One of the most important tasks as an academic coach is to help students understand how to leverage their learning styles to study more effectively … and hopefully more pleasurably.
This week one of my 9th grade clients came in beaming. She couldn’t wait to show me the flashcards that she created for her geography class. She’s an incredibly visual learner, and so I’ve been working with her on drawing pictures to represent the definitions of key terms.
Initially, she created cute pictures that were loosely related to the word she needed to learn. However, it was clear to me that she was leaving out key parts of the definition. Together we practiced how to pay attention to the *entire* meaning of a word, and to find pictures that represent the totality of the definition.
The flashcards pictured above are two of many fine examples that she brought in this week. Judging by the glee with which she showed me her work (and the perfect score on her test), it is clear that her visual learning style made studying both effective…and pleasurable.
(Note: I’m gleeful that this entire blog post was written on my iphone in my car as I waited to go into an InterPlay class. Wow!)
As an academic coach, I work with a lot of fidgety teens with ADD and ADHD. Every fall I buy some new toys to add to my collection. This year I ordered from Fat Brain Toys. We’ll see whether my coaching clients enjoy the Acrobots, pictured left .
I also ordered these Magnetic Marbles, pictured here. However, I’m not pleased with their magnetism, which isn’t very strong. Maybe my students will find fun ways to play with them. (I’m always blown away by new magnetic tricks discovered accidentally while discussing breaking down their next history project into manageable parts).
Finally, I ordered Rory’s Story Cubes. These are more of a treat for me because they remind me of the MuseCubes. I might use these as creative warm-ups with the teens, before we move into our time management and organization tasks. There’s also a fun iPhone app.
Here’s a crackpot theory I’ve been testing lately in my InterPlay classes: to be a good teacher, the more selfish I can be, the better. It seems that, if I teach a class to meet those needs, I generally meet the needs of the class participants as well.
When Coke Nakomoto and I decided to start teaching a monthly performance workshop series, it made perfect sense that we allow ourselves to be supremely selfish. We wanted to create a space in which performers can nurture their artist-selves.
Why? Because we both notice that our inner-artists need some major tending. For example, my Inner Critic can be quite harsh, which limits the choices I make as a performer; I need a gentle, light space to practice creating and being seen. Also, I have a tendency to abandon my deepest expressions in favor of entertaining the audience; I am interested in figuring out how to slow down and be present to myself while I perform, and then meet the audience half way. As a result, most of my recent InterPlay-as-performance teaching centers around self-care and sweetness while I’m improvising infront of an audience.
A week ago Coke and I taught our first performance workshop of the fall, and it went swimmingly! Seven women — half of whom have performance background, and half of whom wanted to play with performance and personal growth — brought their bright, shining, courageous selves to the gorgeous InterPlay studio. We grounded with ensemble movement improvisations, then sunk deeply into some solo explorations, and finally performed for each other. I’m consistently blown away by the profound simplicity of the InterPlay forms…and the artfulness they draw out in others!
The next workshops will be on the following Sundays from 2-5pm: September 11, October 30, and November 13. Come join us!
School began this week all over the Bay Area! I love the first week of school because students are full of hope and their organizational systems haven’t yet succumbed to a sea of papers.
As an academic coaching, I work one on one with students, but no session is alike. Sometimes it feels like a grand improvisation, encountering new issues every hour and figuring out how to approach them. Here are some tasks that Week One was filled with:
- Received tours of backpacks and school supplies. Once student was oh-so-proud of her knew REI backpack which is evidently much more comfortable than a standard backpack.
- Helped binder-hating students figure out an alternative organization method (the accordion folder or the Circa planners are nice backups)
- Taught students how to use a hanging file system at home to file older papers that need to be saved for final exams
- Brainstormed topics for college essays (the challenge of painting with watercolor and how it is a metaphor for my life; why I’m grateful I stuck with the “torture” of preparing for my bat mitvah)
- Calmed several students down who are anticipating an insane homework load
- Collaged new planner covers (I’m a firm believer that if you decorate your planner, you are more likely to use it)
- Renovated planners for all the students who took my DIY Planner workshop last year
- Problem solved what technology a non-artsy student should use for their first English project, which requires some art-making(we landed on GoogleDocs drawings).
- Convinced a student who has never before used a planner to set up iCal to track all his work
- Practiced a locker combination 6 times with a client until she got it right and could open her locker
- Planning when a student should go to her locker during the course of the day, so that she doesn’t have to lug a day’s worth of heavy textbooks with her
- Uncovered a stack of loose papers in a backpack and helped devise locations for all the homeless papers
- Outlined a student’s first essay of the year
All in a week’s work!
I need to start reconciling my finances every Friday, but it’s not my favorite task. Perhaps a playlist of money-related songs will help inspire me each week? (I recommend that my academic coaching clients create playlists for uninspiring tasks, but I’ve never done it myself).
After posting a request on Facebook, and searching out a list of 43 songs on google, my iTunes now sports this fabulous playlist:
- We’re in the Money ~ Thomas Z. Shepherd
- Money Honey ~Little Richard
- With Plenty of Money and You ~Count Basie Orchestra & Tony Bennett
- For the Love of Money ~Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes
- Roll Your Moneymaker ~Hound Dog Taylor & the House Rockers
- The Money Song ~John Tartaglia, Natalie Venetia Belcon & Rick Lyon
- Money (That’s What I Want) ~Beatles
- What do You Do for Money Honey ~Nikki Boyer
- Money Makes the World ~Peter Jobak & Sara Lindh
- Money Makes the World Go Round ~R. Kelly
- Money Talks ~AC-DC
- Money Talks ~Pickin’ On Series (Bluegrass remake of AC-DC’s version)
- Material Girl ~Madonna
- Money Money ~Toyah Wilcox
- Money for Nothing ~Dire Straits
- Glamorous ~Fergie
- Money ~Pink Floyd
- If I Had $1,000,000 ~Barenaked Ladies
- Step Right Up ~Tom Waits
- Beauty in the World ~Macy Gray
- I love Money ~Debbie Thomas
- Luxurious ~Gwen Stefani
- Rich Girl ~Gwen Stefanie
- If I Were a Rich Man ~Topol, Fiddler on the Roof
- Ka-Ching! ~Shania Twain
- Money Talks ~The Kinks
- I Wanna Be Rich ~Calloway
- Money, Money, Money ~ABBA
- Work for Your Money ~Howlin’ Wolf
- Takin’ Care of Business ~Bachman Turner
- Opportunities (Lets Make Lots of Money) ~Pet Shop Boys
- Money Song ~Monty Python
Do you have any additional recommendations for me?
