Follow your coach's direction

I’m in NY for a conference organized by the NY Times on “Schools for Tomorrow.” I met yesterday with Alexandra Zabriskie, a top-notch NY tutor for the SAT and ACT (and school subjects too).  Alex talked about coaching her students to take practice tests under the practice conditions, in other words, when it’s possible, to take at least one practice test at the place you’ll take the actual exam.  ”I tell them how important this is, they say they’ll do it,” Alexandra says, sighing, “But they don’t follow through.”

If you are working with a coach it’s important for two reasons that you follow through. The first is that your coach is not your mother, not your father, not your teacher, but your coach. Your coach knows what you need to do to succeed on the test, just like the coach of an athletic team knows how you should practice to succeed.  Imagine what would happen if you were on a team and you didn’t follow your coach’s direction.

The second reason that this particular coaching — take a practice test at the test site — is important is that you need to simulate the conditions of the exam itself.  Taking the practice test at the site is vastly different than sitting on your bed at home and practicing there. Why? Because at home there are a zillion distractions: texts from your friends, snacks in the fridge, comfy pillow where you’ll just take a rest for “a minute.”   Zzzzzzzzzzzz.  Try doing any of these in the exam room (well, don’t try, actually).

Follow your coach’s direction. Chinese say, left ear in, right ear out. Don’t do that. Hearing what your coach says and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, doesn’t raise test scores. Doing the right things and practicing in the right way does. After all, if you don’t listen to the coach, why do you go to him/her in the first place? doesn’t make sense.

A special shout out to Alexandra Zabriskie in NY. She was an early follower of my work and she does a terrific job of understanding her students’ needs and tailoring her tutoring to them. Check out her website:  http://atoztutor.com. (That’s Alex, on the left, in the picture above.)

You need some energy to perform well

Today’s question is:  How do I get rid of my anxiety before an exam?

Answer: You don’t get “rid” of anxiety. A little bit of anxiety has been shown (in over a hundred years of research) to be a good thing. Remember the “Yerkes-Dodson curve” (see illustration).  Yerkes and Dodson were two psychologists who showed, at the beginning of the 20th century, that there’s a direct relationship between stress and performance. Too much or too little stress and performance suffers. You need just the right amount of stress to perform well. The trouble is students think that their “anxiety” before an exam is a bad thing. Yes, it is, when it incapacitates you. In other words, when it’s too high.But if you think about it as “energy” you need some to give you the boost to get you launched. Think about those big spacecraft — the rockets are fired and the energy propels the rocket into space. The big hulking parts of the spacecraft fall away eventually and the small capsule does its thing once it is out of the earth’s gravitational pull. You are just like that before an exam. Your jets are fired, you are ready to launch. Don’t confuse anxiety with energy.  If you are truly anxious and you are not remembering things, you are doubting yourself, you are distracted and you are physically tense, then you’re going to slide quickly to the right side of the graph. You are unable to perform the way you ought to be.  Too much stress = poor performance. Use the tools in the book. Get yourself back on track. Learn to become calm, confident and focused.

Tell us your stories and send in your questions.

What happens is one word: practice.  He has to practice, practice, practice.  He has to practice becoming more aware of when he tenses his body and when he feeds himself negative thoughts about himself. And he has to practice tools to reduce the stress and turns those unhelpful habits around.

As we spoke I remembered something I learned in one of the first meditation courses I took some 30 years ago. The teacher said, “The Dr. can give you a prescription, but if you just place the prescription on your altar and pray to it every day, and yet never take the medicine how can you ever get better?”  So it’s the case with this medicine — the ongoing, daily practice of becoming more aware of old habits and replacing them with new ones.

The day after our session the client emailed me about how much he got out of it. Then I remembered something my old analyst, a real Viennese psychiatrist, said to me on many occasions, “Ze proof is in ze pudding.”  Let’s see if he practices. One thing I am 100% certain of:  if he does, he will improve and his test scores will be just what he wants them to be: excellent.

Calm, confident, focused

On November 4, 2008, 66 million people elected Barack Obama the 44th president of the United States.
How did he, a young man with a brief resume, make this dream come true?

All the pundits weigh in: “He’s smart.” “He’s savvy.” “He put together a great team.” “He raised a phenomenal amount of money.” All true, but not the whole truth. Through my eyes as a performance coach I see something more fundamental.

Obama has all three traits that I discuss in this workbook. He is calm, confident and focused, and that makes people trust him and believe in him. He never loses his cool, he never seems dejected or bitter at a loss, and it certainly doesn’t make him lose steam and he is never off-message. Obama’s story is especially amazing when you take in the challenges he had to overcome—an African American with little money, virtually no experience on the international stage, and with the middle name Hussein.

Calm, confident and focused. To many this combination seems elusive and mystical, improbable to achieve. Not so. Barack Obama wanted the presidency and on the path to achieving his goal he had to pass many tests. He passed them all with these invaluable traits.

Not everyone wants to be president. But anyone can learn to be calm, confident and focused. We all have that potential.
You too can cultivate these qualities. You too can succeed at even the most difficult tests.

Let me show you how.

When you use The Workbook for Test Success you are investing in a tool kit. It will give you what you need — not only for the school tests you have to face — but for the tests we all face. The tests of daily life.

Share with us your stories of facing tests and being calm, confident and focused.

PTO Emery is a bright light in East Bay

On Monday night I had the honor of being the featured speaker at the Emeryville Unified School district’s parent teacher’s association meeting. After a delicious holiday dinner we all moved into the library of Emery Secondary School and PTO President Brynnda Collins introduced me. The school district generously provided each parent at the meeting with a copy of my book. I gave a talk on the book and particularly chapter 5, “How to Calm Down.”  I think the material in this chapter is particularly helpful for parents when their kids are stressed out about tests.

It was a great group. We had so much fun as I led them through the calming tools.

When the talk was over we had a lively Q&A. One parent enthusiastically endorsed everything I had talked about, commenting that “these tools are good for young children too,” citing a school project where K-5 students were taught techniques for breathing, yoga and being quieter and their test scores substantially upped.  I was delighted to hear this. She said with conviction, “I really believe kids should learn this when they are young.”

The more we can use school time– from the earliest grades–to give our students effective life skills– like how to deal with testing and other stressful situations in a calmer way, the more we are building healthy, contributing members of our community.  I am hopeful that every one of the parents at the PTO meeting will follow up with their questions and observations on how the book helps them and their child.  I am greatly appreciative of their passion in making the testing process more humane and growth-producing instead of stressing everybody out, parents, teachers and kids included.  Bravissimo Emery parents!

I remember a high school student  brought in by her parents. I asked her, “Do you know why you are here?” She immediately replied, “Yes. My parents want me to get higher SAT score. And I don’t want to work for it.”

Then the three of them leaned in. All eyes were on me…

I took down a glass bottle of gold glitter from my shelf. I shook it up and down and said to her, with a small smile, “This is magic dust. Take it home. Every night before you go to sleep, sprinkle it over your head. Your scores may go up.”

She laughed heartily. Then we began working together. I gave her some tools to practice with.

At our next coaching session she came in and shrugged, “I didn’t do any of the things you said.”

I was patient and understanding. Again, at the end of the second session I gave her some tools to practice with.

She came back and again, the same thing, “I didn’t do any of the things you said.”

I looked her in the eye and said, “You are a bright kid. But I can’t work with you anymore. This is a waste of your time, my time, your parents’ money.”

She was shocked. We started a dialogue. I found out there was a school that she wanted to go to. But to get into that school she needed to get her SAT to a certain level.

Bingo! In that moment she got it. She wasn’t doing it for her parents. She was doing it to get to where she wanted to go.

From then on she really worked with me on the performance model. And she got into the college of her choice.

This is what President Obama said about his daughter Malia doing better on a test, “what was happening was she had started wanting it more than us. Now, once you get to that point, our kids are on our [sic] way. But the only way they get to that point is if we’re helping them get to that point.”

If your child is facing and important test, talk about the test together. Make sure that the goal of a higher score is your child’s goal, not just yours. Help them see that it’s about their future and what they want for themselves. There’s more for you in Chapter 9: Help for Parents.

Send in your experiences and questions.

"Tests make me tense!"

As Jamal spoke, his right leg bounced up and down rapidly, his shoulders tensed and rose almost to his ears, and his speech accelerated like a car with a jammed gas pedal. Several times while he spoke, he held his breath. “Just talking about the test makes me nervous,” he said anxiously. “I feel like I’m flipping out right now. This is what happened to me on the SAT.”

Is he right? Wrong.

Jamal believed that remembering the test was making him nervous. In fact, all the nervous things he was doing with his body were causing his anxiety: bouncing his legs, tensing his shoulders, holding his breath. His body made his mind nervous, not his memories.

This is a very common misconception. Most people think that only their mind is working on the exam.

Not so.

Since your body is one of the three key players on your team, all of your body is in the room and engaged while you take a test. If you want to perform at your best, then all of you, not just your brain, has to be fully present and supporting the process.

If you are like most people, you are not too aware of your body throughout the day, unless you’re in pain or you feel sick.

So, you need to learn to recognize the signals when the body starts becoming agitated. The signs. The symptoms.

On p. 38, as part of Chapter Four: How to Calm Down, I lay out a list of common body signals. Go through them. Check all that apply. Start paying attention.

Awareness of when you are not calm is the first step in the process of reducing test anxiety.  Only when you are aware can you apply the tools to actually calm yourself down.

Details: Thursday, Oct 29, room HSW-301. If you can’t  be there, shoot me an email with your test prep question and I’ll reply.

One of the things I will clarify is the Yerkes Dodson curve (click on image at left for larger view and explanation).

It’s all about how to perform optimally by keeping your stress at just the right level.

Too much stress and your performance starts to slide.

The key better test prep and higher test scores is awareness – that your stress is building — and tools to reduce stress on the spot.

That’s what the talk is about.   See you there.