3 Smart Back to School Items for Teens You Haven’t Thought Of

July 30, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

Pens? Check.

Pencils? Check.

Paper? Check.

Notebooks? Check. Backpack? Check.

Ruler, glue, highlighter? Check. Check. Check.

If you’re a parent of school age kids, you know THE LIST contains many other “standard” items you have to get ASAP because it’s Back to School time and you want your kids prepared. But while all of those items are necessary, I bet you haven’t considered at least 2 out of the 3 items below that should be but are rarely “standard” on our back to school lists.

These items have one thing in common. They support the very thing that makes the biggest difference in your children’s learning – their brain.

The following is a list of items that improve things inhaling glue and marker fumes never will - focus, productivity, and sanity of kids when doing school work. For each item, I explain the science, how it helps, how to use it, and give you an inexpensive but effective recommendation.

1. Adjustable Standing Desk

Chances are your children will more than fulfill their daily sitting quota in school. I’m not sure if “sitting is the new smoking” but most of us spend too much time with our buns flattened, which is linked to health concerns such as high blood pressure, sugar level, and cholesterol and increases our chances of dying from heart conditions and cancer.

While a full-size standing desk will cost hundreds of dollars, you can find desk risers you can place on top of a regular desk or work stations that won't break your Back 2 School budget.

Equipping your child’s room or family work space with an adjustable desk promotes focus and productivity while preventing fatigue. As movement stimulates blood circulation, every time the child stands up, the brain receives an increased dose of fresh oxygen. Most such desks are quickly adjustable to the desired position promoting work flow.

Check out these examples:

This 28in x 20in top has room for a laptop, notebook, and a water bottle. I like it because it's stylish, allows quick and easy height adjustment, and comes in 3 colors. It costs $180 on Amazon here.

This standalone work station adjusts and can be placed next to a desk. I like it because you can roll it around to take advantage of natural light during the day. It costs $125 on Amazon here.

If you think the work surface isn't big enough, consider that a smaller surface accommodates fewer items. Having less stuff removes distractions from your teen's field of view promoting greater focus and productivity.

For free shipping, you can do a 30-day Amazon Prime trial here. Just use it for your Back 2 School shopping to get free shipping and then cancel.

2. A Productivity App

Zero. Flipping. Dollars.

Tracking your work time in real time is an effective way to stay focused and get more done. Your teen already has a smartphone so why not use it to prevent distractions and promote productivity?

Find the simplest productivity phone app. Generally, the more complicated something is the more useless it proves. Avoid “productivity” apps with “extra” features as they distract, not focus. An ideal app is one that keeps track of work sessions and brain breaks with timers.

Try Focus Keeper which I use or a similar app. The idea is to hear the subtle ticks that remind your teen to keep going for 25-30 minutes straight and then get alerted to take a 5-minute break to stand up, walk around, get a drink etc. Get the app here.

Pro Tip: Encourage your teens to put their phone in “airplane” mode while working.

3. A Learning How to Learn Book

A book by learning experts Dr. Barbara Oakley and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski is set to be released on Amazon on August 7th. Oakley and Sejnowski are learning experts who teach the all-time most popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects.

Their new book Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens is available for pre-order here.

I took their course and highly recommend the book as a summer reading for teens.

If your teens prefer "hands-on" learning, consider the book I wrote Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and make School Easier which is a series of lessons designed for teens to help them become better students by using the concepts they learn immediately.

The Oakley/Sejnowski book is cheaper at $12.80 and is a great description of effective learning strategies. Get it here.

My book is more expensive at $29.95 but is hands-on and contains many more effective learning strategies as well as project templates, test checklists, and success plans. Get it here.

If you get my book before Friday, August 3rd I will give you an extra copy and a gift that supports your child's learning further for FREE. Just pay $7 for shipping.

But whichever book you get - it will make your teen's school experience better.

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Hi! I'm Oskar. I teach, write, and speak to make learning better.

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categories / Learning
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids

How to Develop Good Habits. Part 2: Replace

July 26, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

This is a follow up post to How to Develop Good Habits. Part 1: Understand.

In Part 1, I explained that to change bad habits, you must first identify the habits you want to change and the "opposite" habits that help you become more successful. The reason for this is simple - if you just tell yourself you'll change, you most often won't change. This is not because of the lack of desire but rather due to not knowing what actions to take so old habits go away and new ones stick.

The plan of action that has the highest chance of success involves replacing an old habit with a new one. This is the easiest (though it may still prove difficult) way to rewire your brain.

If you're a not-so-proud owner of a bad habit, the patterns and actions associated with this habit are wired into your brain. This means that whenever you "do" the habit the routine you follow is automated. Let me exemplify.

While I have been tobacco-free for more than a decade, I used to smoke one pack of cigarettes a day for 10 years. This is why I almost never ate breakfast in my twenties. I replaced it with "a coffee and a cigarette." I'd put the pot on to brew, put my contact lenses in, pour the coffee, head to the laundry room of the Chicago apartment my wife and I lived in at the time, and light up. Every. Single. Day.

I'd be lying if I told you I hated it.

No. I loved it! In fact, the memory is so well-encoded in my brain that I can imagine the taste of that first morning drag to this day. DOPAMINE.

The point is that my morning "coffee and cigarette" routine was so strongly wired into my brain, I was on autopilot. This may be akin to your morning commute to work. You no longer pay attention to the streets, but rather, your mind is elsewhere - listening to audio, in conversation etc.

I tried quitting smoking several times before I was finally successful. It didn't work. I did not know it then but I know now that it was because I tried to "will it" and did not create an effective plan to rewire my brain.

Rewiring Your Brain

If you're a little bit scared right now you should be. While lobotomy proved to impair patients' intellectual and emotional abilities and was eventually deemed less than effective or humane, we are not that far off from a time when scientists will be able to use technology to change your brain's neural networks. UCLA doctors are already seeing some success using magnetic waves to rewire brains of people with depression.

But fear not - the things you need to do to rewire habits do not involve surgeries or exposure to radiation.

What you need to do is come up with a plan for what to do when the old bad habit starts creeping back into your life.

I eventually quit smoking on April 1st, 2007 by playing guitar. A lot. My plan was simple: Every time I had a cigarette craving, I would pick up my guitar and play until I stopped thinking about smoking. And it worked!

There are three reasons for why it worked.

First, I did something with my hands instead of holding a cigarette. My present understanding of this is that doing this slowly rewired my brain's networks that associated my sense of touch and smoking. This was the physical aspect of the habit.

Second, playing guitar is an enjoyable activity for me. Just as I loved smoking, I loved playing guitar. It was easier to replace smoking with playing than it would have been to replace it with, say, mowing the lawn. My brain still received the dopamine reward it craved but it happened in a much healthier way.

Third, playing an instrument is a highly challenging cognitive activity. It requires focus, hand-eye coordination, rhythm, receiving feedback (listening), applying feedback (adjustment of hand positions etc.), constant processing of the song structure, and more. If I just settled on turning the TV on every time I got the urge to smoke I'd be smoking till this day (and likely watching too much TV while at it).

In a similar way, I replaced my online poker addiction with writing.

Thus, to change a bad habit, you need to replace it with a productive habit that is hopefully rewarding but definitely highly engaging. Then, you must do it repeatedly until your brain is rewired.

And don't believe anyone who tells you it will take two weeks, a month, or 21 days. These would-be-experts are in the business of assigning arbitrary numbers to the methods they fashion themselves. While research shows that developing new habits is tied to the frequency of exposure and the intensity of exposure, the time it takes to change habits greatly varies. The more you do it and the more engaged you are in it during each exposure, the faster you will rewire your brain for the new, more advantageous habit but it's impossible to know exactly how long it will take.

Identify and understand your bad habits first. Then, create a plan that helps you replace them with good habits.

This is how I explain it to the teens I teach. I openly discuss my past tobacco and poker addictions. I find being honest (and flawed) helps when working with adolescents. I encourage you to do the same with yours.

Check out Lesson 21 - Changing Your Habits I use with my students and include in my new book Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier below.

The book contains 65 unique lessons such as setting academic goals, understanding and using the brain the way it evolved to learn, completing projects, studying for tests, improving reading speed and memory etc.

I will share the full Table of Contents with you on Sunday The book becomes available on Amazon tomorrow. You can preorder it here.

You can download the 2 Habits Lessons to use with your teens FREE here.

Thank you,

Oskar

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Sources:

UCLA doctors use magnetic stimulation to ‘rewire’ the brain for people with depression. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/tms-depression-ucla

How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. http://repositorio.ispa.pt/bitstream/10400.12/3364/1/IJSP_998-1009.pdf

This column will change your life: How long does it really take to change a habit? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/10/change-your-life-habit-28-day-rule

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make learning better.

BOOKS & TOOLS

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categories / Learning
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids

How to Develop Good Habits. Part 1: Understand

July 25, 2018 / Oskar Cymerman

Develop Good Habits - Understand Your Habits

In my previous post, I shared a free lesson you can use to help kids master difficult concepts faster, which is something they can use to make their school experience less frustrating and more rewarding.

In my next two articles, I want to share with you a strategy that works well for developing good study, work, or life habits.

As habits are automatic behaviors, we rarely think about them. We just "do" them. That's the first problem we face - we don't take the time to identify our detrimental habits. The second problem is we don't devise clear plans to change because of this limited introspection and lack of expertise on how to even begin. You might know from experience that telling yourself I'll try to do better tomorrow rarely works.

To develop good habits you must first identify your bad habits. Next, you must identify the "opposite" habits - good habits that contrast the bad ones. Then, you must come up with an effective plan to replace a bad habit with a good one. Finally, you must do it consistently until you achieve "automation."

The images below show a lesson I use in my Learning to Study Effectively class to help high school students identify and understand their habits.

I usually start with a short activity (not written on the document) asking each student to write down 5 ineffective school, study, or lifestyle habits they have, share them with a group of peers, and list the ones most or all of them struggle with. This is followed by each group using a representative to quickly share and explain their bad habits. This is engaging because students like learning about themselves and they realize that many of their peers experience the same struggles.

When the discussion is over, I ask the students to read actively (another strategy I teach), use the checklist provided in the reading to check off and add any unlisted bad habits they identified, and summarize the key points of the reading.

Finally - and this is the most important part - I ask them to apply what they learned.

First, they identify the effective learning habits which helps them realize things "aren't so horrible."

Second, they list habits that slow down or prevent their learning which helps them specify what they need to work on.

Third, they work in small groups to research, write a script, and record a short video on habits. Communicating in this way helps them better understand what habits are, how they form, why they are so darn difficult to change, and begin identifying the things they can do to start developing more effective habits.

Fourth, they reflect on what they learned and self-assess their understanding of their own patterns.

Notice that the majority of time is spent processing information (reflecting, communicating, designing, creating etc.) not receiving it.

The lesson above is one of the two lessons on habits I use with my students. I included this lesson, and Lesson 21 - Changing Your Habits, in my new book Crush School Student Guide: Learn Faster, Study Smarter, Remember More, and Make School Easier.

There are 64 more such lessons in the book. The skills taught are:

Setting academic goals
How the brain learns and how to use it effectively
Active reading, learning, and note-taking
Completing projects effectively
Creating, practicing, and delivering engaging presentations
Faster learning
Memory techniques
Focus
Listening better
Creativity
Critical thinking
Multiple study and test practice techniques
Teamwork
Mastering difficult concepts, and more...

Please feel free to use the Understanding Your Habits Lesson in any way you want. It is my gift to you. It can help anyone understand their habits so they can start working on changing them. You can download the Free PDF copy here.

My next post will feature the "Changing Your Habits" lesson, so that you have the complete set you can use to teach your students or children about habit development and show them how to take action on developing more effective habits.

The book comes out on Amazon this Friday. You can pre-order it here.

Here are the FREE Bonuses it comes with:

BONUS 1: PDF copy of my book Crush School 2: 10 Study Secrets Every High Schooler Should Know

BONUS 2: Project Completion Template PDF (with directions)

BONUS 3: Create a Killer Presentation Template (with directions)

BONUS 4: Cush Tests Checklist

If you're not sure if the book is for you, don't buy it until you know you or your kids can use it. I will continue sharing different lessons I created for it in my future posts and you can decide then.

As always, I am grateful for your time.

Oskar

You have the power to change lives. Use it often so they can change the world.

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, speak, rant to make learning better.

BOOKS & TOOLS

Buy on Amazon

Comment 0 Likes

tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids