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How do we know that we’re doing the “right” volume of work?
I first learned of the concept of the minimum effective dose from Tim Ferriss, who got it from inventor and exercise expert Arthur Jones.
Jones applied the minimum effective dose (MED) idea to bodybuilding; Ferriss extended it to medications and food. Here, I apply it to schoolwork.
Read MoreWhen you begin with the belief that everyone wants to learn, it stimulates a lot of high quality problem-solving.
As a teacher, I can’t just write off a student as lazy, disobedient, unintelligent, or unmotivated. If something isn’t working, I see it as my responsibility to find something else that will.
What to do with a student who struggles to turn in work on time (or at all)? Who looks at an assignment and immediately gets overwhelmed?
Read MoreThe secret of my success in my early days as a piano teacher was a simple tweak that motivated my students to practice more, made them sound great, and caused them to stick with the instrument instead of quitting. On the strength of this basic framework, I built an entire music school.
This tweak can be applied to learning virtually anything, at any age, to create massive results in a short period of time. However, in order to accept it, we need to give up our desire to be the hero and resist the temptation to tell ourselves unhelpful stories about our progress.
Read MoreWhen you’re writing an essay, you have to organize your thoughts, create an outline, and incorporate your research, while crafting sentences and paragraphs — and these skills depend on solid handwriting or typing skills, confident spelling and punctuation, and strong mental stamina.
This is a lot to manage. So whenever possible, we want to isolate skills. To do this, we use Tiny Tasks. We want to tell the student exactly what’s expected, ask them to carry out the task, and praise them for a job well done. Then we do the next thing, and offer praise.
Read MoreImagine that everything your child knows and can do can be represented by nested rings.
The violet center represents that which your child has mastered.
The red outer ring represents skills and knowledge that your child has very little exposure to.
Too often, the learning process requires students to spend the majority of their time on shaky ground:
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