Let's Get Some Perspective . . .

Taking Advantage of Summer Down Time Early

2010-07-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Business Update
Summer is here! Those interested in making appointments for summer should contact us.

We’d also like to welcome a new tutor to the Perspectives family! Greg Gorden is a former chemistry teacher, so he’s another math-and-science superstar, and of course he’s trained in our proprietary Strategic Tutoring model.

Resources
Get a Job!
If you’re interested in joining the workforce and you don’t already have working papers, this link should start you off.
http://www.svusd.k12.ca.us/guidance/workpermit.htm
Attention Parents! Make Tax-deferred College Investments!
Tuition costs for private four-year colleges are up 4.4 percent from last year and for public four-year colleges are up 6.5 percent from last year. If you don’t already have one, here’s some information about the 529 plan.
http://www.savingforcollege.com/intro_to_529s/what-is-a-529-plan.php
Tips & Strategies
Bridging the Generation Gap of E-mail
I understand that email is for old people, but it is very important that you check it. If you have a phone that can check email, use that. Or get in the routine of checking email every time you check Facebook.
Find SOMEthing to Read!
Tired of reading traditional Steinbeck or endless morose World War Two tales? Use summer as an opportunity to indulge in reading your own selections on your own time! Stuck? Goodreads.com is a wonderful forum where you can read reviews about a book about which you’ve heard, or just browse for recommendations.
News & Research
ADHD: Redefined Again?
The APA is gearing up for its 5th edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible for doctors who diagnose all three subtypes of AD/HD. The subtypes and diagnostic criteria are under scrutiny. Here’s a summary.
http://www.dsm5.org/Proposed%20Revision%20Attachments/APA%20Options%20for%20ADHD.pdf

From the “This Needed to Be Said?” Department
In May, the Supreme Court banned life sentences of life without parole for juvenile criminals who do not commit murder.http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/opinion/18tue1.html?hp

The Best Online MLA Guide, John Irving's LD, and a Teenager's Sage Words

2010-04-22T00:37:00.000-07:00

Business Update

I'm considering moving the High School Readiness seminars to earlier in the summer (mid-July to mid-August).
As we get into warmer days, make sure you grab a sweater when you come to the office - the air conditioning takes its job seriously.

Resources

The folks at Purdue gave their online writing lab a makeover - and it's fabulous!

For all of you writing research and other papers requiring MLA style, here's your (hopefully not late-night) online source for answers. You're welcome.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

Biology students, especially those of you planning to take the Biology SAT II, do yourselves a favor...!
Spend at least 20 minutes each night noodling around this site. You'll thank yourself later. View videos and web pages - not downloads! - about DNA structure to protein synthesis to genetic mutations. Click on the Inheritance link at the top to get information about meiosis and mitosis, Mendelian genetics, and, obviously, inheritance. Taking the "E" version of the SAT II? Then you MUST click on the Ecology link at the top and review populations, ecological succession, competition, and zebra mussels. :)

http://www.biologycorner.com/bio4/DNA.php

Attention Parents!

I really love Dr. Hallowell's work, particularly the verbs in his advice: "parenting," "superparenting," "raising," "releasing positive energy" - OK that one is a verb phrase. Anyway, a parent recently reminded me of an excerpt of Driven to Distraction in which author John Irving discusses his learning issues. Good stuff.

http://www.drhallowell.com/blog/their-beautiful-minds/

Tips & Strategies

Don't be afraid - it's only scary if you ignore it!

A former client, who is now in college, told me that he no longer "wills papers not to exist," as I often say. Instead of procrastinating and throwing together eleventh-hour efforts with ugly results, he says he now spends calmer time while he's at the gym or walking around campus thinking about his paper and planning his ideas. Wise kid.

Lean on Each Other

Kids, this time of the year, it's easy to linger in the sunlight and lose momentum on your obligations. I encourage you to cheer for each other, study together, review together, split and distribute your own study guides - assemble a team to get you through!

News & Research

Teachers accused of child abuse no longer get a free ride in my old home town.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the teachers' union announced a deal to reassign most of the teachers now in so-called "rubber rooms" to administrative or nonclassroom work while their cases are pending. Officials also agreed to increase the number of arbitrators who hear teachers' cases from 23 to 39, and said they hope to catch up with backlogged cases by the end of the year.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100415/FREE/100419917

Forbes clearly used a very different methodology than US News & World Report.

Scroll down a bit and click on Complete College Rankings for the results of its analysis based on the following types of data: student evaluations of courses and instructors, number of alumni listed among the notable people in Who’s Who in America, amount of student debt at graduation, percentage of students graduating in four years, and the number of students or faculty, who have won nationally competitive awards like Rhodes Scholarships or Nobel Prizes.

http://bestcollegerankings.org/popular-rankings/forbes-college-rankings/

The Beginning of the Home Stretch

2010-04-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

Business Update

This August, I will again offer my small-group, highly interactive High School Readiness seminars. More information and a flyer to come, but call or email with inquiries in the meantime.
I am again seeking guest speakers for June's Real Freshman Orientation presentations. I'm looking for recent college grads to speak for about 5 minutes about their college experiences.

Resources

Literary Terms for the AP Literature Exam

This site provides super-concise definitions and examples of each literary term via links, so you can quiz yourself.

Interested in Learning or Improving Your Piano-Playing?

Noreen Wenjen is a well-loved and talented music teacher, a good resource for students who want to apply to college music programs, and an all-around sharp woman. Click on the link above to learn more about her studio, or check out her fascinating and informative blog at http://wenjenpiano.com/blog/.

Tips & Strategies

New Year's Resolutions - Remember?

Remember those commitments to yourselves I asked you to make at the start of the New Year? Take a meditative moment and connect with the you who made that commitment. In the last 14 weeks or so, how well have you kept your promise to yourself? What has inhibited your fulfillment of your promise to yourself? What can we do to get you back on track?

Questioning Text

You know when you read something in a textbook that makes no sense, given what you just read in the last section? Good! That means you have the ability to connect prior knowledge to new information and to identify inconsistencies. One of my new missions in my practice is to help all my students develop their text-questioning skills. Stay tuned.

News & Research

Holy Bad Teacher Behavior, Batman!

Bergen County representatives of the state teachers union wrote a fiery memo encouraging members to "get some dirt" and "go public," and adds the education commissioner to the "attack list." Worst of all, they not-so-subtly implied that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie should die.

The Word on the Street about the Wretched Mississippi Community that Wouldn't Let a Lesbian Go to Her Prom

Long story short, and in bullet form. School officials and parents in this dreadful back ass community:

- told a lesbian she couldn't take her girlfriend to the prom

- canceled the prom when the ACLU got involved

- told a judge (who ruled against them) they would hold and invite Constance to an alternate prom

- held another SECRET prom for all the non-Constance supporting Hitler youth

Click here to ask your US Representative to ask him to support the Student Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 4530) that will help to ensure that discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students has no place in our country's public schools.

Magnet Mayhem: Modifying Morality with Magnets?

"Researchers found that subjects were less able to judge the morality of others' actions when activity in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) -- a region of the brain located above the right ear -- was disrupted by a strong magnetic field. . . . 'Typically intent is the dominant factor in our moral judgments. What we showed here is that we can interrupt intention processing so people go more with the outcomes,' Young says."

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working." - Pablo Picasso

2010-03-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Business Update

Spring Break

If you haven't already, please email me or Alexis with any cancellations or re-scheduling of regular appointments.

Website

As you may notice from the tabs above, the website is technically live. As you may also notice, it looks like a student in a beginner web design class created it. It is functional and will soon be prettier, as I've hired another web designer to take over. Stay tuned for instructions on how YOUR CHILD can create his or her own username and password to access the educational materials database.

Resources

Summer Resources

I've added a "Summer Resources" page to the blog. The link is at the right. It includes bulleted information about recommended summer programs for community service, language immersion, and college experience.

Affordable Proctored SATs with Wonderfully Detailed Reports

Revolution Prep's "mock tests" are available to students who are not enrolled in their classes:

5 exams for $75 or $15 each
Reports include breakdown of areas of strength and weakness as well as answer key.
http://www.revolutionprep.com/

Tips & Strategies

Keep the Woo and the Hoo at Bay

I know it's spring. I know it's about to be Spring Break, (as in "Spring Break - Woo Hoo!"). It doesn't matter. Aside from your concerns about your grades, college applications, getting content knowledge you'll need for next year, and SAT II subject tests, remember that every page you read, every lecture you hear, every conversation with a teacher can be a source of inspiration of passion for learning for you. See the title of this blog.

News & Research

Itawamba, Mississippi Must Be the Worst Place in the World

A Mississippi federal court ruled that school officials violated a lesbian student’s First Amendment rights when it canceled the high school prom rather than let the student attend with her girlfriend. However it denied the student's and the ACLU's request for a preliminary injunction stopping the Itawamba County School District from canceling the prom. The Court supposedly refused to force the school district to hold the prom because of assurances that an alternative “private” prom is being planned by parents and will be open to all students.

Department of "Duh" but Needs to be Said Anyway

Bill Maher, whom many of you know is my hero, made these two very important statements on his show:

1. "The number one predictor of a child's academic success is parental involvement."

2. "It's been proven that just having books in the house makes a huge difference in a child's development."

'Nough said.

Autism and Creative Genius

A professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College in Dublin, said that the relationship between creativity and autism is not a myth, and argued that the characteristics linked to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were the same as those associated with creative genius.

Cancellation Policy Change, SAT II Link & Big Education News

2010-03-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

Business Update

I'm very excited to welcome Ernie Foote, a fantastic and experienced math, Spanish and SAT tutor, to the PEC team! He's been an educator for years, including teaching in Los Angeles high schools and tutoring for the Princeton Review.

IMPORTANT: Cancellation Policy Change

I understand that kids get sick and families don't always know 24 hours in advance that their son or daughter needs to get to bed! At the same time, because our client sessions are limited to after-school hours and Saturdays, last-minute cancellations make it challenging, in general, to accommodate client scheduling requests. Also, because students are at school all day and therefore unreachable, (and quite busy), a last-minute cancellation generally cannot be re-booked. Hitherto, we've charged a full hourly fee for no-shows and same-day cancellations. In order to be more understanding of our clients' needs, we're now launching a trial compromise solution: a flat $45 fee instead of the full hour. Keep in mind also that if a child is up to it, I'm happy to do a session over the phone or through Dim Dim, an virtual meeting venue.

Resources

Taking or planning to take AP Literature?

From what I found, this book has received more positive reviews than the others.

Are you taking Biology?

Are you planning to take the Biology SAT II Subject test? If so, you must decide whether you'd like to take the E version or the M version.

Take Biology E if you feel more comfortable answering questions pertaining to biological communities, populations, and energy flow.
Take Biology M if you feel more comfortable answering questions pertaining to biochemistry, cellular structure and processes, such as respiration and photosynthesis.

Tips & Strategies

Don't Fall Victim to Spring Break!

Every year I see kids begin to unravel the weeks or months of hard work they've done. Stay focused, stay committed, stay honest. If you're feeling overwhelmed, consider me your "organization sponsor" - call me, email me if you feel yourself slipping or feel overwhelmed.

News & Research

Teacher Calls Student a "Loser"

A teacher writes "loser" on a student's papers.

Accurate Red, Creative Blue: Color Counts, Study Says

"The color red can make people’s work more accurate, and blue can make people more creative. . . . Researchers at the University of British Columbia conducted tests with 600 people to determine whether cognitive performance varied when people saw red or blue. . . . Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes." It's an article from last year, but so, so interesting.

Big, Big News about Standardizing Education Nationally

"A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation."

Map Games, Spanish Class - in Costa Rica!, and Some Good Jersey Learnin'

2010-03-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

New Subscribers, Welcome! You will receive a blog update once each week.

Resources

Olympics, Shmolympics! These Here's Learnin' Games!

If you have to study geography of any kind, in any part of the world, this site offers fun games at every level (complete with audio audience to cheer and say, "Awwww!"). If you noodle around the site using the menu at the top, you'll also find an chemical elements quiz, and a whole list of vocabulary games (scroll down)!

Forget to Read or Study for a History Test?

These two sites out of jolly ol' England give you only the most important facts in a very readable style:

The first covers the shaping of "Modern Europe" from the 16th through the 18th centuries.
The second covers the end of the Roman Empire through the Byzantine Empire and beyond.

I'm not going to lie - the navigation is not the most user-friendly, but the information is valuable, easy to understand, and even INTERESTING!

Tips & Strategies   

Build a House, Save a Turtle - Just Stay off the Couch!

Start thinking about what you'd like to do with yourself this summer. All of you have to complete some sort of community service-type hours. Consider how (and where!) you'd like to give to a community. There are all kinds of programs all over the world where you can build community gardens, repair or build houses, work with disadvantaged youth, etc. Contact me if you're interested in something specific, or just want to brainstorm. I have a few contacts and resources. If you're just interested in some foreign fun, though, I did some Spanish training in Costa Rica with these folks, who do a teen Spanish program that looks like an incredible 2 weeks.

The Bookmarks are In!!!!

The first batch of bookmarks for fiction texts has finally arrived. When you come in, make sure you take at least one, and use it! Use it to keep track of characters, deadlines, and "textual evidence," those pesky quotations you can never find when you need them.

News & Research

Stuck Deciding Between the SAT and the ACT?

“The bright underachievers who are bored and get through school using one quarter of their brains will do better on the SAT, because you just need good reasoning skills for that,” says Mr. White. “And the overachievers . . . will do better on the ACT.” This NY Times article breaks down the differences in format, skills assessed, student success rates based on student type, etc.

Metacognition - Jersey Style!

"All 428 sixth graders at Linwood Middle School in North Brunswick, N.J., are charting their own academic path with personalized student learning plans — electronic portfolios containing information about their learning styles, interests, skills, career goals and extracurricular activities. These new learning plans will follow each sixth grader through high school, and are intended to help the students assess their own strengths and weaknesses as well as provide their parents and teachers with a more complete profile beyond grades and test scores." Very, very cool.

Business Update

I'm happy to help! When you send me drafts of writing to review, please let me know what type of feedback you'd like and when the final draft is due.
Spring Break is coming soon. Please let Alexis or me know as soon as possible if and when you will need to cancel or re-schedule sessions.
Check, read, share, comment on, make requests for this blog!

Feed Starving Children with a Game!

2010-02-25T21:07:00.000-08:00

Regardless of which pieces of the blog you like to read, please see "Business Update" below for instructions on subscribing to it. Enjoy!

Resources

Want to Feed Starving Children? Work on Your Vocab!

Whether you're heading toward the SATs, the ISEEs or just having some trouble understanding every word in your history textbook, this site has a really fun vocabulary quiz game that donates 10 grains of rice each time you get an answer correct to the World Food Programme.

It's PowerPoint Season!

Teachers are getting tired of grading your tests and essays. Chances are, at some point this semester, you'll have to put together a presentation. Here are 10 tips for making it awesome.

1. Apply a template to jump start your presentation.
2. Add sound effects in your slides.
3. Insert a chart or graph into your presentation.
4. Add transitions between slides.
5. Apply an animation effect to text or an object.
6. Have your presentations start in Screen Show view automatically.
7. E-mail links in your presentations.
8. Print handouts of your slides for your audience and allow them to take notes as you present.
9. Add a password to your PowerPoint presentation to ensure you're the only one who modifies it.
10. Important keyboard shortcuts to know while your presentation runs in full screen mode.

This techy site gives you step-by-step instructions for each of the above tips. Use-ful!

Tips & Strategies   

The 5-Minute Review

OK kids. I won't bore you with the research, but it says that a 5-minute review of the previous day's notes each day will go a long, long way to help you learn, remember, and my personal favorite: learn what you know and what you don't! But, Karolina - that's 5 minutes per class each day?! Yes and no. Here's how to make it happen:

1. Make sure you do it for tougher and/or heavily lecture-based classes.
2. Do it IN CLASS whenever possible, e.g. during roll, when the teacher is checking HW, after warm-ups, etc. You know you have the time. :)
3. What you should do:

Re-read your notes. Connect with Yesterday You, who wrote them.
Tag and ask questions about parts you don't understand.
Use a classmate's notes to fill in parts you might have missed.
Underline, box, highlight headings.

News & Research

Fire Everyone? Yes, Fire Everyone.

The board of a high school in Rhode Island voted 5 to 2 to accept a plan proposed by the superintendent to fire the approximately 100 faculty and staff members. The school's four-year graduation rate is 48 percent. It has 800 students.

"High-Powered" Policymakers May Have Done Poorly on Multiple-Choice Tests in School
Some policy folk in Washington "urged a move away from of multiple-choice tests that demand factual recall, toward the development of a set of deeper, more analytical questions, tasks, and projects that ask students to solve and discuss complex problems. One example is a problem that has been posed to Connecticut high school students: Figure out how to build a statue that could withstand the effects of acid rain, then describe, analyze, and discuss your findings."

Business Update

I goofed and I blame Google. I won't bore you with the details, but when I asked you to "follow" this blog, I should have asked you to "subscribe" to it. Please enter your email address to the right and hit "Subscribe." You will receive a link to confirm your subscription. You will receive only one email update of this blog each week.
Please be sure to read the "Bring Next Time" section of the daily sheets.
Check, read, share, comment on, make requests for this blog!

Brain Games, Missing School, Paying for College, & ADHD Brains

2010-02-17T23:19:00.000-08:00

Hello! I hope you all enjoyed a well-deserved and much-needed day off Monday. Below you'll find terrific resources, links to a couple of interesting articles, an important tip for absences and a business update. I think I've decided that posting once a week should do the job . . .

Resources

This fantastic AP US History Cram book has a very readable style, multiple choice questions after each section, practice essay questions, and even sample DBQs.

This site includes lots of fun, challenging games that claim to help hone crucial skills: spatial skills, verbal skills, even processing speed.

A really important foundational piece of learning new vocabulary, both to improve reading comprehension and to prepare for standardized tests like the SAT, is morphemes: word roots, prefixes and suffixes.

Tips & Strategies   

Everyone Misses School Sometimes

'Tis the season when kids can tend to need "mental health days." But kids, it's YOUR JOB to make sure you do the following for each class you missed:
          1. Copy the lecture notes from someone reliable. (Try talking to a couple of classmates.)
          2. Speak to the teacher to get any handouts distributed while you were gone.
          3. Hand in or show the teacher homework that was due while you were gone.
          4. Find out what was assigned while you were gone.

News & Research

Paying for College

Mark G. Yudof, president of the University of California said, 'The real crunch is helping families that make roughly $100,000. The most at risk at this time really are going to be the middle class.'

"With state contributions largely flat or down over the last 15 years, and enrollments and costs up, many top flagships are . . . accepting larger numbers of out-of-state students, who often pay twice the tuition of residents. At the same time, applications are pouring in from students shut out by the stratospheric cost of private colleges. . . . Flagships are attracting more wealthy and better-prepared students. . . . The evolution underway is putting some flagships out of reach for the students who were typically enrolled even a decade ago. Each year, the quality of students as well as the budget model skews closer to that of elite private universities."

The Brain of the Child with AD/HD

"The ventral striatum . . . which maintains levels of motivation when a person starts a task and continues to maintain motivation until the task is completed, [is smaller in children with AD/HD.]"

Business Update

I'm thrilled to report very enthusiastic participation from students at last week's Learning Workshops. Kids did a fabulous job of analyzing their learning styles and taking honest stock of themselves as students!
Just a gentle reminder about the 24-hour cancellation policy . . . Of course kids get sick sometimes and things come up, but if you do need to cancel, please give as much notice as possible so another client is able to take your slot.
Check, read, share, comment on, make requests for this blog!

Welcome to the first content-filled post of Let's Get Some Perspective!

2010-02-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

A hearty thank you and "Good On Ya" for subscribing to the blog. I will do my best to post about twice per week, and to include information that you will find fascinating. Feedback about content, missing content, frequency, organization and tone are all welcome. Here you go...

Tips & Strategies   

1. Filling in First-Term Holes   

So finals or midterms are over (or nearly over)! Here is your golden opportunity to learn more about what you know . . .

For science, history, math, business, art history*, other academic electives:

You may have thought you were done forever with the material from the first term, but alas, you were only half right. You now need to find out 3 things:

1. which pieces of material from the first term are foundational to the second term's material

2. the areas of the material from the first term that you did not sufficiently master

3. the overlap between #1 & #2

*Note that if you are planning to take the SAT II Subject Exams, you will be responsible for the whole shebang, plus some.

For your language classes, you must have ALL the grammar from the first semester down cold. That means:

1. verb tenses, conjugation in all forms - regular and irregular

2. preposition usage, agreement of articles and adjectives, any other grammatical concepts

3. sentence structure

In the interest of pursuing your Path Toward Fluency and succeeding in future classes, it's always a good idea to know all the vocabulary. You will probably not have to worry again about specific reading selections or cultural content.

For English,

You will most likely never again be tested on specific literary works from the first term, but you may have to worry about other parts of the course:

1. Find out if you will be held accountable for vocabulary.

2. Grammar will probably be on your final exam.

2. Your Material World

It may sound silly or even wasteful, but you'd be surprised at the profound psychological effects that can come from brand spanking new materials. Think of the new term as a clean slate.

1. Replace old, doodled-upon, backpack journey-addled binders, notebooks and divider tabs.

2. Re-stock supplies (post-its, highlighters, pens).

3. Create a "Home File," in which you store material from the first term. 

News & Research

As promised, research on the brain . . . Really fascinating stuff: 

"The study's results showed (via MRI) that the brain development of children with high IQ's (defined in the study as 121-145) is significantly different from that of their above average (109-120) and average (83-108) peers. . . Another study from the UC Irvine College of Medicine indicates that intelligence levels are correlated with amount of grey matter in certain areas of the brain." Yet another UC Irvine study shows that "gifted brains are less active but more efficient."  

Business Update

Reminder: I will be on vacation from the afternoon of Saturday, February 13th through the afternoon of Tuesday, February 16th. I will have intermittent access to my mobile phone and email. If you need to get ahold of me, contact Alexis at info@PerspectivesEd.com or 646.345.4367. She'll find me.
If you decide you'd prefer not to be bugged with emails from this blog, you can remain a follower of it and check it when you please. Simply click on Options, then Site Settings, then Messaging, then unclick the box that says, "Receive site newsletters and communication from Let's Get Some Perspective . . . "
Check, read, share, comment on, make requests for this blog!

Inaugural Post - Welcome!

2010-02-08T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hello All! Welcome to Let's Get Some Perspective!

In tandem with finally getting my website up and running (if not yet visually stunning) any day now, I've set up this blog, which will ultimately be seamlessly integrated into the website.

Following the Blog

1. Click on the "Follow" button under the "Followers" widget to the right.

2. Privacy options for following depend on which service you use to follow. If you use Google, you'll then see a pop-up window with options to either follow publicly or privately.

3.More detailed instructions at: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=104226

4. I'm still working on finding out how you can be updated by email, if you so choose. In the meantime, please bookmark LetsGetSomePerspective.blogspot.com and check regularly for updates.

Posts will:

communicate in bullets whenever possible
make strategic recommendations based on current trends I observe among clients
update clients and parents about:

changes in my practice
new or upgraded services from PEC
vacation and other logistical issues
new materials available on the website's Resources page

provide information and quotations from recent articles about:

the college application process
learning differences
research on the brain, cognition and learning

include links to useful online resources to support curricular work as well as skill development

Please do not hesitate to comment or email me about content posted or content you would like to see posted. Feel free also to pass the blog on to friends and colleagues, even if they are not clients of PEC. All are welcome.

_Karolina

Educational Therapist, Founder

Perspectives Educational Consulting

12011 San Vicente Blvd., Suite 540
Los Angeles, CA 90049
Karolina@PerspectivesEd.com