set out to uncover the role of guessing in learning. Do people learn by taking risks and making mistakes? Does the memory of past errors improve future performance? Here’s...
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8 Tips for Using Video to Learn
The past decade has seen an explosion in free, online videos that teach everything from art history to Spanish to calculus. Students today are accustomed to being assigned videos by their teachers....
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Teen Drivers Informational Newsletter
Dear readers, This week, we have a guest post about teen driving from a trusted local insurance agent. Obviously, this is not relevant to learning and studying, but there is a good message here for any...
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4 Reasons to Become a Volunteer Tutor & How to Do It
Today, I want to quickly bring your attention to an incredible opportunity for high schoolers to help our community: volunteering as a video tutor for elementary and middle school students. But wait,...
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Accommodation and Remediation
When addressing learning differences and other academic challenges, there are two approaches: accommodation and remediation. Accommodation means providing extra support or alternative options to make...
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News Flash! Asynchronous Time is School Time!
In this strange world of remote learning, most schools are doing “synchronous” classes in the mornings and “asynchronous time” in the afternoons (sometimes called “office hours”). This means that...
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The Downside of Neuroplasticity
Think about your best kitchen knife. The more you use it, the duller it gets. Eventually, you have to sharpen it. But if you don’t use it, and you just leave it in a drawer for six months, it’ll be...
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Why Going Fast Often Means Going Slow
I have a student who loves to go fast. We do math together. He likes to rush through problems, he doesn’t like to write things down, and he doesn’t like to work things out step-by-step. But he also...
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Why Don’t Teenagers Listen to Grown-Ups?
Teenagers seem programmed to doubt, question, reject, and disobey what adults say. As I’ve explained before, a teenager is like a Chinese finger-trap: doing the intuitive thing and just telling them...
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