5 Terrific Tips for Students

5 Terrific Tips for Students

A very ancient saying we made up just a couple of years ago:

"Anyone, even a fool, can learn from someone wise. But it takes someone pretty wise to be able to learn even from fools."

If you have a wise teacher, make the most of it. If you have someone teaching, or a school, which is somewhat less than wise, as most of us do, still make the most of it. Along the way, just in case, make careful note of the things which would, by example or by contrast, eventually enable you to become a wise teacher should you choose to become so. It's easier to discard options than to gain or build them — give yourself some room. Keep your options open and make more of them.

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No. 1 Key to Effective Learning:
What you learn is wholly up to you. A few of us have been blessed somewhere along the way with a wonderful, wise teacher. Most of us have not. But people can learn usefully from a rock, a cocked eyebrow, someone's pause or hesitation, the word not said — indeed, from anything that you notice.

Notice things. See things for yourself. One picture seen can sometimes outweigh a million teachings. Pay attention to your own awarenesses — there's more there than you think! The people who have learned the best: they were their own best teacher.

Part of you already knows the stuff you're trying to learn. The trick is, to make enough of the matter conscious for you to resonate with where your understanding is, to bring THAT conscious for you.

• Question A: What are some of the things you can do with what's in front of you, to make more of the matter more conscious for you, toward making that resonance happen?

• Question B: What are some of the things you can do inside of yourself, to build more of the matter into your conscious mind to make that resonance happen?

• Question C: How much of Question A can be answered by answering the question, "What are some of the ways you can use your physical senses, to make more of the matter more conscious for you?" Are there any parts of Question A which can't be answered directly through your physical senses? — If so, what?

• How much of Question B can be answered by answering the question, "What are some ways to use your imagination to make more of the matter conscious for you, to make more of that resonance happen?"

No. 2 Key to Effective Learning:
Turn "dry facts" into memorable experiences. Use your imagination and involve all your senses.

Never settle for a situation in which you are staring at the information you're supposed to be learning and it's staring back at you, nothing communicated between. That just puts your intelligence asleep in that context. Imagine your way through as one of the participants in those historical events. Use your own body as a way to measure off diameter, radius, pi, other mathematical quantities and formula relationships. Imagine being the person who discovered the information you are now dealing with, and what that discovering experience must have been for him or her.

No. 3 Key to Successful Learning:
Success tip: "You get more of what you reinforce." Do more of what you do well, you'll do more well. Build from your strengths. Discovering your strengths — often we take these so much for granted that we don't even notice them, but you have some. What is it in yourself you'd like to see more of? How can you reinforce it when it happens?

Rising to a challenge is also something you want to be able to do more of. But while that sometimes meets with success, sometimes things go other than intended. How can we gain more benefit from, and learn from, our mistakes without giving them the kinds of attention which reinforces us into more mistakes? Past mistakes, we've already "paid our tuition for," can we get our money's worth of learning from that tuition, without punishing ourselves or otherwise reinforcing in us what went wrong instead of what went right? (Even punishment is reinforcement, not only rewards. The main natural law of behavior and psychology is the law of effect: "you get more of what you reinforce.")

No. 4 Key to Successful Classroom Learning:
This classroom tip is also a reflection of the law that "you get more of what you reinforce" — Everyone likes to be heard and listened to.

• The listener can be very powerful. Just by listening a little more intently in one direction than another, he steers the person talking into one direction rather than another. The person talking often talks himself into something.

• By your apparently listening intently, the teacher soon finds himself or herself talking more to you when he or she is teaching the class. By your listening intently more in one direction than another, you can steer the teacher's discussion without his or her noticing. When you give the teacher the feeling — subtly, not in CAPITAL LETTERS! — that you are listening intently, the teacher will respond to you much more, without even knowing he or she is doing so! And give you more of the attention that assures, from his or her end, that you really do get to understand the point of the lesson.

• Among your friends, your intent listening — more in one direction than in another — will let you control events much more than if you were overtly the leader of the pack.

• Not everyone who gets such special attention from teacher or classmates knows this consciously. Somewhere along the way, unconsciously, they've learned that to listen in a certain way gets results that they find pleasing.

• To listen is not necessarily to obey. You are still your own person. If you've appeared to listen intently, then followed your own path, and appear to have good reasons for your choice, you will win respect — which will get you better listened to.

No. 5 Key, a Major Tip for Learning and for Life:
Talk your way through the key points or issues, WITH someone. The more you describe, the more you will see. Especially if you describe more of what you are actually seeing, less of what you "know." You know both more and less about the matter than you think.

Talk problems through with a pal, whether these are math problems, science problems, problems of the school, at-home or personal problems. Many of those crucial little things people miss, no one discovers until he or she has actually said it aloud, to a listener. You'll be amazed at what you pick up this way, that you had no hint or realization before that you were missing.

Take turns. Going through the problem, one of you describes everything that's going through your awareness as you do that, not just what you're "supposed" to be talking about. This gives the rest of your mind the chance to relate in its own way to the problem or issue.

Your pal is listener, not interrupting, just listening and urging you on if and when need be, until you hit your "a-HA!" instead of letting on how he's already figured things out. In your turn, if you see an obvious answer to your partner's problem, resist your urge to blurt it out, even if he's missing the overwhelmingly obvious. The more he wrestles with it himself, the more likely it is that he will not only find the answer that is best for him, but will become able to answer all such further questions of that type. He may even think of that answer days later, while doing or thinking about other things, thanks to having truly wrestled with the matter.

When it's your turn to describe freely and to have a go at solving the problem, allow your own ideas and perceptions, and descriptions of your ideas and perceptions, to surprise you — because often the best answer comes from unexpected directions if you let it. Nearly all of your brain thinks in sensory images at the back of your mind, very little of that fits readily and immediately into words. It's when we can bring conscious words and back-of-the-mind impressions/associations into one focus that our understanding flowers.

Your understanding can indeed flower — indeed the sheer JOY of your understanding can flower. The beauty you see in a diamond or a dew drop or a flower, you can also discover in an idea of how things fit together — and sometimes that understanding is useful, not only beautiful.

You are brighter than you think. Much brighter. That idea of how things fit together, go together, work together, combine into something new together, is a perceptual act, and not an act of rote memorizing of information. Schools and many teachers can't appreciate that.

We opened this by observing it takes someone pretty wise to be able to learn even from fools, which is what we all have to do at least a little of the time, in a world whose provisions for your generation are something less than perfect. It's wonderful when you HAVE a wonderful teacher, but you can't expect to have that all the time. Only YOU can make sure your learning is rewarding and effective. You can do that by making your learning mean something. These have been some of the many ways you can do that.

- Winwenger