The middle school and high school years are very difficult for students and their parents. The students go through their hormonal changes which lead to confusing emotions, very sensitive triggers, and extreme moods. Parents walk on eggshells during this period striking the balance between supporting their children and being strict on what they can and cannot do.
Stressful and difficult as things can be, this can actually be used to improve their learning skills. Their passions and emotions can be used to focus and direct their attention and actions. Their desires and dislikes can be used to create carrots and sticks to channel their behavior. Their triggers can be used to switch them, using neuro-linguistic programming, to be in the right mindset to receive information and knowledge.
With proper coaching, parents and tweens/teens can work together to make middle school and high school the most productive years in the students’ development.
For more information on how to channel your child’s physical changes to make him/her a better student, please book a Discovery Call with TurboLearner using this link: https://plp.turbolearner.com/sss-discovery-session
It is true: schools have moved cautiously over the past year in order to balance remote schooling and hybrid schooling, and to walk the tightrope between technology (video conferencing) and safety (social distancing, masking). The focus has been taken away from curriculum. Students have not progressed as much.
However, there is great danger in accelerating the system without preparing the students for it. In one word: inertia. Newton’s first law states that every object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless compelled to change its state by the action of an external force. This applies to the mind, also. When students are used to a certain pace of learning, acceleration will hurt more than it will help.
The popular belief is that students will learn or not learn according to their abilities. This is definitely not true, and I am living proof of the contrary. I participated in an experiment about 45 years ago in which my learning faculties were analyzed and I was then given a personalized learning system. That made the difference between terrible grades in 6th and 7th grades and graduating from an honors engineering program with distinction (summa cum laude). This experiment was the basis of a Ph.D. thesis and a project that won the CASTME (Commonwealth Association of Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators) Award in 1984. The system that grew out of the experiment has been used to create hundreds of super students – those who studied in Sri Vidya Schools in Tilaknagar, Hyderabad, while it was under the leadership of Dr. Indira S. Rao will relate to this post.
Dr. Indira Rao believed that education should be a partnership between the teacher and the student. In the current system, teachers are trained to teach but students are not taught to use their learning skills. This is not a true partnership. Teachers are “active” participants in the education process but students are only “passive” participants. Acceleration will not work unless students are also taught to learn effectively and efficiently, i.e., unless there is a true partnership between the teachers and the students.
How can students be made into “active” learners? I have quoted Brian Herbert before: “The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, and the willingness to learn is a choice.” The last time, I focused on the third, the choice. This time, let me focus on the first, the capacity. Every child does have the capacity to learn. This capacity is often dormant because the child’s unique learning skills have not been identified and shown to the child.
Since each student has a unique brain, thinks differently, and, therefore, learns differently, there is no single way to teach students to learn efficiently. On the contrary, each student has to be taught to learn in his/her unique way. Such was the system that Dr. Rao created in the experiment that I was the subject of. And this is the same process I use today to help students become better learners.
Here is how I create personalized learning processes for students. There are other experts in the field who have their own methods and opinions. These are mine.
I analyze the factors that make up your child’s learning skills
I assemble a set of learning methods that suit those learning factors
I tailor the learning methods in a step-by-step learning process to suit your child
I teach your child the methods and the process to unlock your child’s skills
I optimize the process to fit your child closely and therefore accelerate the process
The Turbo Learner method is a framework for acquiring, applying, adapting and augmenting knowledge and skills in a structured and consistent manner. It is not a tutoring or coaching system, nor is it a learning center or test prep center. It is not a replacement or substitute for any of these – tutors, coaches, learning centers and test prep centers give you immediate results, while Turbo Learner fixes the foundation and give long-term results.
For more information, download our free e-book “Introduction to the Turbo Learner Method” from this link here.
At 10:56 p.m. ET on July 20, 1969, the American astronaut Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the lunar surface and famously declared, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Small things can have a big impact. Small actions can have large consequences.
Here’s a small change you can make in your child’s education that can make a big difference. Teach your child to be an active learner.
What does this mean? Isn’t this how children usually learn? Aren’t all students active learners?
It turns out that almost 95% of all students are passive learners, more so as they move up in grades. They “receive” what the teachers give them, do their homework, and don’t really hit the books until it is time for a quiz or a test. They don’t take the initiative in the education process. You may argue that this is right – they don’t know enough to move forward on their own. However, there are other things they can do to learn in an active manner. This is the “active” part of being an active learner.
This is different from “activity-based education” that most kindergarten and elementary school students participate in. I am not suggesting that children learn everything through doing things with their hands, although there are many things that can be learned that way. I am suggesting that children should take an active role – a proactive role – in education.
Here is a simple active learning process: Prepare, receive, summarize.
Preparation includes setting goals for the learning session and pre-evaluation – to understand what they already know about a topic, to identify the gaps and being ready to fill those gaps with new information. This sets the stage for the learning session. It opens the mind to recognize new material as opposed to things already known and increases the student’s comfort level.
“Receiving” is the traditional learning session with the teacher. This is when the material is offered to the student and the student can relate to what he/she already knows and grab the new information.
Summarizing the knowledge acquired in class in succinct manner, possibly using mind maps or concept maps, allows the student to really digest the new material and check to see if the gaps are indeed filled. Reviewing these summaries periodically reinforces the learning.
Just these two additional stages – preparation and summarization – will make all the difference in the child’s understanding of the topic.
One small step for your child, one giant leap for your child’s education.
The Turbo Learner Method is a comprehensive system to super-charge your child’s learning skills. It is not a coaching or tutoring program, nor is this a learning center or test prep center. We identify the factors that influence your child’s learning skills, build a learning process around those factors and coach your child in its use. It is a one-of-a-kind system to build a custom, personalized learning system for your child.
For more information, download our free e-book “Introduction to the Turbo Learner Method” from this link here.
The “Kissing Bridge” in Copenhagen has two “fingers” that roll out and are supposed to meet or “kiss” in the middle, hence the name.
When perfectly aligned, they automatically latch together when protruding tongue-like bolts enter complementary holes in the other span. These bolts aren’t perfectly aligned, though—they’re off by six to eight centimeters, which is enough to prevent them locking correctly.
What has this got to do with why children struggle to learn? Their problem is a misalignment of a different sort.
Every student has a unique brain, thinks differently, and, therefore, learns differently. But students are not taught differently. The way that they “naturally” learn is out of alignment with the way they are being taught. And I don’t blame the teachers: The problem is with the system as a whole.
There are several issues that contribute to the mismatch. The more significant issues are these: teachers, because of the poor teacher-student ratio and because of what the system demands of them, don’t have the bandwidth to cater to individual students; and while teachers are trained to teach, students are seldom taught to use their learning skills.
The bottom line is this: Students struggle to learn because of a mismatch or misalignment between how they “naturally” learn and how they are taught. This is what keeps them from reaching their full potential, from learning easily, and from getting great grades. This is what makes them spend hours and hours on homework, assignments, projects, and study sessions. This is what causes stress and frustration. And this is what makes them stop loving learning.
And, in truth, this is the only problem to solve to get students to enjoy learning again, learn anything easily, remember everything they learn, get excellent grades, get into the colleges of their dreams, get the best jobs, and have a successful life.
What students really need is a simple, structured, consistent and effective process for learning anything. There is no “generic” process that suits every student – no one size that fits all. But, when they are given this unique process and use it to learn, there is no limit as to what they can achieve.
What is this unique learning process and how can they get it?
Here is how I create personalized learning processes for students. There are other experts in the field who have their own methods and opinions. These are mine.
First, since I cannot see a student’s mind directly, I create a model that represents the mind by evaluating the student’s responses to specific questions. I then pick learning techniques and strategies that fit this model. I build a structured and systematic process around these techniques and strategies. Finally, I teach the student how to use this process.
The Turbo Learner method is a framework for acquiring, applying, adapting and augmenting knowledge and skills in a structured and consistent manner. It is a comprehensive system to super-charge your child’s learning skills. It is not a coaching or tutoring program, nor is this a learning center or test prep center. We identify the factors that influence your child’s learning skills, build a learning process around those factors and coach your child in its use. It is a one-of-a-kind system to build a custom, personalized learning system for your child.
For more information, download our free e-book “Introduction to the Turbo Learner Method” from this link here.
Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a boy eagerly awaiting the end of his sophomore year at high school. I asked him how it was going and he unloaded on me! [Aside: Sometimes, these kids just need a sympathetic ear! End aside.]
He spoke of sleepless nights, struggles and stress.
He told me that he did well in math and history, the former because of his ability in that subject and the latter because of his interest. In all other subjects, although he obtained a bunch of A’s and nothing below a B, it was a struggle. Many sleepless nights, many cramming sessions where he memorized stuff without understanding just to be able to answer questions, lots of stress and frustration. He endures it because, while he is a shoo-in for the safety colleges and some other colleges in his list, he has his eye on Princeton.
Do we need to subject our children to this torture? There is a better way …
There is another girl I spoke to. She was on her school’s Track and Field team. She was a sprinter, and her events were the 100m, 200m and the 4x400m. Her best time was a shade above 12 seconds at the 100m.
Sprinters can run fast because they can move their legs freely. How fast can they run if they wore fetters?
That is exactly what is happening to many students: Their learning skills are fettered and so they can’t run their minds freely and learn easily. Just as the best way to run is to remove fetters from feet, the best way to learn is to be unfettered in learning.
What holds a child back from learning freely? The fetters on the mind are the myths and the false beliefs that people have about learning.
Brian Herbert said, “The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, and the willingness to learn is a choice.” While it is true that there are many gifted with the capacity to learn, what people don’t realize is that anyone can acquire the capacity, just as some are born rich and others acquire riches through their toils. Anyone can learn to learn.
The third part of Brian Herbert’s statement is the most important: The willingness to learn is a choice.
Children who choose to learn achieve the most. This choice is almost independent of capacity or ability. The choice sets up the mindset to take action and achieve results. The choice opens up the mind to capacity and ability. As Napoleon Hill wrote, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” The concept and the belief are built into the choice.
Every child is born with the capacity to learn. Many have this capacity locked up inside. Only a handful come into this world with the capacity unlocked. So it is not a matter of creating a capacity that does not exist or creating a silk purse from a sow’s ear. It is merely a matter of unlocking a capability that lies dormant.
At Turbo Learner, we identify the factors that contribute to a child’s learning ability, customize a personal learning process for each child, teach that child how to optimally use his/her learning skills, and transform the child from a struggling and frustrated student to a confident and excellent student.
When your child is able to use his/her natural learning faculties correctly, there is really no limit as to what he/she can achieve.
The Turbo Learner method is a framework for acquiring, applying, adapting and augmenting knowledge and skills in a structured and consistent manner.
Let me give you a sample of what I do with this free report “5 Tips to Boost Your Child’s Learning Ability“. These are simple steps you can take now, and when you see how well they work, you can make an appointment with me to learn more.
Imagine a huge rock sitting at the edge of a cliff or an escarpment. If that rock tipped over and hurtled down the vertical cliff face, it could wreak much damage. The energy with which it could strike the ground can be calculated by E (energy) = m (mass) x g (gravitational acceleration) x h (height of the cliff face).
But that is all potential energy. That energy would never get released if the rock stayed put at the edge of the cliff forever.
There is much difference between potential and performance.
Your child has the potential to learn anything and be a genius. Almost every child has that potential – and I am also including borderline autistic children and children with mild learning disabilities in the mix. Very few children – approximately 2.5% or 1 child in 40 – realize that potential.
Why?
The simple answer is that every child is different. Every child has a unique brain, thinks differently, and, therefore, learns differently. But children are not taught differently, nor are they taught to understand and use their unique learning skills. Children struggle to learn because of a mismatch between their “natural” learning process and how they are taught.
I don’t blame the teachers: this is not a blame game. I respect teachers. My mother was one. However, teachers in the United States face several major challenges
There is usually a poor teacher-student ratio, which means that teachers don’t have the bandwidth to focus on individual students.
The “No Child Left Behind” rule forces teachers to make sure that the lower tranche of their students pass.
In many school districts, teachers are evaluated against their performance in the standardized tests, so, in reality, teachers teach to the test from day one.
The technological and safety challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic is taking away what limited time teachers have.
So, when parents feel that their children could do much better at school if only they could rise to their true potential, they are right. Children do not perform at their true potential.
The Problem
Parents have wants and needs when it comes to their children. They need their children to have a quality education so that they succeed in life. This stems from a deeper need for assurance and peace of mind that when they are no longer around to come to their aid, they can still fend for themselves. But they also want their children to be the trophies that they can proudly showcase to their peers. They want to be able to say, “My son, the mayor” or “My daughter, the doctor.” No one wants to say, “My child, the failure.” Parents need their children to succeed not only for the children’s sake but for their own (parents’) sake.
During the COVID pandemic, there have been other needs that surfaced. Parents have a need to balance personal and professional lives as they work from home and their children have some level of remote schooling – either totally remote or hybrid. They need to be able to help their children learn, to help their children reduce their stress and frustration, and to support them in every way that they can. And they don’t want their children to interrupt their work-related conference call with, “Mommy/Daddy, I don’t understand this stuff. Can you help me learn?”
How do you feel when your child is struggling to learn remotely or in a hybrid environment because of the COVID pandemic?
How do you feel when you have to add “teaching” to the already huge pile of hats you wear, and the role of “teacher” does not sit well with the role of “parent”?
How do you feel when your child’s education interferes with your working from home?
Are you frustrated? Stressed out? Overwhelmed? Angry?
As a parent, you want your child to not merely survive but thrive. You want to be able to give your child every advantage that will allow him/her to get ahead of peers, classmates, and, later, colleagues. Those peers, classmates and colleagues are friends, but human beings are fiercely competitive. Sometimes, it is a healthy competition between friends. Sometimes, it is quite cut-throat.
Let’s face the truth: While we pretend that it is all “Kumbaya” and we are all friends, there are times when we don’t allow friendship to come in the way of our desires. There are times when children fiercely compete with their best friends to get on that last seat on the debate team or the lead role in the school play or admission into the college of their dreams. As grown-ups, we compete to get the best jobs, the best assignments, the best sales territories, or bigger bonuses. We are friends – until the friendship gets in our way.
How do you get your child to thrive in such an environment? What advantages will allow your child to get to and stay in the lead position?
The biggest advantage is the ability to learn anything easily. Henry Adams said, “They know enough who know how to learn.”
So, how do you get your child to be able to learn anything easily? What is holding your child back from being able to do so?
When you go to a doctor with a fever, he/she doesn’t just treat the fever. The fever is just a symptom. The doctor checks to see if there is an underlying infection or disease that causes the fever. Yes, the doctor also gives you something for the fever, but that is generally in addition to any treatment required for the underlying problem.
Likewise, you may have a litany of “problems” relating to your child’s education:
Too easily distracted
Disorganized
Doesn’t manage time well
Doesn’t complete assignments on time
Gets poor grades
Procrastinates, then pulls all-nighters to complete projects
Spends more time on social media than on studies
And so on.
But these, as you can possibly guess, are only the symptoms. The real problem is that your child does not have a consistent process for learning any subject.
There is a process that will help your child learn any subject easily, effectively and efficiently. However, there is no one “universal” process that works for every child – one size does not fit all. Every child needs a unique, personalized process.
So, the real problem is that your child does not know the unique process which will help him/her realize his/her true learning potential.
Some children learn some subjects well out of a natural acumen, interest, or because the teacher is able to inspire, motivate or activate them. On these subjects, they are organized, manage time well, complete assignments on time and get good grades. They struggle to learn other subjects. On these, their actions, and results, are diametrically opposite.
Some children get some learning out of hard work, but mere “brute force” can only get them so far. They struggle to bridge that gap between “good enough” and “excellent”. These children spend an inordinate amount of time with paltry results.
Other children struggle and work hard but get poor results. Good grades remain out of their grasp.
And then there are the children who don’t work hard enough because they have given up or don’t care enough. They give up because they don’t believe that they could achieve good grades. Having seen poor results from either their own or vicarious experiences, they don’t see any point in working hard.
(I use the term “child” loosely: some middle-school, high-school and college freshmen will take umbrage at being called children, but at my age, even a 25-year-old is a child. My own children are in their twenties.)
The Impact
President Woodrow Wilson was not known for his looks. He is credited with the following limerick:
For beauty I am not a star,
There are others more perfect by far,
But my face I don’t mind it,
For I am behind it,
It is those in front that I jar.
Many children don’t mind that they don’t get good grades. It doesn’t affect them as much as it jars others.
“What’s the big deal?” they ask, “Who cares? It’s only grades.”
But people do care. Especially if this affects a child’s ability to get a job, earn a decent salary and support a family. The impact of poor study habits and results – poor grades – can be felt on the parents, siblings and other people in the immediate social circle of the students with such habits.
What is the impact of poor study habits?
Distractions, disorganization and poor time management cause every action to take much longer time and yield poor results. As Stephen Covey mentioned in his “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” if you work on a task only when it is urgent, you don’t have the time to think things through. The result is something haphazardly put together and therefore incomplete and poorly done.
When studying takes a long time, it eats into other activities including eating and sleeping. Irregular eating and sleeping leads to poor health, stress, and poor control of emotions including anger. This disrupts the harmony of the household and leads to friction between parents and children and/or between siblings.
All of these lead to poor grades. The consequences of poor grades include fewer opportunities to get into good high schools, good colleges and good jobs. Parents get anxious when their children don’t have good prospects and are not settled in life.
What is the value of education? Derek Bok, the president of Harvard University, said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” And Benjamin Franklin said, “An investment in education pays the best interest.”
As parents, you would like your child to be able to take care of himself/herself when you are no longer around to help. You don’t want your child to be a millstone around your neck for the rest of your life. It is a poor parent, indeed, who clings to a child long after the child ought to be fledged for fear of “losing him/her.” And one of the first requirements to independence is the ability to understand a situation and decide what to do about it. This ability comes only with knowledge and experience, the first being taught in regular school and the second in the school of hard knocks.
But knowledge is more important than experience – it is not necessary to experience being burnt if you have the knowledge that fire burns. Human knowledge is built on the experiences of our ancestors. If you have to experience everything to know it, one lifetime is not enough to know enough to survive and thrive. That is why the formal learning we get from the school system is so important.
What People Generally Do
When children fare poorly at studies, parents try many options.
The first is a very hands-on approach. The parents, or at least one parent, must interact with the child to know what was covered in school and what homework was assigned, and make sure that the homework is completed. The parent(s) must also set strict study schedules, designate a study area, ensure healthy nutrition (the brain works well with certain foods), manage screen time and make sure that bedtime is strictly followed. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of time and effort but gets great results.
The second is to judiciously use carrots and sticks – incentives and disincentives, or rewards and punishments. Good grades lead to more privileges, gifts, trips and indulgences; bad grades yield loss of privileges, being grounded, being denied gifts, trips and indulgences. This often backfires and creates rebellious or passive/aggressive behaviour.
When it comes to changing your child’s behavior, it is important to remember Dale Carnegie’s advice (How to Win Friends and Influence People): “There is only one way to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.” While we cannot change somebody’s mind, we can give them the opportunity to change their own mind. We cannot change someone’s mind by attacking because when we attack, they dig in, and at that point in time, they stop listening to what we have to say. On the other hand, when we engage them in conversation, the longer we converse the more opportunities we have to say something of influence. During the conversation, we can bring their core values and contradicting behavior to fore without unduly stressing the contradiction: Let them see the contradiction and have the lightbulb moment.
The third is to assist the child with tutors in subjects that the child finds challenging. This is an expensive option and gives mixed results. The tutors often address only the symptom – the specific thing that the child does not understand – and miss the underlying issues.
A related method is to use learning centers such as Kumon, Mathnasium, Eye-Level, Oxford Learning Centers, etc., to enhance reading and math skills through focussed repetition. This helps the child be better at verbal comprehension and at using processes to solve problems.
There are other “learn to learn” courses available for adults on Udemy, Coursera, The Teaching Company, etc. These are not readily usable by children because they depend on an underlying foundation of self-discipline. Parents may, however, take these courses and use the materials to help their children learn. However, it does take a lot of time and effort.
And there are specialists, experts in neuroscience, psychology, cognition, etc., who teach learning techniques pertinent to their area of specialization.
Let me tell you a story.
There were 5 blind men who tried to describe an elephant by touching it. Each only touched a part of the elephant and described that part:
“It’s like a wall”, said the person who felt the flank.
“It’s like a rope”, said the one who felt the tail.
“It’s like a pillar”, said the one who felt a leg.
“It’s like a spear”, said the man who felt a tusk.
“It’s like a fan”, said the one who touched an ear.
Were they wrong?
Each was only partly right. They are not equipped to see the entire elephant. The true description of an elephant includes all these and more.
In the world of education, there are many schools of thought both on teaching and on learning. Each expert focuses his/her attention on one aspect – neuroscience, cognition and meta-cognition, behavioural psychology, learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, verbal, logical, solitary, social), personality type, and biochemistry. Some focus on memorization and recall techniques, some focus on study habits, some on self-testing practices, some on note taking systems, etc.
Who is right?
They also are only partly right. What they are missing is the ability to see the entire picture. They are in a swimlane of their own perspective … and cannot visualize the entire elephant.
Limitations of the General Solutions
The major issue here is that unless the children know their own special learning skills, they will hit a point beyond which they cannot improve.
When the parent works with the child, all the parent can do is support the current way in which the child learns. If this way is not the best way for the child to learn, nothing the parent does can solve the problem.
When the parent tries to influence the child using incentives and disincentives, again, how well the child can do is still limited by the child’s lack of understanding of his/her unique learning skills.
When the parents try tutors and training programs, it addresses the symptoms without addressing the underlying issue.
And when the parent tries the “learn to learn” courses, the main thing to understand here is that all these courses are generic, “one size fits all” courses. Unless the parent knows which techniques suit the child or knows how to customize the techniques to fit the child’s needs, the child will not benefit from such training.
The one issue I find with most courses and tutoring services – they provide information. It takes coaching to provide transformation.
The Smart Alternative
When working “harder” is not enough, the solution is to work “smarter”.
Let me tell you a story. There’s an age-old story of two men walking along an African path, when they come across a lion. The first man calmly puts his backpack down and slips on the running shoes he’s been carrying.
The second man laughs and says: “You’ll never outrun a lion.”
To which the first man responds: “I don’t need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you.”
What does this have to do with education?
When all your child’s classmates are wearing – and running with – hiking shoes, if your child wears the right running shoes, he/she can outrun all of them.
Competition is fierce everywhere. For example, at the 2012 Olympics in London, Nathan Adrian won the gold in the men’s 100 m freestyle swim by a mere 1/100th of a second! At the Italian Grand Prix in 1971, Peter Gethin won by 1/100th of a second. At the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Gail Devers won the 100 m sprint by the same 1/100th of a second.
In education, too, competition is tight. The way to beat the competition is to do something different. To study smarter.
The smart study method that we recommend is to identify the factors that indicate each child’s unique learning process, assemble learning techniques that suit the child, coach the child in its use, and optimize it for the child. This method, the Turbo Learner Method, when tailored specially for your child, is the best method your child can use to learn.
Let me explain this method with an analogy. Imagine that a farmer stands in the middle of his field and merely tosses all his seeds into the air.
Some of those seeds may land on rocks or barren soil and not germinate.
Some of those seeds may just be blown away by the wind or carried away by water.
Even the few seeds that fall on fertile soil would not be spaced right and would compete for water and nutrients.
Only a few seeds would ultimately yield crops.
On the other hand, what the farmer does is very smart. He tills the soil, fertilizes it, and neatly plants the seeds in rows. He nurtures the saplings and makes sure that every seed grows.
Likewise, when the teacher merely scatters knowledge, some students pick it up easily, some with difficulty, and others not at all. On the other hand, if the students are prepared to learn, all knowledge takes root and bears fruit. The Turbo Learner Method prepares students to learn.
Let me add a few caveats to this. The Turbo Learner Method is not a silver bullet. It is not a tutoring program. It is not a test prep program. It is not a counselling program. It is a program to create a framework and a repeatable process that your child can use to learn anything easily. It will help your child be more productive and unlock his/her learning potential.
Can you imagine what it will do for you?
One of the first modules in the program addresses distractions, disorganization and poor time management. With this, your child will be able to get things done quickly.
The personalized learning program will help your child learn anything easily and effectively. This will make sure that your child has a regular sleep cycle and, therefore, less stress, anxiety, frustration and related health issues.
Most of all, the personalized learning program will make your child able to confidently take on any test, get better grades and be able to get into the college of his/her choice. This will improve his/her prospects for a job and for a successful life. You can breathe a sigh of relief.
So, what does this program do? What is the Turbo Learner Method all about? It’s about creating a personalized learning process to unlock your child’s learning potential.
These are the steps I use to create a Personal Learning Process:
I analyze the child’s learning factors (there are 17 factors)
I assemble a candidate learning process from a repertoire of learning strategies and techniques (I have about 100 learning techniques in my collection)
I personalize the candidate learning process to suit the child
I coach the child in how to use his/her personal learning process and transform him/her into a super learner
I optimize the learning process and add special techniques to accelerate the learning process
My Story
I mentioned earlier that children do not usually perform at their true potential.
I was such a child.
As long as I was in elementary school (or primary school as it is called in India), I was near the top of the class in almost every subject. I realize now that through those years, my mother,the principal of a school, sat with me as I worked on my homework or studied for tests, and helped me learn. When I got to sixth grade, my mother became busy with her school and with her Master’s/Ph.D. program, and the teachers in middle school were not sympathetic. “You are no longer in elementary school,” they seemed to say, “and so we will not coddle you. Grow up!”
My grades were abysmal. I struggled to learn but got nowhere.
My mother saw my predicament. While she could not spend the time to help me with my schoolwork, she did something better. In the spirit of “If you give a man a fish, he feeds for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he feeds for a lifetime,” she taught me to learn. It was an experiment, and I was the guinea pig. It was a successful experiment, though. By the end of 8th grade, I was back near the top of the class. I graduated high school with a decent score and went on to complete an Honors Engineering program with Distinction (equivalent to summa cum laude). I obtained two Master’s degrees after that.
My mother used the results of this experiment for her Ph.D. thesis and won the Commonwealth Association for Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators (CASTME) award in 1984 with this methodology.
After my mother retired in 2002, she spent her time visiting her children in the US and in India. In 2005, I convinced her to stay back and applied for her green card. While she was with me, we worked on improving the system to fit modern education research and to take into account the system of education in the US. We taught this method to my children. My older son graduated with a TRIPLE major – Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Computer Science. My younger son just graduated with a 4.0 GPA, one of only about 200 students from a graduating class of 8500. I have taught other children with excellent results.
My original idea was to make this a coaching program that my mother could get some income from and live independently. However, she fell ill in 2013 and slowly deteriorated until she passed away in 2017. I launched Turbo Learner in her memory in 2018. It is the best way I can think of to celebrate her achievements.
Your Turn
What will you do?
Status quo will only give you the same results as you have received in the past. If you want different results, you must be willing to get out of your comfort zone and try something different.
What kind of future do you imagine for your child? Bob Proctor, a very famous self-help guru, talks of aligning your purpose, your vision and your goals with your actions in order to get the results you desire.
When your purpose, vision and goals center on creating a better future for your child, what actions will you take? Which option will you choose – tutoring, test prep, counselling, generic study skills coaching, or the Turbo Learner Method?
There is always the question of the known devil versus the unknown angel. You don’t know me and may argue that going with standard solutions – tutoring, test prep, and generic study skills – could get your child to be “better” at studies. Is that enough? Don’t you want your child to be excellent, not just better? Don’t you want your child to be far, far better than anyone else?
This method was the basis of a Ph.D. thesis. This method won the CASTME award in 1984 out of 200+ entries from 70+ countries. This method has allowed me to breeze through 3 degrees, my older son through 3 majors, and my younger son to be 4.0 GPA senior. This method will unlock your child’s learning potential and unleash the genius within.
Is cost an issue? On average, a private tutor costs between $25 and $80 an hour. For SAT and test prep tutoring, prices start at $45/hr and can go up to $100/hr. And they last a long, long time.
Some institutions such as Hunting Learning Centers charge $1220 per subject for 14 hours and $2645 for 32 hours. Kumon charges $150 per month and goes on for years. Sylvan charges about $50 an hour but goes on for years. (these are rates I picked up from the internet)
So ultimately you will be spending more than $10,000 every year on less-than-perfect methods to boost your child’s education. And the Turbo Learner Method program is only 8 weeks long, gives you an exact framework that fits your child (tailor-made as opposed to “one size fits all”), for a one-time fee. The value of this system is more than $15,000 but the fee is not even half of that figure. So, if you do the math, you will note that this program offers more for less cost. And there are payment plans to help.
My question to you is: What is stopping you? Why aren’t you rushing to give your child an advantage when it comes to getting into the best high school, the best college or the best job? Do make an appointment with me for a FREE strategy session at https://msgsndr.com/widget/booking/iorEmhRcC9c6eAnIBDvR. Your children will thank you.
Education has two sides: The teachers teach and the students learn. The difference is that teachers are trained to teach. Very few students are trained to learn.
The assumption – myth – is that children learn “naturally” and nothing needs to be done about it.
Natural learning is a philosophy that encompasses two major beliefs: Children develop skills and learn according to their own natural rhythms, and we trust that each child is capable of learning on their own continuum and in their own time and their own unique way.
It is true that children are wired to naturally learn many things. We don’t have to teach children how to walk, jump, climb, talk or play. Children are naturally curious and use their senses to explore the world. They learn by observing elders and mimicking their behavior. This natural learning ability is curbed by the formal education system on two levels: First, they are asked to “be serious” which means that learning is not play but work, and they had learned everything so far by playing; and second, they are evaluated by grades and report cards which takes away the enjoyment of learning.
How do you get your child to enjoy learning again?
Dale Carnegie said that the best way to get someone to do something is to make them want to do it.
You can coax and cajole your child to sit and study. You can bribe your child with gifts and privileges. You can threaten them with consequences if they did not study. You can actually punish them for not studying. In the first case, they will do it for you. In the second case, they will do it to get the reward. In the third and fourth cases, they will do it out of fear. However, none of these will achieve anything. The only way to make them achieve anything out of studying is when they want to study, and when they enjoy learning.
Tony Robbins, in his sales training, used the acronyms ERBN, LRBN and DRAB – Emotional Reasons to Buy Now, Logical Reasons to Buy Now, and Dominant Reasons to Avoid Buying. The premise is that while we human beings pride ourselves in the use of logic to make decisions, most of our decisions come from our emotions and we use logic to justify it. This is more so in children – they are not yet in the habit of making logical decisions – and more so with tweens and teens whose hormonal levels ensure that their lives are largely driven by emotions. Therefore, to make them learn because they want to (using Dale Carnegie’s principle), we give them emotional reasons and hold them in place with logical reasons (using Tony Robbins’ principle).
Most middle school, high school and college students are passionate about something. As a parent, you either already know or can determine what your child feels strongly about. Help your child realize the passion while you demonstrate your own passion. Leverage the passion for one thing to other related areas. Show how all knowledge is linked. Through this journey, your child will become passionate about learning about everything.
Incidentally, the passion to learn will lead to feeling confident about himself/herself. This leads to a “Can do” attitude.
The ability to learn will help a person not only to successfully navigate through school and college but also through the rest of life.
Learners will be able to adapt to any situation and change with the times. Learners will be able acquire new skills when needed and grow into new roles in their careers. Learners will be able to succeed where others fail.
The Turbo Learner method is a framework for acquiring, applying, adapting and augmenting knowledge and skills in a structured and consistent manner.
Let me give you a sample of what I do with this free report “5 Tips to Boost Your Child’s Learning Ability“. These are simple steps you can take now, and when you see how well they work, you can make an appointment with me to learn more.
There were 5 blind men who tried to describe an elephant by touching it. Each only touched a part of the elephant and described that part:
“It’s like a wall”, said the person who felt the flank.
“It’s like a rope”, said the one who felt the tail.
“It’s like a pillar”, said the one who felt a leg.
“It’s like a spear”, said the man who felt a tusk.
“It’s like a fan”, said the one who touched an ear.
Were they wrong?
Each was only partly right. They are not equipped to see the entire elephant. The true description of an elephant includes all these and more.
In the world of education, there are many schools of thought both on teaching and on learning. Each expert focuses his/her attention on one aspect – neuroscience, cognition and meta-cognition, behavioural psychology, learning style (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, verbal, logical, solitary, social), personality type, and biochemistry. Some focus on memorization and recall techniques, some focus on study habits, some on self-testing practices, some on note taking systems, etc.
Who is right?
They also are only partly right. What they are missing is the ability to see the entire picture. They are in a swimlane of their own perspective … and cannot visualize the entire elephant. As it relates to learning, no one method suits every student. It is best to take a holistic approach to building a personal learning process that involves the whole brain (left-brain for analysis, right-brain for creativity, cerebellum for a disciplined approach), all levels of consciousness (conscious, subconscious and unconscious), includes multiple disciplines (biochemistry, neuroscience, psychology, physiology, etc.) and multiple learning factors (learning style, personality type, strengths, aptitude, etc.).
Learn to Learn from Turbo Learner is such a system. It is based on the research of Dr. Indira Rao, an award-winning educator whose “Topic-web Model of Learning” has improved the lives of hundreds of students. Dr. Rao believed that education should be a partnership between the teacher and the student, that the student must actively reach out to grab what the teacher offered rather than passively receive what the teacher threw out. To do so, the student must be prepared to learn. On this basis, Dr. Rao created techniques to help children learn better.
Learn to Learn embodies my 5-step process:
Identify the student’s learning factors (there are 17 factors)
Select from Dr. Rao’s learning techniques those which fit the student’s learning factors
Integrate the learning techniques into a standard learning process outline
Coach the student in the use of the personal learning process
Optimize the process and accelerate learning
The Turbo Learner method is a framework for acquiring, applying, adapting and augmenting knowledge and skills in a structured and consistent manner.
Let me give you a sample of what I do with this free report “5 Tips to Boost Your Child’s Learning Ability“. These are simple steps you can take now, and when you see how well they work, you can make an appointment with me to learn more.
Let me tell you a story.
turbolearner 