Learners Work Quotes

Being easily freaked out comes with its own special skill set: you develop subtle tricks to work around it, make sure people don't notice. Pretty soon, if you're a fast learner, you can get through the day looking almost exactly like a normal human being.

When they [visitors to his studio:] learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: "Gee, you could work real hard, couldn't you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?" Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don't work all of your life to do something so you don't have to do it.

The one who does the work does the learning.

It is possible for you to realise your dream as a scientist, you must be a passionate learner and curious enough to seek this wonderful career path.

For many years I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is, "Because they're scared." I used to suspect that children's defeatism had something to do with their bad work in school, but I thought I could clear it away with hearty cries of "Onward! You can do it!" What I now see for the first time is the mechanism by which fear destroys intelligence, the way it affects a child's whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life. So we have two problems, not one: to stop children from being afraid, and then to break them of the bad thinking habits into which their fears have driven them. What is most surprising of all is how much fear there is in school. Why is so little said about it. Perhaps most people do not recognize fear in children when they see it. They can read the grossest signs of fear; they know what the trouble is when a child clings howling to his mother; but the subtler signs of fear escaping them. It is these signs, in children's faces, voices, and gestures, in their movements and ways of working, that tell me plainly that most children in school are scared most of the time, many of them very scared. Like good soldiers, they control their fears, live with them, and adjust themselves to them. But the trouble is, and here is a vital difference between school and war, that the adjustments children make to their fears are almost wholly bad, destructive of their intelligence and capacity. The scared fighter may be the best fighter, but the scared learner is always a poor learner.

Nothing great was ever achieved without a personal sacrifice. You have to pay the price to realize your goals.

You are learning to be an expert.

Do all the work you can in your youthful days while you have the greatest strength.

there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other.

Tool,” William said,...."As in a device to perform or facilitate mechanical or manual labor?” “That’s right Encyclopedia Britannica. Or in layman’s terms: screwdriver, hammer—” “How about a wrench,” William interrupted,“ — "You’ve got a quick learner on your hands, Bryn,” Paul said .... “Sure, wrench works just fine as well,” ... “Whatever blows your skirt up buddy.” ... “Well a wrench would come in handy right now,” William mused. “Because you definitely have a couple screws loose.

Lincoln never finished his education. To the night of his death he was a pupil, a learner, an inquirer, a seeker after knowledge. You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might

Good training is priceless.

Do all the work while you still have strength.

Working together for a great mission is very fulfilling!

The key to success is to be a lifelong learner who continuously works hard to improve.

Make sure that slow learners are rewarded—or at least not punished— for expressing their deviant views and acting in odd ways.

Learner/Judger Questions We all ask both kinds of questions, and we have the power to choose which ones to ask in any moment.

Great learners become great earners.

It doesn’t matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has; the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change. Pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning. The focus should not be on teaching feedback givers to give. The focus—at work and at home—should be on feedback receivers, helping us all to become more skillful learners. The real leverage is creating pull. Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it’s about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow. It’s also about how to stand up for who we are and how we see the world, and ask for what we need. It’s about how to learn from feedback—yes, even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you’re not in the mood.

Purpose in general is for me to do something I have fun in doing. I want to be excited to wake up. I want to be excited to do my work. I want to feel like I'm playing when I'm doing my work. I'm very curious so I want to feel like a constant learner. I like having great conversations with interesting people [...]; I love creating; artistically creating; and it allows me to continually stay in excitable mode.

A therapist who fears dependence will tell his patient, sometimes openly, that the urge to rely is pathologic. In doing so he denigrates a cardinal tool. A parent who rejects a child's desire to depend raises a fragile person. Those children, grown to adulthood, are frequently among those who come for help. Shall we tell them again that no one can find an art to lean on, that each alone must work to ease a private sorrow? Then we shall repeat and experiment already conducted; many know its result only too well. If patient and therapist are to proceed together down a curative path, they must allow limbic regulation and its companion moon, dependence, to make the revolutionary magic. Many therapists believe that reliance fosters a detrimental dependency. Instead, they say, patients should be directed to "do it for themselves" - as if they possess everything but the wit to throw that switch and get on with their lives. But people do not learn emotional modulation as they do geometry or the names of state capitals. They absorb the skill from living in the presence of an adept external modulator, and they learn it implicitly. Knowledge leaps the gap from one mind to the other, but the learner does not experience the transferred information as an explicit strategy. Instead, a spontaneous capacity germinates and becomes a natural part of the self, like knowing how to ride a bike or tie one's shoes. The effortful beginnings fade and disappear from memory. (171)

I’m also a collaborative learner. Once I’ve absorbed new concepts in quiet reading, I need someone to bounce ideas off to help them sink in. I absorb much better that way than by simply engaging in quiet reflection.

A teacher, coach, or manager who knows his learner is able to accurately communicate in a manner that best suits that learner, and the more effectively a leader can communicate his or her expectations, the better the results are going to be.

It has long been known that learners remember responses they generate themselves better than those responses that are given to them, and this is now often called the generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). In particular, one hour students spend writing test questions on what they have been studying results in more learning for them than one hour spent working with a study guide, answering practice tests, or leaving the students to their own devices (Foos, Mora, & Tkacz, 1994).

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change. Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't. A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages. Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities." The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be. Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't. Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy. Everything above may be wrong!

Remember, though, that self-explanations will be most helpful when the learners receive feedback on their work—so you still might follow up peer activities with a large-group session in which you solicit some explanations and can provide a response.

ACCIDENTAL GROWTH INTENTIONAL GROWTH Plans to Start Tomorrow Insists on Starting Today Waits for Growth to Come Takes Complete Responsibility to Grow Learns Only from Mistakes Often Learns Before Mistakes Depends on Good Luck Relies on Hard Work Quits Early and Often Perseveres Long and Hard Falls into Bad Habits Fights for Good Habits Talks Big Follows Through Plays It Safe Takes Risks Thinks Like a Victim Thinks Like a Learner Relies on Talent Relies on Character Stops Learning after Graduation Never Stops Growing

Over the course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have decided that I want them to be lifelong learners be passionate be ready to take risks be able to problem-solve and think critically be able to look at things differently be able to work independently and with others be creative care and want to give back to their community persevere have integrity and self-respect have moral courage be able to use the world around them well speak well, write well, read well, and work well with numbers truly enjoy their life and their work.

On earth Christ was a learner in the school of obedience; in heaven He teaches it to His disciples here on earth. In a world where disobedience reigns unto death, the restoration of obedience is in Christ’s hands. As in His own life, so in us, He has undertaken to maintain it. He teaches and works it in us.

Without ongoing training in tailoring instruction to individual learners (and support in doing so), “fault” for underperformance or disengagement from learning is frequently shifted to the child: The child is lazy, has an attitude problem, or refuses to work up to his or her potential. The child is enormously vulnerable in this system.

INTJs aren’t only looking to change externals and other people. They are also diligently committed to working on themselves. Though they won’t typically dwell long upon their feelings and emotional state, they are fully engaged in the work of self-improvement. They are lifelong learners and will always be looking for ways to increase their knowledge and skills.

When learners are struggling they need support, not red lines and stern faces. They don’t need the dark suits of doom, but rather a learning coach, detached from any process, to support, mentor and guide. (A problem solver, not a process monkey, remember?) A skilled, empathetic specialist who can work with the learner to meet their immediate needs and stem the flow of poor conduct.

PULL BEATS PUSH Training managers how to give feedback—how to push more effectively—can be helpful. But if the receiver isn’t willing or able to absorb the feedback, then there’s only so far persistence or even skillful delivery can go. It doesn’t matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has; the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change. Pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning. The focus should not be on teaching feedback givers to give. The focus—at work and at home—should be on feedback receivers, helping us all to become more skillful learners. The real leverage is creating pull. Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it’s about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow. It’s also about how to stand up for who we are and how we see the world, and ask for what we need. It’s about how to learn from feedback—yes, even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you’re not in the mood.

The greatest gift that one generation bestows on its successors is striving valiantly to make every day of a person’s life count by working to enhance human knowledge and teaching what we learn to willing learners. Every generation of human beings owes a debt of immense gratitude to the forerunning generations who worked to solve problems that bedevil humanity and for exhibiting a profound reverence for all forms of life.

educators, we have to recognize that we help maintain the achievement gap when we don’t teach advance cognitive skills to students we label as “disadvantaged” because of their language, gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Many children start school with small learning gaps, but as they progress through school, the gap between African American and Latino and White students grows because we don’t teach them how to be independent learners. Based on these labels, we usually do the following (Mean & Knapp, 1991): Underestimate what disadvantaged students are intellectually capable of doing As a result, we postpone more challenging and interesting work until we believe they have mastered “the basics” By focusing only on low-level basics, we deprive students of a meaningful or motivating context for learning and practicing higher order thinking processes

In this new narrative, learning ceases to focus on consuming information or knowledge that’s no longer scarce. Instead, it’s about asking questions, working with others to find the answers, doing real work for real audiences, and adding to, not simply taking from, the storehouse of knowledge that the Web is becoming. It’s about developing the kinds of habits and dispositions that deep, lifelong learners need to succeed in a world rife with information and connections.

today’s learners face new challenges. Their primary hang-up is understanding what they want to do. Our career options have expanded so far beyond traditional options that they didn’t even exist when you or I were in school. Now a learner can choose to be a firefighter or a coder, an accountant or a YouTuber, a veterinarian or an Etsy seller. With so many possible directions to choose from, so many new skills and new careers and new creative pursuits available, deciding what to explore must come first.

He was the most astonishing contradiction of components I’d ever encountered. Shy yet fiercely communicative when putting an idea into your head. Vocally astringent regarding his own abilities but not to the point that he couldn’t produce—he was as prolific an artist (yes, an artist, and I never use the term, especially regarding people I like) I’ve ever seen. But I could feel it. Everything he sketched, penciled, inked, made—was a payment, one he could scarcely afford; as if it physically hurt him to put pencil to paper. Yet that only seemed to spur him on, to live far beyond his means. He was unable not to. For Sketch, to draw was to breath, and so the air became lead—silvery in the right light, dark soot in the wrong; heavy, slick and malleable—into shapes he brought together in glorious orchestration, with a child’s eye and a rocket scientist’s precision, all fortified by a furious melancholy, a quiet engine of sourceless shame and humility. When it came to another’s work, he longed to praise it but then couldn’t resist critiquing it all within an inch of its life, analyzing deficiencies with uncontrollable abandon and laser accuracy. He was sharp as his Radio 914 pen nibs, and as pointed. And then he’d apologize. Oh, he would apologize: Oh my GOD, forgive me, please don’t hate me, I’m SORRY, don’t listen to me, why am I saying things, what do I know, I don’t know anything, why do you listen to me you should just tell me to shut UP, I’m awful, forgive me, you hate me, don’t you? Tell the truth. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t. Please.

Katie stood alone... 'They think this is so good,' he thought. 'They think it's good- the tree they got for nothing and their father playing up to them and the singing and the way the neighbors are happy. They think they're mighty lucky that they're living and it's Christmas again. They can't see that we live on a dirty street in a dirty house among people who aren't much good. Johnny and the children can't see how pitiful it is that our neighbors have to make happiness out of this filth and dirt. My children must get out of this. They must come to more than Johnnny or me or all thse people around us. But how is this to come about? Reading a page from those books every day and saving pennies in the tin-can bank isn't enough. Money! Would that make it better for them? Yes, it would make it easy. But no, the money wouldn't be enough. McGarrity owns the saloon standing on the corner and he has a lot of money. His wife wears diamond earrings. But her children are not as good and smart as my children. They are mean and greedy towards others...Ah no, it isn't the money alone... That means there must be something bigger than money. Miss Jackson teaches... and she has no money. She works for charity. She lives in a little room there on the top floor. She only has the one dress but she keeps it clean and pressed. Her eyes look straight into yours when you talk to her... She understands about things. She can live in the middle of a dirty neighborhood and be fine and clean like an actress in a play; someone you can look at but is too fine to touch... So what is this difference between her and this Miss Jackson who has no money?... Education! That was it!...Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt. Proof? Miss Jackson was educated, the McGarrity wasn't. Ah! That's what Mary Rommely, her mother, had been telling her all those years. Only her mother did not have the one clear word: education!... 'Francie is smart...She's a learner and she'll be somebody someday. But when she gets educated, she will grow away from me. Why, she's growing away from me now. She does not love me the way the boy loves me. I feel her turn away from me now. She does not understand me. All she understands is that I don't understand her. Maybe when she gets education, she will be ashamed of me- the way I talk. but she will have too much character to show it. Instead she will try to make me different. She will come to see me and try to make me live in a better way and I will be mean to her because I'll know she's above me. She will figure out too much about things as she grows older; she'll get to know too much for her own happiness. She'll find out that I don't love her as much as I love the boy. I cannot help that this is so. But she won't understand that. Somethimes I think she knows that now. Already she is growing away from me; she will fight to get away soon. Changing over to that far-away school was the first step in her getting away from me. But Neeley will never leave me, that is why I love him best. He will cling to me and understand me... There is music in him. He got that from his father. He has gone further on the piano than Francie or me. Yes, his father has the music in him but it does him no good. It is ruining him... With the boy, it will be different. He'll be educated. I must think out ways. We'll not have Johnnny with us long. Dear God, I loved him so much once- and sometimes I still do. But he's worthless...worthless. And God forgive me for ever finding out.' Thus Katie figured out everything in the moments it took them to climb the stairs. People looking up at her- at her smooth pretty vivacious face- had no way of knowing about the painfully articulated resolves formulating hin her mind.

Collins and his coauthors identified four features of apprenticeship that could be adapted to the demands of knowledge work: modeling, or demonstrating the task while explaining it aloud; scaffolding, or structuring an opportunity for the learner to try the task herself; fading, or gradually withdrawing guidance as the learner becomes more proficient; and coaching, or helping the learner through difficulties along the way. Christoph Kreitz and his colleagues incorporated these features of traditional apprenticeships into their course redesign, reducing the amount

Great teaching is the ability to distinguish between what can and needs to be explained and what cannot be explained. The working of a computer needs to be explained as it is made by the human mind. But a butterfly need not always be explained. A butterfly has to be seen with gleaming eyes of wonder as it is a natural expression of life and not of the mind. Great teaching is more like a craft than a technique. To evoke the curiosity in the learner, to care for the learner and to take the learner on a journey of discovery are some of the most critical elements of this craft.

When you force yourself to focus on just the person and their work, not their glorified past, you also end up giving more people a chance. There’s no GPA filter to cut out someone who didn’t care for certain parts of their schooling. There’s no pedigree screen to prevent the self-taught from getting hired. There’s no arbitrary “years of experience” cut to prevent a fast learner from applying to a senior position. Great people who are eager to do great work come from the most unlikely places and look nothing like what you might imagine. Focusing just on the person and their work is the only way to spot them.

In their writing on education, Deci and Ryan proceed from the principle that humans are natural learners and children are born creative and curious, “intrinsically motivated for the types of behaviors that foster learning and development.” This idea is complicated, however, by the fact that part of learning anything, be it painting or programming or eighth-grade algebra, involves a lot of repetitive practice, and repetitive practice is usually pretty boring. Deci and Ryan acknowledge that many of the tasks that teachers ask students to complete each day are not inherently fun or satisfying; it is the rare student who feels a deep sense of intrinsic motivation when memorizing her multiplication tables. It is at these moments that extrinsic motivation becomes important: when behaviors must be performed not for the inherent satisfaction of completing them, but for some separate outcome. Deci and Ryan say that when students can be encouraged to internalize those extrinsic motivations, the motivations become increasingly powerful. This is where the psychologists return to their three basic human needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. When teachers are able to create an environment that promotes those three feelings, they say, students exhibit much higher levels of motivation. And how does a teacher create that kind of environment? Students experience autonomy in the classroom, Deci and Ryan explain, when their teachers “maximize a sense of choice and volitional engagement” while minimizing students’ feelings of coercion and control. Students feel competent, they say, when their teachers give them tasks that they can succeed at but that aren’t too easy — challenges just a bit beyond their current abilities. And they feel a sense of relatedness when they perceive that their teachers like and value and respect them.

If you want big improvements, she said, chew gum. Gum? Sure enough, chewing gum has been shown to improve a person's immediate recall of learned words by some 24 percent. Long-term recall improves by a larger 36 percent. To get the benefit, you actually have to chew gum as you are studying; for some reason you can't merely move your jaw up and down. I also discovered that drinking sage tea increases one's recall of words modestly, as does the odor of rosemary. Something as mundane as coffee provides a benefit, too. Drinking two cups of coffee increases neuronal activity in the frontal lobe, where working memory is controlled, and in the anterior cingulum, where attention is controlled.

Merrill Swain and Sharon Lapkin (2002), who have investigated sociocultural explanations for second language learning in Canadian French immersion programmes. Their work has its origins in Swain’s comprehensible output hypothesis and the notion that when learners have to produce language, they must pay more attention to how meaning is expressed through language than they ordinarily do for the comprehension of language. Swain (1985) first proposed the comprehensible output hypothesis based on the observation that French immersion students were considerably weaker in their spoken and written production than in their reading and listening comprehension. She advocated more opportunities for learners to engage in verbal production (i.e. output) in French immersion classrooms.

Voegelin displayed all of these qualities because he understood teaching as an existential quest with students that ascends from ideological disorder to wisdom (sophia) and practical judgment (phronesis). Teachers and learners form an existential community because together they turn, and have their souls turned, from becoming to being. For Voegelin, the “art of the periagoge” consists of inculcating the habits necessary for these existential virtues, and the methods used to inculcate them are various because they require the teacher to dig more deeply than reason into the souls of the students. As Voegelin indicates, his lifelong work is the result of the need to show students why the life of reason is indeed the pursuit of truth. His scholarship and teaching has as its core the moral aspiration for existential life in truth.

To help our kids become good learners (which I’d argue is more important than being “smart” or “getting things right”), we have to help them sit in the not-knowing-and-yet-still-working-at-it space. And this comes from how we respond to our children’s frustration. I often remind myself that my job as a parent is not to help my kids get out of the learning space and into knowing . . . but rather to help my kids learn to stay in that learning space and tolerate not being in knowing! So rather than solving children’s problems for them, belittling their struggles, or losing patience with their efforts to understand that which might seem simple to an adult, we have to allow our kids to do the work on their own. The longer children can stay in that in-between space, the more they can be curious and creative, tolerate hard work, and pursue a wide variety of ideas.

The fact that early languages, no matter how many there are, utilize the same streams implies that the brain doesn't have a native language. The brain can only reflect the fact that a set of neural circuits was built and activated for a certain period of time. Nor does the brain care if those neural circuits map onto things that the rest of the world calls languages or dialects. It really cares only about what activates those circuits. Thus, the brain patters that typify language use across skill levels can be mapped. Brain imaging technology monitors the intensity of oxygen use around the brain - higher oxygen use represents higher energy use by cells burning glucose. The deeply engrained language circuits will create dim MRI images, because they are working efficiently, requiring less glucose overall. More recently acquired languages, as well as those used less frequently, would make neural circuits shine more brightly, because they require more brain cells, thus more glucose.

You're kidding, right?" Shane asked. "You don't need caffeine. You need sleep." He held out the last cup, and Claire realized she'd been wrong; there was someone else in the shadows. Deeper in the shadows even than Oliver had been. Myrnin. He looked completely different to her now, and not just because he wasn't crazy anymore. He'd remembered how to dress himself, for one thing; gone were the costume coats and Mardi Gras beads and flip-flops. He had on a gray knit shirt, black pants, and a jacket that looked a bit out of period, but not as much as before. All clean. He even had shoes on. "Yes, you must sleep," he agreed, as he accepted the cup and tried the coffee. "I've gone to far too much trouble to train up another apprentice at this late date. We have work to do, Claire. Good, hard work. Some of it may even earn you accolades, once you leave Morganville." She smiled slowly. "You'll never let me leave." Myrnin's dark eyes fixed on hers. "Maybe I will," he said. "But you must give me at least a few more years, my friend. I have a great deal to learn from you, and I am a very slow learner.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

WHEN beginners become aware of their own fervor and diligence in their spiritual works and devotional exercises, this prosperity of theirs gives rise to secret pride—though holy things tend of their own nature to humility—because of their imperfections; and the issue is that they conceive a certain satisfaction in the contemplation of their works and of themselves. From the same source, too, proceeds that empty eagerness which they display to some extent, and occasionally very much,1 in speaking before others of the spiritual life, and sometimes as teachers rather than learners. They condemn others in their heart when they see that they are not devout in their way. Sometimes also they say it in words, showing themselves herein to be like the Pharisee, who in the act of prayer boasted of his own works and despised the Publican.2 2. Their fervor, and desire to do these and other works, is frequently fed by Satan in order that they may grow in pride and presumption: he knows perfectly well that all their virtue and works are not only nothing worth, but rather tending to sin. Some of them go so far as to desire none should be thought good but themselves,3 and so, at all times, both in word and deed fall into condemnation and detraction of others. They see the mote in the eye of their brother, but not the beam which is in their own.4 They strain out the gnat in another man’s cup, and swallow the camel in their own.5 3.

You're a killer, Keeley.You'd tease a man to death." He didn't mean it as a compliment, but to her it was a revelation. "I've never tried it before. Now one's ever attracted me enough.You do,and I dont even know why." When she dropped her hand,he took her wrist. It surprised him to feel the gallop of her pulse there, when her eyes, her voice had been so cool, so steady. "Then you're a quick learner." "I'd like to think so.If I come to you, you'd be the first." "The first what?" Temper wanted to stir, especially when she laughed. THen his mind cleared and the meaning flashed through like a thunderbolt. His hand tightened on her wrist, then dropped it as though she had turned to fire. "That scared you enough to shut you up," she observed. "I'm surprised anything could render you speechless." "I've..." But he couldn't think. "No,don't fumble around for words. You'll spoil your image." She couldn't think just why his dazed expression struck her as so funny,or why the shock in his eyes was endearing somehow. "We'll just say that,under these circumstances, we both have a lot to consider.And now,I'm way behind in my work, and have to get ready for my afternoon class." She walked away,as easily, as casually, Brian thought numbly, as she might have if they'd just finished discussing the proper treatment for windgalls. She left him reeling. he'd gone and fallen in love with the gentry,and the gentry was his boss's daughter. And his boss's daughter was innocent. He'd have to be mad to lay a hand on her after this. He began to wish Betty had just kicked him in the head and gotten it all over with.

Perhaps..." Resuming his rake's persona, investing every movement with languid grace, he shifted forward, closer. Held her gaze. "You could teach me what it is you need." He let his gaze drift from her eyes to her lips. "I've always been considered a fast learner, and if I'm willing to learn, to devote myself to the study of what you truly want..." Her lips parted slightly. He raised his gaze once more to her eyes, to the stormy blue. Read her interest, knew he had her undivided attention. Inwardly smiled. "If I swear I'll do all I can to meet your requirements, shouldn't you accept the...challenge, if you like, to take me as I am and reshape me to your need?" Holding her gaze, resisting the urge to lower his to her tempting lips, he raised a hand, touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek in a tantalizingly light caress. "You could, if you wished, take on the challenge of taming the ton's foremost rake, of making me your devoted slave...but you'd have to work at it, make the effort and take the time to educate me-arrogantly oblivious male that I am-all of which will be much easier, facilitated as it were, by us marrying. After all, nothing worthwhile is ever attained easily or quickly. If I'm willing to give you free rein to mold me to your liking, shouldn't you be willing to engage?" She was thinking, considering he could see it in her eyes. She was following his arguments, her mind following the path he wanted it to take. Shifting his fingers to lightly frame her chin, he held her face steady as if for a kiss. "And just think," he murmured, his eyes still locked with hers, his lips curving in a practiced smile, "of the cachet you'll be able to claim as the lady who captured me.

Again you must learn the point which comes next. Every circle, of those which are by the act of man drawn or even turned on a lathe, is full of that which is opposite to the fifth thing. For everywhere it has contact with the straight. But the circle itself, we say, has nothing in either smaller or greater, of that which is its opposite. We say also that the name is not a thing of permanence for any of them, and that nothing prevents the things now called round from being called straight, and the straight things round; for those who make changes and call things by opposite names, nothing will be less permanent (than a name). Again with regard to the definition, if it is made up of names and verbal forms, the same remark holds that there is no sufficiently durable permanence in it. And there is no end to the instances of the ambiguity from which each of the four suffers; but the greatest of them is that which we mentioned a little earlier, that, whereas there are two things, that which has real being, and that which is only a quality, when the soul is seeking to know, not the quality, but the essence, each of the four, presenting to the soul by word and in act that which it is not seeking (i.e., the quality), a thing open to refutation by the senses, being merely the thing presented to the soul in each particular case whether by statement or the act of showing, fills, one may say, every man with puzzlement and perplexity. [...] But in subjects where we try to compel a man to give a clear answer about the fifth, any one of those who are capable of overthrowing an antagonist gets the better of us, and makes the man, who gives an exposition in speech or writing or in replies to questions, appear to most of his hearers to know nothing of the things on which he is attempting to write or speak; for they are sometimes not aware that it is not the mind of the writer or speaker which is proved to be at fault, but the defective nature of each of the four instruments. The process however of dealing with all of these, as the mind moves up and down to each in turn, does after much effort give birth in a well-constituted mind to knowledge of that which is well constituted. [...] Therefore, if men are not by nature kinship allied to justice and all other things that are honourable, though they may be good at learning and remembering other knowledge of various kinds-or if they have the kinship but are slow learners and have no memory-none of all these will ever learn to the full the truth about virtue and vice. For both must be learnt together; and together also must be learnt, by complete and long continued study, as I said at the beginning, the true and the false about all that has real being. After much effort, as names, definitions, sights, and other data of sense, are brought into contact and friction one with another, in the course of scrutiny and kindly testing by men who proceed by question and answer without ill will, with a sudden flash there shines forth understanding about every problem, and an intelligence whose efforts reach the furthest limits of human powers. Therefore every man of worth, when dealing with matters of worth, will be far from exposing them to ill feeling and misunderstanding among men by committing them to writing. In one word, then, it may be known from this that, if one sees written treatises composed by anyone, either the laws of a lawgiver, or in any other form whatever, these are not for that man the things of most worth, if he is a man of worth, but that his treasures are laid up in the fairest spot that he possesses. But if these things were worked at by him as things of real worth, and committed to writing, then surely, not gods, but men "have themselves bereft him of his wits".

In 2009, Kahneman and Klein took the unusual step of coauthoring a paper in which they laid out their views and sought common ground. And they found it. Whether or not experience inevitably led to expertise, they agreed, depended entirely on the domain in question. Narrow experience made for better chess and poker players and firefighters, but not for better predictors of financial or political trends, or of how employees or patients would perform. The domains Klein studied, in which instinctive pattern recognition worked powerfully, are what psychologist Robin Hogarth termed “kind” learning environments. Patterns repeat over and over, and feedback is extremely accurate and usually very rapid. In golf or chess, a ball or piece is moved according to rules and within defined boundaries, a consequence is quickly apparent, and similar challenges occur repeatedly. Drive a golf ball, and it either goes too far or not far enough; it slices, hooks, or flies straight. The player observes what happened, attempts to correct the error, tries again, and repeats for years. That is the very definition of deliberate practice, the type identified with both the ten-thousand-hours rule and the rush to early specialization in technical training. The learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better. Kahneman was focused on the flip side of kind learning environments; Hogarth called them “wicked.” In wicked domains, the rules of the game are often unclear or incomplete, there may or may not be repetitive patterns and they may not be obvious, and feedback is often delayed, inaccurate, or both. In the most devilishly wicked learning environments, experience will reinforce the exact wrong lessons. Hogarth noted a famous New York City physician renowned for his skill as a diagnostician. The man’s particular specialty was typhoid fever, and he examined patients for it by feeling around their tongues with his hands. Again and again, his testing yielded a positive diagnosis before the patient displayed a single symptom. And over and over, his diagnosis turned out to be correct. As another physician later pointed out, “He was a more productive carrier, using only his hands, than Typhoid Mary.” Repetitive success, it turned out, taught him the worst possible lesson. Few learning environments are that wicked, but it doesn’t take much to throw experienced pros off course. Expert firefighters, when faced with a new situation, like a fire in a skyscraper, can find themselves suddenly deprived of the intuition formed in years of house fires, and prone to poor decisions. With a change of the status quo, chess masters too can find that the skill they took years to build is suddenly obsolete.

Focus intently and beat procrastination.    Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break).    Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives.    Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up.    Set up a distraction-free environment.    Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck.    When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode.    After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck.    Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests.    When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply.    Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating.    Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed.    Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself.    Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory.    Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones.    Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory.    Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently.    Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace.    Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly.    Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems.    Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any.    Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline.    Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings.    Improve your habits.    Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself.    Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks.    Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks.    Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set.    Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively.    Preview the text before reading it in detail.    Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests.    Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan.    Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible.    During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers.    Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner.    Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust.    Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.

Any parent would be dismayed to think that this was their child’s experience of learning, of socializing, and of herself. Maya is an introvert; she is out of her element in a noisy and overstimulating classroom where lessons are taught in large groups. Her teacher told me that she’d do much better in a school with a calm atmosphere where she could work with other kids who are “equally hardworking and attentive to detail,” and where a larger portion of the day would involve independent work. Maya needs to learn to assert herself in groups, of course, but will experiences like the one I witnessed teach her this skill? The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts. Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts, write College of William and Mary education scholars Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. And too often, “very little is made available to that learner except constant advice on becoming more social and gregarious.” We tend to forget that there’s nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it’s the best way to learn but because it’s cost-efficient, and what else would we do with our children while the grown-ups are at work? If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there’s nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself. The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussions in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it. Why do we accept this one-size-fits-all situation as a given when we know perfectly well that adults don’t organize themselves this way? We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids “blossom” into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it’s not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don’t have to live in whatever culture they’re plunked into. Research from a field known as “person-environment fit” shows that people flourish when, in the words of psychologist Brian Little, they’re “engaged in occupations, roles or settings that are concordant with their personalities.” The inverse is also true: kids stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened.

FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP Youth unemployment has become an urgent challenge facing the global society. In 2011, nearly 75 million youth aged 15 to 24 were unemployed worldwide. The majority of the world’s youth (87%) living in developing countries “are often underemployed and working in the informal economy under poor conditions,” according to the 2012 The World Youth Report of the United Nations (United

THE NEED FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP Youth unemployment has become an urgent challenge facing the global society. In 2011, nearly 75 million youth aged 15 to 24 were unemployed worldwide. The majority of the world’s youth (87%) living in developing countries “are often underemployed and working in the informal economy under poor conditions,” according to the 2012 The World Youth Report of the United Nations (United

Keep working while grace abound.

It can be done. It will be done.

When I have fully executed this phase of my life, then I can begin a new chapter.

Changing things in education involves hard work, determination and an ability to swim against the tide.

The research evidence suggests that a better approach is to strive for additive bilingualism—the maintenance of the home language while the second language is being learned. This is especially true if the parents are also learners of the second language. If parents continue to use the language that they know best with their children, they are able to express their knowledge and ideas in ways that are richer and more elaborate than they can manage in a language they do not know as well. Using their own language in family settings is also a way for parents to maintain their own self-esteem, especially as they may have their own struggles with the new language outside the home, at work, or in the community. Maintaining the family language also allows children to retain family connections with grandparents or relatives who do not speak the new language.

But there is a caveat or two here, maybe even a bit of a paradox for the school leader. The staff needs to know that if the vision of the school is based on teaching teams, then teachers have to be able to work in teams. Teacher preferences are important, but schools do not exist for adults, they exist for learners and learning. The school vision cannot be seen as an option.

With one or two clicks we are now able to identify which of our 75 learners are in need of working on any specific learner outcome … and, equally importantly, identify those who also have mastered the prerequisite learnings required to successfully master this new learner outcome.

Your special spiritual gifts and talents are your calling.

my First Law of School Work will kick in: A job not worth doing is not worth doing well. One of the best things teachers can do is work very hard to make sure research projects are well designed and intrinsically motivating.

project-based learning requires that the content is significant, the inquiry is in depth, the work is question driven, the student has a voice in choosing the product, the work is shared with an audience beyond the classroom, and creativity and innovation are “explicitly taught and assessed.

Students . . . •    learn in a classroom. •    are assigned a task to do. •    follow required objectives. •    do the assignment designed by the teacher or curriculum. •    seek information for the assignment. •    work individually or in a group depending on assignment. •    earn a grade to reflect meeting the objectives and standards. Learners . . . •    develop their own learning goals. •    monitor their progress in meeting their goals. •    have a purpose or interest to learn something. •    ask questions. •    seek information. •    find ways to collaborate with others. •    want to know something because they want to know it—not for a grade. •    are curious about life and never stop learning.

Work is learning, and learning is the work.

rover, or garbage disposal is. Analogies and metaphors that incorporate simple household and backyard items help illuminate content (for example, “Your brain's hippocampus works a bit like a surge protector to limit the risk of overload

Feedback places students in a category all their own. This girl’s accomplishments were truly huge accomplishments if you only compare her performance to her ability. If you were to compare her performance with another student’s, she may look, once again, as just a mediocre, slow-processing reader. It isn’t fair, though, to compare her or belittle her progress, success, or accomplishments with another learner’s. She deserves the right to grow, process, and succeed at a rate that works for her and then celebrate when she meets her goals! That’s what feedback has the power to produce in a classroom. (2014)

According to Luisa Muraro, an Italian writer whose work is mainly dedicated to elaborating a feminist philosophical perspective, access to language is fundamentally linked to the affective relation between the body of the learner and the body of the mother. The deep, emotional grasp on the double articulation of language, on the relation between signifier and signified in the linguistic sign, is something that is rooted in the trusted reliance on the affective body of the mother. When this process is reduced to an effect of the exchange between machine and human brain, the process of language learning is detached from the emotional effect of the bodily contact, and the relation between signifier and signified becomes merely operational. Words are not affectively grasping meaning, meaning is not rooted in the depth of the body, and communication is not perceived as affective relation between bodies, but as a working exchange of operating instructions.

Lifelong learning” is a phrase so trite it makes your teeth hurt, but being a good mentor means showing your child that learning doesn’t stop when someone hands you a diploma. Not by treacly speech, but by everyday immersion in a life that celebrates learning interesting things and doing challenging, meaningful work.

Real project work is work that is chosen by children and done by children, with the help of attentive adults who are there to mentor, facilitate, and support.

Avoid Paternalism: do not do things for people that they can do for themselves."" They go on to explain five ways that we in North America sometimes act paternally. •Resource paternalism: believing that throwing money at global problems will solve them. •Spiritual paternalism: believing that since we are materially rich and they are economically poor, we must have the deeper walk with God. •Knowledge paternalism: believing that we are the teachers and they are the learners. •Labor paternalism: doing work for people that they could (and should) do for themselves. •Managerial paternalism: taking charge when things are not moving at a pace that satisfies us.9 For effective North American-global partnerships to exist, we need to revise our paradigms, or the ways we look at things. Several partnership-related paradigms needing revision stand out.

Papert takes great pains to declare that one particular experience, no matter how rich, might not have the same effect on other learners. To Papert, “the most powerful idea of all is the idea of powerful ideas.” (Papert, 1980) His life’s work has been creating tools, theories, and coercion-free learning environments that inspire children to construct powerful ideas through firsthand experience.

March presents impressive formulas and graphs showing that when an organization has a greater percentage of people who are incapable, unwilling, or have not yet learned the way things are “supposed to be done around here,” the company is more likely to be innovative. Yet March offers few hints about what kinds of people are likely to be slow learners. Research in personality psychology suggests that three kinds of traits are key: those who are “low self-monitors,” those who avoid contact with coworkers, and those who have very high self-esteem.

Always work enthusiastically.

You can’t separate how you approach life as a family and how your child will approach life as a thinker and learner. Your home is your child’s first workplace, first studio, first school — and your family members are your child’s first friends, first coworkers, first audience, first collaborators. You are his first mentor, and his siblings are his first teammates. You can’t separate learning from living. If your daily habits and routines don’t support your learning goals, you need to get them back into alignment. You want to build a family culture that celebrates and supports meaningful work. This is much more than saying the right thing — this is creating a lifestyle, a set of articulated beliefs, and a daily routine that encourage and sustain the life you want for your family. Building a family culture means being purposeful with your choices. What you say you value pales in importance next to the way you live from day to day, the choices you make, big and small.

Jesus did not say “make converts” or “teach them to pray a particular prayer.” Rather, this is about people who are born again through the power of the Savior who died and rose again. You and I are to participate in the work of multiplying the number of surrendered learners and followers of Christ. We are to lead people into the kingdom by way of the Cross.

Vanity metrics wreak havoc because they prey on a weakness of the human mind. In my experience, when the numbers go up, people think the improvement was caused by their actions, by whatever they were working on at the time. That is why it’s so common to have a meeting in which marketing thinks the numbers went up because of a new PR or marketing effort and engineering thinks the better numbers are the result of the new features it added. Finding out what is actually going on is extremely costly, and so most managers simply move on, doing the best they can to form their own judgment on the basis of their experience and the collective intelligence in the room. Unfortunately, when the numbers go down, it results in a very different reaction: now it’s somebody else’s fault. Thus, most team members or departments live in a world where their department is constantly making things better, only to have their hard work sabotaged by other departments that just don’t get it. Is it any wonder these departments develop their own distinct language, jargon, culture, and defense mechanisms against the bozos working down the hall? Actionable metrics are the antidote to this problem. When cause and effect is clearly understood, people are better able to learn from their actions. Human beings are innately talented learners when given a clear and objective assessment.

School application: Grades, class rank, or even winning competitions are not the key to making students more creative. The truly original thinkers work out of personal need and interest, not for high test scores. In fact, worrying about grades and other extrinsic motivators will also make students risk averse and less likely to take creative chances.

The time is now. What you have to do, do it now.

Finding Three: Boys Are Relational Learners Perhaps the most revealing and promising finding in our study was one that appeared without our seeking it. We had asked both boys and teachers not to discuss, mention, or name individual persons when they recounted an especially effective scholastic experience. And not a single teacher named or even profiled an individual student. By contrast, almost all of the boys named or profiled teachers. In many cases, boys veered away from discussing the nature of the lesson into deeply feeling responses to the impact a specific teacher had made. There was no single quality or even pattern of qualities singled out in the boys’ responses; they appreciated especially attentive and nurturing teachers in equal measure with daunting taskmasters who displayed an impressive command of their subjects. They celebrated teachers who found ways to be genuinely funny, as well as teachers who freely disclosed their own personal experiences and struggles. Common to all of the accounts in this chorus of praise and appreciation from students was a sense that the teacher in question had somehow seen and known the writer as a distinctive individual. Especially touching were the boys who identified themselves as frustrated and unsuccessful in their studies but experienced a transformation in understanding and motivation as a result of a teacher’s reaching out to him.

Nevertheless, Michael Erard’s (2012) review of the cases of some of history’s most successful learners of multiple languages shows that their unusual talent was also associated with a willingness to work hard at tasks that many would consider too boring or difficult, such as using word cards to study vocabulary.

They were divided into four categories that are described below along with examples of the motivational behaviours included within each. 1     Teacher discourse: arousing curiosity or attention, promoting autonomy, stating communicative purpose/utility of activity 2     Participation structure: group work/pair work 3     Activity design: individual competition, team competition, intellectual challenge, tangible task product 4     Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation and activity design: effective praise, elicitation of self/peer correction session, class applause. In each lesson, the learners’ motivation was measured in terms of their level of engagement. The proportion of students who paid attention, who actively participated, and who eagerly volunteered during activities was calculated. A three-level scale was used to measure engagement in each observed lesson: very low (a few students), low (one third to two thirds of the students) and high (more than two thirds of the students). Learners also completed a questionnaire about their motivation levels specifically related to their EFL class. The researchers found significant positive correlations between the teachers’ motivational practices, the learners’ engagement behaviours, and the learners’ self-reports on the questionnaire. The researchers acknowledge that correlation results do not indicate cause–effect relationships. Nevertheless, the findings are important because this is the first study to provide ‘any empirical evidence concerning the concrete, classroom-specific impact of language teachers’ motivational strategies’ (Guilloteaux and Dörnyei 2008: 72).

Robert DeKeyser (2000) carried out a replication of the Johnson and Newport study, working with Hungarian immigrants to the United States. He also found a strong relationship between age of immigration and performance on the judgement task. In addition, he asked participants to take language aptitude tests and found that, for participants who began learning English as adults, aptitude scores were correlated with success. However, there was no such correlation for those who learned English in childhood. These findings appear to confirm the hypothesis that adult learners may learn language in a way that is different from the way young children learn.

Despite compelling new knowledge about learning, how the brain works, and what constitutes effective classroom groupings, classrooms have changed little over the past 100 years. We still assume that children of a given age are enough like each other that they can and should traverse the same curriculum in the same fashion. Further, schools act as though all children should finish classroom tasks as near to the same moment as possible, and that school year should be the same length for all learners. To this end, teachers generally assess student content mastery via tests based on specific chapters of the adopted textbook and summative tests at the end of designated marking periods. Teachers use the same grading system for all children of a given age and grade, whatever their starting point at the beginning of the year, with grades providing little if any indication of whether individual students have grown since the previous grading period or the degree to which students' attitudes and habits of mind contributed to their success or stagnation. Toward the end of the school year, schools administer standardized tests on the premise that all students of a certain age should have reached an average level of performance on the prescribed content by the testing date. Teachers, students, and schools that achieve the desired level of performance are celebrated; those that do not perform as desired are reprimanded, without any regard to the backgrounds, opportunities, and support systems available to any of the parties. Curriculum often has been based on goals that require students to accumulate and retain a variety of facts or to practice skills that are far removed from any meaningful context. Drill-and-practice worksheets are still a prime educational technology, a legacy of behaviorism rooted firmly in the 1930s. Teachers still largely run "tight ship" classes and are likely to work harder and more actively than their students much of the time.

learners made more progress when they were given a simple rule and then worked together to find the correct possessive determiners (Spada, Lightbown, and White 2005).

when pair work functions collaboratively and learners are in an expert–novice relationship, they can successfully engage in the co-construction of knowledge.

Broadly speaking, it seems that teachers help you know and understand and coaches help you practise and get better. Returning to the notion of how we are useful to our students, which do your students need most from you? The following questionnaire can help you think about this further.   Your turn 2 Underlying philosophies Grade each statement from 1 (don’t agree) to 10 (agree completely). Make a note of your answers, if you wish, to discuss with a colleague. a) Learning a language means learning words and rules. b) Learning a language means repeatedly using it. c) People learn best by noticing and working things out. d) They learn best by communicating with other people. e) Mistakes show that students have not understood the grammar properly. f) They show that they have not practised enough. g) Speaking is a conscious, cognitive process. h) Speaking is an automatic habit.   Perhaps all of these statements are true for you. Still, you may have found that you favour some more than others. Notice how a), c), e) and g) promote the idea of language as knowledge to learn, a bit like maths or music theory, whereas b), d), f) and h) reflect the side of learning that involves practising a skill, more like tennis or playing the piano. If you think that the skill side of language learning is particularly important, you will probably feel comfortable thinking of yourself as a language coach, someone whose main job is to get students practising and improving. If you see language as knowledge, the question to ask yourself is how your students can best acquire that knowledge, from you teaching it to them or from other sources of reference and input?

Most companies automatically search for fast learners, gregarious people with social graces, who are willing and able to bend to the wishes of others.

We also have the power to help students to monitor and maintain their motivation levels out of class time. As teachers we can control materials and activities in class to optimise motivation; as coaches we need to help our students to do this for themselves. We can, for example, raise their awareness of the options for reading English on the internet and the possible approaches to working with texts they choose. Examples of this are the activities 'Easy Reading' and 'Authentic Reading' (Student's Book activities 23 and 22). Another activity, Motivation Meter (activity 4, suggested lesson format here), helps learners monitor their motivation levels and analyse what influences these fluctuations.

Students can use this framework to set a goal and refer back to it when evaluating their achievements. Here’s an example from an intermediate student: Specific – He has the goal of telling stories with more accurate use of tenses. Measureable – He records himself telling an anecdote today and again in a week’s time after he has practised. Agreed – He seeks the agreement of the teacher to confirm that it is a priority he needs to work on to be more easily understood. Realistic – He’s not expecting miracles! 100% precision in all the narrative tenses after a week, for example, is probably not realistic. Time bound – He reckons on a week to give him enough time to improve. He’s earmarked three slots through the week to practise.

As so often in the New Testament, the call to prayer is also the call to think: to think clearly about God and the world, and God’s project for the whole human race. Don’t rest content with the simplistic agendas of the world that suggest you should either idolize your present political system or be working to overthrow it. Try praying for your rulers instead, and watch not only what God will do in your society but also how your own attitudes will grow, change and mature. 1 TIMOTHY 2.8–15 Women Must Be Allowed to Be Learners 8So this is what I want: the men should pray in every place, lifting up holy hands, with no anger or disputing. 9In the same way the women, too, should clothe themselves in an appropriate manner, modestly and sensibly. They should not go in for

Feedback places students in a category all their own. This girl’s accomplishments were truly huge accomplishments if you only compare her performance to her ability. If you were to compare her performance with another student’s, she may look, once again, as just a mediocre, slow-processing reader. It isn’t fair, though, to compare her or belittle her progress, success, or accomplishments with another learner’s. She deserves the right to grow, process, and succeed at a rate that works for her and then celebrate when she meets her goals! That’s what feedback has the power to produce in a classroom.

The findings suggest that the teachers should relax their control and allow the students more freedom to choose their own topics so as to generate more opportunities for them to participate in classroom interaction. Doing so might foster a classroom culture that is more open to students’ desire to explore the language and topics that do not necessarily conform to the rigid bounds of the curriculum and limited personal perspectives of the teachers (2010: 19). At the same time, this assumes a common denominator of shared community, a community of practice in which the learners all feel themselves to be members, with the rights and duties that such membership entails. This means the teacher needs to work, initially, on creating – and then sustaining – a productive classroom dynamic. Managing groups – including understanding, registering and facilitating their internal workings – is probably one of the teacher’s most important functions. But, whatever the classroom dynamic, there will still be learners who feel an acute threat to ‘face’ at the thought of speaking in another language. It’s not just a question of making mistakes, it’s the ‘infantilization’ associated with speaking in a second language – the sense that one’s identity is threatened because of an inability to manage and fine-tune one’s communicative intentions. As Harder (1980) argues, ‘the learner is not free to define his [sic] place in the ongoing [L2] interaction as he would like; he has to accept a role which is less desirable than he could ordinarily achieve’. Or, as he more memorably puts it: ‘In order to be a wit in a foreign language you have to go through the stage of being a half-wit – there is no other way.

hypothesis was influenced by cognitive theory, but more recent work has been motivated by sociocultural theory. Using the term collaborative dialogue, Swain and Lapkin and their colleagues have carried out a series of studies to determine how second language learners co-construct linguistic knowledge while engaging in production tasks (i.e. speaking and writing) that simultaneously draw their attention to form and meaning. As shown in Communication task B in Chapter 5, learners were testing hypotheses about the correct forms to use, discussing them together and deciding what forms were best to express their meaning.