Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

Predicting and Teaching Innovators

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedIn my last post about How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, I considered how Advanced Placement (AP, IB, and other courses designed to teach college courses at the high school level) try to challenge high achieving students. Certainly, these rigorous (often defined as requiring lots of hours of study outside of class, that is, homework) can teach self-discipline, which is measured by grades. However, good grades don’t always lead to success. And my research has shown that for the jobs of the future, we really need to be teaching innovators. So what do grades have to do with teaching innovators? Nothing.

“[Self-discipline] may be very useful for predicting who will graduate from high school, but it’s not as relevant when it come to identifying who might invent a new technology or direct an award-winning movie.” – Angela Duckworth, How Children Succeed p 74

Self-discipline isn’t good a good predictor of innovators and teaching it isn’t teaching innovators.

This really gets to the heart of what I’m searching for….

Read More »

AP classes don’t challenge students

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedIn How Children Succeed, Paul Tough found that good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success. Students need to learn how to set and approach goals with mental contrasting, grit, the ability to take on challenges and face failures, and the ability to persuade other people to give them what they need.

Providing challenges is often given as a reason for AP classes (Advanced Placement courses, or IB courses, college courses designed to be taught in high school and success measured by a standardized exam.) But in our personal experience, that isn’t happening for several reasons. In How Children Succeed, there was evidence that agreed with this view….

Read More »

4 characteristics that lead to success

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedSo if good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success, what are the factors that do lead to success? In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough looks at characteristics they found in students from an underprivileged school where they measured success as graduating from college.

When KIPP started looking at their students who did finish college, they found that instead of being those that were the best scholars while they were at KIPP, “They were the students who were able to recover from the bad grades and resolve to do better, bounce back from [personal conflicts]; could persuade professors to give them extra help after class; could resist the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study.” – How Children Succeed, p 52

Obviously resisting “the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study” relates to self-discipline, but remember that while grades are a measure of self-discipline, good grades alone were not a good predictor of which students from KIPP would go on to graduate from college.…

Read More »

Good grades don’t predict success

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedIn my last post about How Children Succeed,  by Paul Tough, I covered how a student’s GPA is more a measure of self-discipline than IQ. The education system is set up to reward students with self-discipline and high GPAs with admission into college. In How Children Succeed, success of disadvantaged students was measured by whether or not they went on to graduate from college. In spite of this, Tough, surprisingly, concludes that the ability to perform well in the ways that school measures aren’t a good predictor of success, even though here success is measured by going on to college.

Specifically, good grades and lots of homework aren’t good predictors of success, and in fact can lead to stress that actually inhibits success….

Read More »

Self-discipline is more important to grades than IQ

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedMy alarming conclusion from How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, was that the set of qualities that our education system emphasizes – measures, teaches, and drills – aren’t traits that lead to success.

Why are grades so important to us? What, exactly, do grades and GPAs measure, and how did they come to be known as future predictors of success?…

Read More »

11 Reasons your high-achieving student will fail

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

How Children SucceedAs I covered in my post about getting back into the schedule of the school year, teens in high school are busy, busy, busy, trying to make sure they have enough AP classes, keep their GPA and their class rank high, and fill all the rest of the “free” time they have with extracurriculars and service hours, hoping to have resumes spectacular enough to get into a “good” college. It’s common knowledge that if you do your best in high school – especially if it means you can be valedictorian! – it will show everyone, including colleges, that you have what it takes to be a success in life. But does that common knowledge have it right?

Have we gone to far with the rigor of high school with overwhelming loads of AP classes, extracurriculars and volunteerism? Are there enough hours in a day? And if you don’t encourage that standard of excellence, are you encouraging your child to be a slacker?

If you don’t do what everyone else is doing, how can you be sure your kid is going to succeed?!?

It’s a question that keeps parents up at night.

So when I came across the book How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough,  I read it. (I was up, after all.)…

Read More »

Breaking Point – from bones to academics, everything has one

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

A couple months ago I slipped on some water. I could tell you that I managed to catch all my weight with my right hand, so that I didn’t even get a bruise on any other part of my body.

Or I could tell you — that the over-achievement of my right arm and hand led to breaking my wrist.

Which has turned out to be more of a pain, in every possible definition of the word, than I thought it would be. Of course, I’m right handed. So this post, typed with one hand, will be short.

Related to the subject of this blog, I’ve been gathering information about education, job prospects, and entrepreneurship. This episode of the podcast Start Up, by Gimlet Media, shows an interesting connection between them. In this episode, the ADULT employees talk about the effects of their late hours and stress are having on their health and personal lives.

Their schedule sounds remarkably like high-achieving high school TEENS I know….

Read More »

Are you dreading the packed schedule of school activities and homework?

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

Back to school is now in full swing! If you haven’t already started, your kids have probably at least picked up their schedules. Or they might be frantically trying to finish their summer projects. In the last week, I’ve heard so many parents mention that they’re dreading the start of the school year. I think the parents might even be dreading it more than the kids!

Are you dreading the school year busyness? (Yes, I looked it up. That’s really a word. “Business” doesn’t mean the same thing that it used to, and so now there is also “busyness.”) Are you dreading the calendar running your life? The hours of homework? The school activities with early morning and late night practice? The lack of sleep?

It might be time to take a good look at why your kids, or you, have signed up for all the activities and advanced classes that are taking up all your time and then some….

Read More »

Books for thought on Education and Purpose

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

We took our kids – with our main focus being our son, who’s a high school junior – to visit two private universities in our state over spring break. While our son is very focused on a major in computer science, I took our daughters to see the fine arts department at one school, and visited with women who are a professor of interior design, a biochemist, and a chemical engineer/turned industrial engineer/turned computer science lecturer/women in engineering adviser, at another.

Meanwhile I’ve been reading, a lot….

Read More »

To give, or not to give homework? That is the question

This post may contain text and image affiliate links. You pay the same price, but I may receive a small commissions for purchases through those links.

by

A friend forwarded an article to me recently with the comment “I don’t agree with this, but you might find it interesting.”

I love having friends who disagree with me. I think it’s important, to constantly challenge my own decisions. It helps to surround myself with thoughtful people who are willing to discuss the pros and cons of a different issue, and the discussion is most informative when you think you fall on different sides of an argument. Sometimes a friend convinces me to change my mind. Sometimes I convince them. Most of the time we agree to disagree, but I think everything lives on in our subconscious and influences us later. What’s important, is that it allows each of us to thoughtfully consider and reevaluate our position.

In this case, the question happens to be homework. To give, or not to give homework. That is the question….

Read More »