You go tutors!

Every day I receive Google alerts about stories and statistics regarding test anxiety, test scores and test preparation. I like to keep current with what’s going on in the field.

Here’s one that came across my desk today:  It’s from “Janice R.” who runs a tutoring service in Palm Coast, Florida. Janice offers a good roadmap for students: familiarize yourself with the test, do some solid preparation and get ready for test day.

How often we overlook the essentials!

I applaud Janice R for getting the word out and offering what she can to students who may not be getting the guidance they need and deserve. Keep up the good work!

Janice R is a tutor at WyzAnt.com. Check out their website. While I am not personally familiar their services and therefore can’t yet recommend them, I definitely am intrigued to find out more, and suggest you look them over too.

Take a moment to breathe

New Year’s greetings to everyone, far and wide!  May it be a year of peace, health and prosperity for all.

Since the beginning of a new year is usually filed with resolutions– which are really thinly disguised attempts to change habits — I’m going to begin the year with a series of posts on habits.

Habits determine the quality of our lives. And they are fundamental if you want to reduce your stress around taking tests.

Life is made up of habits. Think about it. As you are reading this you are breathing (whether you are aware of your breath or not).  As your eyes take in these words do you know whether you are inhaling or exhaling?  Likely not because breathing is such an automatic habit — so much in the fabric of every moment of life -that most of us lose our awareness, or consciousness of it. Yet, it is the single most important tool we have for calming down and staying in the present. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could use it to our benefit beyond simply staying alive.

Although everyone is breathing, very few of us have any sustained awareness of our breath.  Why is such an awareness important?  Because along the way each of us has adapted and even changed the fundamental habit of breathing so that it corresponds to our own emotional/mental state. Take a person who, every time she hears the word “TEST,” freezes up. In that moment she is stopping her breath. What’s causing her anxiety?  Surely not the four printed letters T-E-S-T. They are merely pixels on a screen, they are not “making” her anxiety. This person’s anxiety comes from her long-time habit of stopping her breath every time she reads or hears the word “TEST.” Her memories, associations and fears about tests have a stranglehold on the one tool that could really help her: her breath.

Try an experiment:  as you read this sentence, exhale deeply.  Keep going until all the air is out. Good.  Now what happens?  The inhale comes in automatically.  That’s the fundamental habit we come in with it at birth (it’s what kicks off life) and it’s what leaves us at death.  I remember sitting with my dear Aunt Rachel when she lay dying at the age of 105.  Over the course of two weeks I watched and listened to her breath, becoming every more shallow, ever shorter, until finally…. it stopped.

Keep your breath going, and keep your attention on your breath. As you click away from this blog xhale, and then inhale on the next thing you do, whether at your computer or away. Sustain your awareness of your breath in any activity you are doing today and forward:  whether it’s cooking, studying, taking a shower, or working out.  When you realize you’ve lost awareness—we all do, most of the time—bring your attention back to your breath. Exhale. Inhale.  Simple.

That’s your first task: just become more aware of your breath.. In a few days we’ll get into the next step of using this basic and most profound tool to our benefit.

OK. Get ready to click away from this blog.  Ready? Exhale.  See you in a few days

Sure enough, she wouldn’t talk to me.

OK, I thought, now what? I saw Amy eyeing a set of colored markers

I have on the floor in my home-office and I asked her if she liked to draw. She nodded. Rather than get into a tug-of-war over her not talking (of course, she would win), I said, “We don’t have to talk. You can draw if you’d like.” She started drawing and got very absorbed in an intricate picture of a group of lizards. When she was done I asked her if she would tell me something about it. All she said was, “It’s a family.”

In the second session she started drawing again, almost immediately. Again, lizards. The identical family as last time. They were in varying sizes and from the expressions on their faces (anger, fear, blankness) was obviously some story behind the picture. I asked Amy if she would tell me the story and she said, “In this family there is a father, a mother, a brother and a sister.”

Of course this corresponded directly to her own family configuration, and the story, as it wound out over several sessions, came clearer: the parent lizards didn’t think the little daughter lizard was as smart as the older brother lizard One day, as Amy was drawing I casually asked her, “So what’s the problem with math?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t understand it.” I asked her if she told anyone that and she shook her head, “No.”

Immediately a light shone for me on her whole situation: here was a child who didn’t understand the teacher but was afraid to say so for fear of that she’d be seen as not being smart. I asked her if this were so. Again, she nodded.

With Amy’s knowledge I spoke with her parents and teacher. I explained to them that it had to be safe for Amy to say, “I don’t understand this,” and that they needed to check in with her about it during or after class and when she was doing homework. I also trained Amy to say these simple words right away, “I don’t understand this.” When she saw it was safe to say it, she did.

Our work together ended several weeks before the math qualifying test and the interview. Her mother called one day and said, “Amy passed the math test and couldn’t’ stop talking at the interview.” She was accepted into the school.

What can we take away from Amy’s story? First, it’s all right not to know, and second it’s necessary to speak up, to confide it to someone who will be accepting. There’s an ancient expression, “He who thinks he knows not, knows; he who thinks he knows, knows not.” While this has deep spiritual implication, the bottom line is that not knowing is a natural, expected and an excellent place to start, provided you have a safe environment to express it.

When you are studying or preparing for a test and you don’t know something, recognize that. Rather than beat yourself up about it, say it—to yourself, and to someone who can help you. This is the first step on a path to building your confidence: it’s OK to not know.

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.)

Dr. Joy Magtanong-Madrid

Yesterday my wife and I had the distinct pleasure of attending the Commencement ceremonies for the University of the Pacific, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. One of the students who graduated, now Joy Magtanong-Madrid, DDS., was a student several years ago in a post-baccalaureate program in which I was the performance coach.  There were 12 students, like Joy, who had all recently received their bachelor’s degree, and had wanted to go on to dental school, but didn’t get in anywhere they applied. They then applied for the post-bac program, which was a year to get their grades up and improve their scores on the DAT.  What an amazing group of people!  I loved coaching them. Why? Because they were so focused. They had such strong, determined spirits. They each had a goal and were determined to reach it. As I write in the book, focus is a function of the spirit– to be and become your highest self.

Joy was determined. She went through the program. She learned what she had to learn. But when the year was up she still didn’t get into dental school. Did that stop her? No way!  She became a dental assistant, applied again, and the next year started at UoP, arguably the finest dental school in the country. When the President of the University spoke yesterday she commended Joy for managing a most unusual outreach dental program for poverty-stricken children and adults in the Philippines.  Not only that, but Joy received two major awards and one major scholarship!  Her whole family was there to celebrate her achievements. We all went out for an amazing feast at a Burmese restaurant.

Last week a colleague of mine and I were talking about being teachers. I’ve been teaching for 40 years and he’s been teaching for 50. He said, “You know, if only one or a few students really get it, then you’ve done your job.” Joy was, and is, that student for me, as were her colleagues, a few of whom also graduated this week.  Joy took what I had to offer and ran with it.  The world will be a much better place as her spirit goes forth to light the way for others.

The first student — I’ll call her Aly — is determined to score well in her college level courses and is doing what’s necessary  to make that happen. The second — I’ll call her Erika — wants to score well but she’s often distracted and her grades are sub-par.

What’s going on?  Aly is focused, Erika is not. Focus means having a goal and taking actions that get you to it. That’s what

Aly is doing. She sets herself a task and she accomplishes it.  Each task that she accomplishes lead her closer to her goal of getting good grades.  She stays on the path and if she veers off it she gets back on and keeps going. Erika– who’s got the same amount of brain power as Aly– winds up checking email, or talking on the phone, or watching TV when she knows she should be studying.

In the next posts I’m going to go into more depth about these two scenarios.  But to start: which one do you identify with– Aly or Erika?

Here’s some hope: even if you are way off the path, you can always get back on it. You can succeed. How?  Stay tuned!

Need help? Confide in someone.

Recently a student came to see me. She said that she was having great difficulty with the one of the subjects in her medical school program. “I feel like everyone else is getting what’s going on and I’m not.” She was embarrassed to tell anyone she was having difficulty and so pretended that she understood what was going on when, in fact, she did not. This

just increased her unease and sense of isolation.

I told her that she made a good and important move by opening up to me about it, and I coached her to tell this to one of her classmates. She wasn’t thrilled with this coaching suggestion but  agreed to it any way.

At our follow-up session she said that when she was in lab she did, as agreed, talk with someone working near her. She said “I don’t get this stuff sometimes,” and, much to her surprise, her fellow student responded by saying, “You know, I feel the same way.” This got them talking, and then planning to get together to study.  The student I was coaching was much relieved.

The first tool in dealing with confidence issues is confide.  You have to admit– to yourself and to someone else– that you are having difficulty. You have to admit the negativity (“I’m not getting this,” “I feel dumb,” etc.). If you don’t acknowledge it you stay disconnected.  Remember: stress is a function of disconnection. When we are disconnected from self and others we get stressed and too much stress hurts performance.

If you are feeling “less-than” you need to reach out. In your isolation you think you are the only one who’s having difficulty. You will be amazed to find that many (many) other people are thinking the exact same thing. They think that you get it while they don’t.

Open the door and let out the negativity. Then something fresh, new and helpful can come in.

Let me know how it goes.

Worrying? Again?

Do you find yourself worrying about an upcoming test? Or, when you are in the middle of an exam answering questions, are you worrying then?

The first thing to know is that it’s normal. Just about everyone worries from time to time.

Second, know this: worrying never solves anything. Anything.  Worrying just breeds more worrying.  Haven’t you noticed that when you continue to worry

about something the worries just seem to grow and grow?

Also,  we often worry about things that never even come to pass. Have you ever worried that something would turn out one way and — as it happened– it turned out completely differently?  Most of us have had this experience– more than once. It’s common for test takers.  You worry about what’s going to be on a test and then, come test time, it’s not on the test.

The most helpful coaching I give to people who worry is this: when you start worrying, stop!  See a stop light, a stop sign, a hand go up, an alarm bell go off. Just stop the worrying. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself, “Is this worrying going to take me to my goal?”  The answer is “No!”  Next, listen– listen to the voice inside of you that’s going to tell you the next helpful action to take (“Get back to the books– keep reading the section you were working on”).  And then, fulfill the direction of the voice… do it!

It’s the best cure for worrying.

Appreciate your greatness

It’s well known, in the circles of positive psychology, that expressing appreciation is a powerful tool for improving relationships and performance. Usually we think of expressing appreciation  to someone else– someone who has done something for us or with us, whose contribution we want to acknowledge.

We don’t often think of expressing appreciation to ourselves, about ourselves. In fact, in workshops I offer when we get to this part, people are often stymied. What can I appreciate about myself?

Appreciation means “perceiving value” and “expressing gratitude.”

As you prepare for tests and do the work involved in studying, reviewing and practicing, take time to appreciate yourself for what you are doing.

In other words, take a moment to perceive the value in your actions, in what you are doing:  you are taking definite steps towards your goal. Acknowledge this, inside yourself. You might close your eyes and see yourself in a mirror, your bright, shining self, as you accomplish the work. Express your gratitude — your thanks –  to yourself, for following through.

This brief “appreciation pause” is a tonic: it will give you the energy boost you need to keep going.

When you hit a wall: grow something slowly. You will break through.

One of the things test stress can do is get you to feel like you can’t do anything. You feel like you’ve hit a wall.  Everything looks too big, too insurmountable, too daunting.  You shut down and collapse. Some people  spin in place. The talk in your head sounds like this:  There’s too much to do, I’ll never be able to accomplish what I want to, I won’t do well… on and on. [If this happens to you I'm sure you know what I'm talking about and could supply your own script].

This kind of talk is, literally, self-defeating. The way things work is on a

step-by-step, moment-to-moment basis. And you work that way too. You need to do what’s in front of you and in small manageable steps.If you take on too much all at once you hit the wall and shut down.

Here’s the way to resolve the everything-is-too-much,  spinning-in-place issue:  Choose one thing that you can do in the next 15-20 minutes and do it.  Once you start working you’ll see that all the energy that’s gone into being stuck, now goes into accomplishing the one task.  Make sure the thing you choose can be done in 15 minutes.  It may be learning one concept, or reviewing one problem. Just choose something — one thing — that you know needs to be done right now and do it.

Once you’ve accomplished that, take a pause. Look back at what you just did.  First, you’ll see that you got something done. This is beneficial in that it’s something you needed to do and you did it.  Next, realize  that you’ve just disproved the notion that you had a half hour ago that you couldn’t do anything.  You just did.  Congratulations!

Now, repeat the process. What’s the next small thing you can (and need) to do?  Now do that.

Send in your own methods for getting out of spinning in place and feeling overwhelmed.

By the way, this is an issue that touches all three legs of the stool– calm, confidence and focus. If you’ve been reading the book you can see I jumped to the third tool for regaining confidence, which is envisioning taking small manageable steps. The focus leg is also involved:  you got into action in a way that supports you in achieving your goal.  And I’m sure the whole thing calmed you down.

You got back on the path and kept walking.  Appreciate yourself, and thank your supports (friends, family, your spiritual guides) for helping you to help yourself  get moving.