Be, or become, proud of You

Did the last post encourage you to put yourself in a more positive place? Know that often we can do little to change much of what surrounds us. Know that it is nobody's fault you are where you are. Know that if you want to change things around you, you can. If you were born into circumstance that makes most days a struggle for even the most basic comforts of life, do not commit to an entire existence in that position. Work to change it, even in the smallest amounts, over time. Keep your mind focused on where you want to get to in life. Put a small note on your bed, desk, mirror; somewhere you will see it often. Only small reminders that change often or they will be too constant and be either ignored or annoying. Refresh often. If you have a success, put that there too.

Putting it all in perspective makes the realisation of plans possible. Last summer it rained; a lot. On Facebook I posted that my boardshorts still had the tag on, my sunscreen bottle was still full. The status was a bit tongue in cheek, not really a complaint. Putting that in perspective made me flinch. The same rain that had kept me from the beach had sadly washed away homes, livelihoods and lives in some of the worst ever flooding in the area. Ouch! That's nature's perspective in action. Brutal. What do you need to put into perspective? How are your grades? Are they showing any signs of improvement? If they are stable, what sort of comments are you getting? Remember teachers and high schools are very cautious in writing comments because they do not want any comeback from the community. How much have you joined in this year? I do not mean compulsory stuff. What you should find is something you can do that would help out.

Make this year the year of consolidating a better future for you.

Begin the changes that will make you hold your head high and be super proud of what you have done and what you have become.

This is a great video called Success Achievement -- Your Guide for Moving Forward Daily

It is a top start the year and your advancement. Grow to who you really are.

Best of wishes for 2012.
Advancement plus for you

Be who you are

'I wish I was smarter, luckier, taller, more athletic, had straight hair, had curly hair, had black hair, had red hair.' Heard any of these? Oh yes. Haven't we all?

To be truly successful, you should accept yourself and your situation for who you are and what it is. It is the best thing to do. No good wishing for something that only a real miracle can change. The body type, brain power, color hair, location we start our lives with are all out of our control. At school, you are stuck with the teachers you get, good or ordinary, inspirational or boring; there they are right in front of you.

A short time ago I was feeling low. Heading downwards quickly. Yes, there's always someone worse off but I think that is one of the lousiest 'cheer up' statements ever invented. Who cares when you feel so low? Retail therapy? Crap. Things are not what buoys your spirit. Things wear out. Things go out of fashion. Things become dreary, waiting to be replaced by other things. No, when you are down, you need to drill into your spirit to find the required boost. What jolted me in this instance, more than anything, was a trip to the beach. The water was clear, warm; the day sunny. It dawned on me that I was so fortunate to be able to play in the surf; jump under waves; glide into the beach; throw the refreshing water into my face. It was an awesome jump start. How lucky to be able to do something so enjoyable. My spirit's energy grew; my thinking became more positive; I felt restored, renovated, more immune from the crap of life. I realised I am who I am. After all these years.

My problem had been that I had let business become an excuse for putting off all, and I mean all, that I enjoy. I had stopped doing the things that built my spirit, made me feel energised. Many of these were small but their omission had compounded to make a huge and negative impact on what I was able to accomplish mainstream. So, absolutely definitely, do not give up your joys in life in order to get more busy. You will have things that make your spirit stronger and you must retain their presence in your world. Learn to recognise them. Write them down and the feeling you encounter that makes them so good. From personal experience, it is vital that you avoid any excuses to put off these interludes, or worse still, forgo them.

What's that? Oh yes, I agree this blog is all about change. So what am I going on about here? Have I gone nuts and now say you cannot change grades, comments, stress? No, now I say if I am nuts, I must always have been and the 'nutty' was just waiting for a trigger to make it emerge. :) What I am saying is that you must be comfortable that you can recognise your current situation for what it is. Right now you are stuck with it. I do not mean comfortable in the sense that it feels good but in the sense that you can define it and tell us what is wrong with it. You can write down clues to you. House, family, school, success, your potential, things you have, things you need but do not have, the frills of life things like fashion label stuff. You know you. You can write you down. Best of all because you can document you now, you will be able to document changes. That will be powerful.

Define everything you can about yourself and what happens around you. Keep it in a special place where you will not lose it. Leave it flexible enough to change because you do. Start on a fresh piece of paper and write down the things you would most like to change about your situation. Not hair color, brainpower and so on. I ask you to do this because in our society education is the key to change. Better education means more opportunity. If you are feeling that you want change, look to Success at School to help you. That is what we are all about here. Do you have a career plan? What grades do you need to get started? Write it down.

Finally, think about your school results and comments. Think about the stress that study, assessment and assignment causes. Are they all good? Many students think not. There are of course other stresses in high school that we will also deal with so if you have these too, add them here. Write down all you can that is good and all the things you would like to change. Again, it cannot be the teachers, school and so on because we are usually stuck with these.

End up with three lists. You and your environment; things you want to change and aspire to; you and your schooling. Keep all this information in a safe spot. We will be going back to it often.

Have a great 2012
Hope this is a turn around year at school, especially if you have struggled

Taking notes II

Read  the earlier Post about note taking and reviewing. Why is note taking so important? Why is regular review so important? These two very simple processes are absolute key to Success at School. Your high school years are full of maxi and mini events. What you do every day is almost always influenced in some way by the requirements of the school system. They are often tough to fulfil. They are often unclear. They often lead to stress. Getting properly organised for note taking and reviewing can reduce stress to manageable levels and give you a better chance of improved exam grades. If for nothing else, that must make these skills worthwhile.

Surely taking notes is just copying off the board? Get down what the teacher writes on the board. There's even time for a quick chat. No need to listen too hard, it will mostly be there for later reading, usually much later. If you miss a few bits here and there because of distractions, you will have most of it and should be able to fill the rest in later. Not a good plan. The bits you missed? Filling those in will get harder the longer it is left. Get good notes at the time they are given. You're mad if you don't. Your notes are essential to success at high school. Some students seem clearly proud about how scruffy and full of graffiti and other artwork their notebooks are. Scraps of words from the lesson, mixed with scraps of words from another lesson, another subject even; days all mixed up with work put into any available blank space; ripped and crumpled pages all go against good grades. Best use for these notebooks? Starting up the Sunday barbecue. They are next to useless as tools for learning.

Anyone can copy. Anyone. Ask a student from a very early grade, who can basically write and copy shapes, and they could do a reasonable job of copying. They will be a bit slow because they are not familiar with the style and the symbols. Their writing will be a bit more basic but it will be there. Do they understand it? Almost certainly not. You see, the thing about copying is it requires almost no thought if we are familiar with the numbers and symbols. That's the trouble. Too easy to copy. Too easy to think we have it all. Do not kid yourself. Copying without thought is pretty much a useless exercise. Copying has nothing to do with learning unless it is done with thought and commitment.

OK, 'I get it' I hear you say.

We have talked about the importance of a separate notebook for each subject and using few colors of pen. For a ruler, you can use almost any straight edge. Just writing and highlighting, no extra bits. If you like to doodle take a doodle book with you to class and keep the sketching and arty thoughts there. The cleaner the page is to study, the better.

The photo above is the bare minimum I use. I like a mechanical pencil because I never have to sharpen it and it doesn't leak ink all in my pocket. Use a soft lead (I use 2B) that will make dark lines which are easy to read when you are tired. Leads harder than this are too light and will cause unnecessary eye strain if you have to read a lot. The small notebook is for incidental information for every part of high school and holds a wonder of information about when stuff is due, if I am running out of things or if I need to remember to do something, graffiti and odd bits of artwork even. This has taken many forms over the years but this one can easily fit into my pocket. As you can see I travel light to class. To highlight, I circle. To emphasise, I double underline. The eraser is there for show. I usually just cross something out if I change my mind about it. This set up has the other advantage of being cheap. Of course, there are smaller books you can get. I recommend a fairly large size to fit any sketches or long bits of information on one page, rather than breaking it up. Remember, one notebook for each subject. Judge the size of the notebook by asking or by last year's volume of work in a subject.

Make sure your notes count. Look at them as you go. If the teacher says something to fill in a bit of information, get it down. They cannot possibly write all they say in a lesson on the board. Make sure you know what is on the page. Put a * next to bits you are not sure of as a signal to get extra information here. Ask a question, if you want. If that is not done in your group; google, other students, the teacher, the library could all help. If you had a bit of difficulty following some reasoning, again add * to go back and fill in more until you are happy with it. The * will also be clues for when you study as you will know you had some difficulty first time going over it and so you can make sure you feel comfortable with these weaker areas. Study is not about what you know but what you had trouble with or are a bit fuzzy on.

A bit of hard work in class will pay back generously when you come to review and study.

Good luck with your exams.

Have a great day

Don't try to jump too high

How well did you score on your last piece of assessed work? Did you like the score? Do you really want a better future, secured by exam results that more truly tell everyone what your ability actually is? OK, say you do, then how much better does your result have to get? How much better can it get? Sometimes we get too enthusiastic and try to jump up our marks too quickly and are disappointed when it does not happen. If you have been getting D's or E's or F's or whatever your school uses to show grades lower down the scale, then you are working from a relatively weak foundation. The first bit of the challenge is to get things going. Aim for a couple of small successes and do not be too hard on yourself about progress, for reasons I will show you below. Celebrate small improvement, even if just means you have turned the corner and you feel you are setting yourself up for success. You know you are worth it, you know you can give it a go, so just go with it and try.

Why should you not worry too much about improving your mark too quickly from not passing to passing with flying colors, especially if you have a history of low achievement in a subject? Just think of the following for a moment. To jump from an E to a D is a very big jump so don't be too disappointed if that does not happen on the first one or two attempts. Say you go from mid E around 12% to a low D around 30%. You need to get two and a half times your results to make this massive jump (a 150% improvement in your marks). And, you must do this from a fairly weak position. So you need to make up an awful lot of ground to do this. When you make it, you can be hugely proud.

So now it becomes easier.
From mid D around 36% to low C around 55%, the jump is only about one and a half times (a 50% increase in your marks). You will also be working from a much more sturdy platform of results. Even easier is the jump from mid C around 60% to low B around 72%. This is a mere one fifth bigger score (a 20% increase in your marks) from a position where you were already passing and so had a fair idea of the subject material. The higher grades are more about perfection of presentation of argument, structure and small changes. We will get to work on this too but not right now.

Now you can see why your early efforts may not result in the grades you wanted. However the improvement will be going on and gradually building up as you put in the effort, get organised, sort out the correct equipment and so on. They all add, little by little, until they become invincible; your grades start to creep up, your confidence starts to grow and you feel better about the whole high school experience. Once you get it all happening, slow though this may be, you will find that your own frame of mind plus your better background knowledge will help you climb even further but with lowered barriers as things start to fall into place. It may take time. Please do not give up before you give yourself a chance. You deserve the result. Be a bit patient.The first few strides take time. The momentum will build. You will feel great pride in your growth as you lock in a future with an enviable track to follow.

So you can see the biggest jumps are in the lower grades but they are also the easiest to organise for successful stepping up. You can ramp everything up as you get settled into each step in progress. So try to get going with that. Follow ideas you see here and watch your grades grow.

Try for gradual improvement, not massive. Your grades will be able to stabilise and maintain at each level as you grow at a slow and steady pace.

Good luck with your studies
Have a great day

Homework. How much should I do?

How much homework is enough when you are in high school? This is a tough question and, seriously, it is up to you, not up to a teacher, to judge. How can you tell when enough is enough? Do all your grades have to be A+ to tell you have done enough? Do you have to have a nerdy image? Do you have to sit home all weekend studying while your friends are out enjoying themselves? These are not good ways to judge how much value you are getting out of homework. More, more, more is a poor strategy and a dreadful way to use your time. It is definitely not a wise use of time. Remember that in high school your biggest asset and biggest adversary can be time. We want to use it in the most efficient and balanced way. Balanced is important.

OK, what then should you do to judge the amount of homework necessary for success at high school? How do you know when it's enough before exams and will let you reach better grades and further Success at School?

Do the right amount. What? Yes, the right amount. You may do a bit too much, but only a bit.

Try to judge your own need for homework. You must do what the teacher sets or, if you regularly find the work too targeted at students less able, negotiate with your teacher to leave out some of the easier tasks and replace them with harder ones. Remember that you may do the easy (easy to you) ones much quicker than others in your class. Do not do 10, find them easy and set out to do another 10 at the same level. There is little benefit in this. It is time wasted. You should stop or make better use of the time. You actually get to choose. So this is one area where we have actually made time where we can use it more flexibly. Take less time and use it for other pursuits or use it to work on more difficult subjects or use it to reach higher grades in this subject. That is a pretty cool set of choices. Let your teachers know you are trying to improve your grades, that you are developing a plan to do this. Try teacher by teacher as you feel more confident with your strategy. Get them involved in your plan. They may even join in and begin to set two levels of homework to help out. In high school, teachers tend to be more approachable as you get older so take advantage of it and go see them.

This applies to any subject. You know the level the class is working at because you are in the middle of it. Read on from where your teacher left off. If it is a subject you enjoy, google information to see what you can do to expand your knowledge. Add an edge to set work to enhance your learning. Again, be honest. Do not do it to make yourself look good. It will come undone at some point, maybe disastrously. Do you really have a strong enough foundation to move on up? Do you have the time?

How do you know if you can do more? On your next assigned homework task (some problems for math, a short paragraph for English, a sketch for art, and so on), work unaided by notes, texts, Google, Facebook, friends etc. ... In other words, no reference material. Do the task with just pen/pencil and what you remember. Can you do it? Can you do it well? If you can then for that topic or skill you are ready to move on and add more to your knowledge. Do it. Learn how to judge when you have done enough homework.

Good luck with your studies.
Have a great day

Don't let a question stop Success at School

Here's the scene. Your teacher is going over new work or may be reviewing past lessons, when you come across a point you do not understand. 'Understand' means you could explain it to a friend clearly enough that they could understand it too. What do you do? Put up your hand to indicate you need a better or fuller explanation? Not a cool thing to do? I wonder if that bit of information is the difference between getting a higher grade and staying where you are; worse still, going down. Do you find that you often have time left in exams; time where you could add a few valuable lines to your paper? Was that the piece of information you could have asked about?

Sometimes it takes courage to put up your hand in a class of students who are too cool to put up their hand. Academic courage is not trained or taught. School systems push us in one end and out the other, over a decade later. Do we learn enough on the way? Some care, others do not. Take heart, you are not alone. There are other ways around this problem.

Be a leader. Someone has to take control. Try to talk to some friends who may be willing, on a signal, to put up their hands, giving strength to others to do the same. Even approach the teacher to see if they will join in your scheme. Most teachers would love to have more students asking questions. Two things happen. Firstly, it makes them feel good and secondly, it's always good to have an ally in the staffroom. That can be useful to you. This 'ally' will feel more inclined to spend a bit of time extra with you to help out.

Take careful notes and hope that between you and your friends you can eventually sort it out. Maybe someone has an older brother or sister who is good at the subject. You can see plan two has a few time constraints that will eat into the time you have slotted into your schedule as 'spare', 'play', 'shopping' and so on.

Even more risky is you could just wait and hope that before next week's test the teacher revisits the topic and you actually understand it. Youtube, Google, Answers and other online sources are other time consuming ways that may give you the answer. The library? Where's that? How about you make an appointment with the teacher to meet with them for help during a break? Lots of ways to get sorted that do not take up too much valuable time.

Read Sun Tzu's Art of War. It's full of strategy that all manner of professions take from the battlefield for which it was written to their own interactions with associates and competition. That may help.

Mostly, get the itch fixed. A small point can make all the difference. At this point, not learning, not finding out is not an option. No one's worry but yours. Get stuck in and do something. Email me if it's a real emergency but do something. Your Success at School is the most important thing to get out of school, right alongside some wonderful lifelong friends.

Get that point clarified as early as you can. These small points are the ones that form really effective stops to further learning in a topic even though, in themselves, they may only need a minor explanation. They create roadblocks to assimilating new knowledge and confuse thought patterns as your brain tries to work its way around what it sees as corrupt information.

Make a plan and carry it through. Tomorrow you'll feel good about it.

Get the most from school. Have a great day.

Develop a system for taking notes and reviewing I

One of the easiest ways to head into higher marks territory is to organise your notetaking really well. Make it efficient. Make it suit you. Make it make it easier for you to learn the material from each class. Make it make it easier for you to keep up to date and to study for exams.

Make sure your notes are suited to your needs. Who does not want to have some success at school? If you are going to do exams and reports you will want to know what is on the exam and what to focus on in a report. Duh! Of course. So why is it that so many students have the rattiest looking notebooks with bits and pieces of several subjects jumbled together? Easier study, more efficient study, less exam stress and ultimately better grades are targets of better notetaking. Making your life more blissful; ahhh! Your notes are key.

You should never be in doubt about what to study and where to go for useful material. Write each subject in a different notebook. Doesn't matter if you can get one with eight, ten, twenty divisions so all subjects fit. Do not get a notebook like this. It will mess up your mind with what's in it. Separate books for separate subjects. If some subjects require less notes, get a thinner book with fewer pages.

In the back of your notebook goes a sort of diary. You write homework tasks; report information such as due date(s) topics, size, references, special data sources and so on; exam topics if they are mentioned; and page numbers and topics in relevant texts. Each entry needs a date. Use this in case any conflicting information comes along so you can go to your teacher ask them to clear up the confusion. Your classmates will thank you for keeping on top of things.

In the front of the book write down the date, heading and topics, and references. Number the pages in your notebook. Use the page numbers to link up with the summary information you are putting in the back of the book. It keeps everything very tight. No question about what is on the exam or what is due when.

Do not just copy off the board or image. Listen to what is being said and add notes to help your understanding.

Sometimes what the teacher says is more important to your understanding than what they write or show. Use this information to fill in gaps or answer questions you may have. Write as neatly as possible. Use very few colors. Blue, black, red, orange (only if dark) if you like. Colors must be dark so they are easily read and do not strain your eyes when exam time comes around. Work hard to get as much down as possible. Class time is is the best time to learn. Use the time wisely. It will mean you spend less of your free time trying to figure stuff out. So, good notetaking means you will have more free time. Yeeha to that!

As soon as you can, re-read your class notes to see if you understand all, yes all, that was written. Find out what you do not understand; look it up, ask your pals, ask your teacher, google it but quickly fill in the gaps in your required knowledge for each section. At least you will have the comfort of knowing you know all you need to know; :) Then once a week quickly go back over all you did for that week and the weeks prior. You will never have to read too much as exams are sort of doorways between components of knowledge. As you go through the material you may find the amount of reading becomes quite big. Now's the time to read English on Monday, Math on Tuesday, History on Wedesday and so on. The smaller subjects can be grouped into one evening.

As well as reading, do a few practise problems. This would be important for Math especially but also for Science and other subjects that need you to do problem solving. Do adequate often until you can solve most problems quite freely and do not leave your fate to Fate. Keep your brain muscle flexed and it will be ready to use at peak performance. It is vital you keep your learning up to date, day by day, week by week. Yes, people do pass exams by cramming, they do pass with little study. Is it worth the risk? Definitely no, no it is not. What if you get sick, find your family or friend needs help, you get stuck with too much work and get tired out, get too weary to study because your coach insists on extra training? Why risk your future when you can ensure it quite easily? Success at School is the key for your future success and future choice.

Work well. Do not think you have to half kill yourself with study to get anywhere. Consistency is the way to go. Do some often, not a lot in great big scary chunks that expose you to shallow learning and less chance of success.

Have a great day

Time management II

After completing the preparation phase, move on to make use of the time and strength of purpose that follows serious preparation. Do not be happy with the first model. Experiment. Take notes of what works and what seems a bit klutzy. The favours will all lie with you. You will find time you didn't think you had, the ability to relax at times you would normally stress, and be able to produce work of higher quality and, consequently be awarded better grades. The aim is not trying to fill your time with even more jobs to do. The effort here is part of the plan to use time more efficiently and so at exam time or when large reports are due, you watch all your friends stress around you, their workload out of control, while you know you have everything ticked off ready to go. While others stress, you are thinking of the final touches to a job well done and thinking you may go to the movies as a reward. That should be encouraging for you to persist. Maybe you might just go to the beach, or have a few hours in the snow. Who knows!

So you have been recording the information you need to set aside times for. Activities such as sleep, part time work, sport, monthly meetings, weekly meetings, religious events, entertainment and party (caution here), going to library, in class time, lunch and other meals. You can be as detailed as you want. Have you got an approximate time attached to each activity? This does sound like a big job hey? Take my word, it does get easier. Once you have completed a first run through, then the future additions are just built on top, the time it takes is much reduced (is that a far off cheer I hear?).

Now comes a slightly tricky bit. Prioritise your list into four groups. (1) What must absolutely happen? (2) What is very important and should happen? (3) What do I do that is fairly flexible and not necessary to have if I need a bit extra time allocated to something else? (4) What do I do that could be totally changed or dropped easily to find time? Even if it can be repaid later. Try not to fill 100% of your time. Some time slots should be left blank for free use or for an emergency. You know what schools are like. "Do this by Thursday" sort of request, when you already have a full week.

I think now your list should be put into a computer for ease of manipulation. So you can easily re-order different activities. If you go with a computer list, make the four priorities four different colors so you can easily recognise those activities absolutely locked in and those that are a bit more flexible. You must have sleep, so put that in even in the peak exam period. You must have a break too. Allow for large and small. Use colored pencils or highlighters if you are not putting information into a computer. Make up a table to show a whole term or semester. You will be able to detail the close times while the end of semester is a bit fuzzy.

As you feel you can, begin to place the time zones into days, regular (e.g. every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 p.m.) or into monthly times where you may need three or four hours set aside once a month. Start with your school timetable as the skeleton for this project as it is the area we want to make more successful. Don't forget to take your time to do the detail at first. Make sure it makes sense. Next time you will already have a structure which you can easily change, delete bits from or add stuff to. Are your days and what you do with them starting to take shape? Did you realise any really easy activities that could be modified to help you achieve Success At School.

Do not get disgruntled. Stay fresh as you focus on the future. You want better grades. You want to set yourself up so you are more likely to have a secure future and good career prospects. You want to choose your path through life.

Next we will look at setting up your program.

Good luck with this exercise. Have a great day.