734-994-1896
Email:
amy.lesemann@gmail.com
About a month ago I interviewed 15
year old Bella. She’s a wonderful sophomore, homeschooled, who said glorious
things about me, so there should have been no problem. We discussed, first, how
things were B.L.L. – Before Lesemann Learning.
“I wasn’t focused; I wasn’t really
motivated. I felt sort of overwhelmed,” Bella mused. “Even when I was supposed
to be having fun, I knew there was this work hanging over me.”
“Even when you were procrastinating,
you weren’t able to get it off your mind?”
“Yeah! It was just – there. All the time. Now,
I get it done. It’s finished. And it’s not bad, really. I mean, I get it done
better and faster.”
“Would you say you like to read…a
lot? I mean, I brought you maybe six books, and you zipped right through all of
them!”
She laughed. “It’s a problem
sometimes. I’d rather read than work. I get distracted, sometimes.”
“So, let’s talk about writing, and especially
outlining. That really made a difference for you, especially with those biology
essays. You had an interesting analogy – do you remember that?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it’s like a
recipe. You sort of start with this basic thing, and you set it all up. When
you have that outline set up at first, you kind of get free to add in all those
spices, like what you said about all those transition words, and stuff.”
I did not pay her to say that.
Really.
She sighed, and twirled in her
chair. “It’s been such a relief to stop having all that work hanging over me.”
So where’s the rub, right? I sound
like the greatest tutor since maybe Socrates sat in the town square and they
fed him the hemlock.
Then I talked to Bella’s mom.
Bella’s mom sighed, too. But not
with happiness.
“She’s doing better, yes. But I
still have to chase her down.”
Whaaat?
“I mean, when she’s working, she’s
doing a better job, and she does know how to use an outline, which is really
great. But she is still just wandering off! And I have Anthony, who’s 18 months
old; it’s just… too much sometimes.”
Right about then my delusions of
grandeur began to crumble. I brought the
two of them together, and posed the question, what exactly is going on?
Bella was a bit embarrassed. “Well,
I still find it hard to concentrate. I mean, I just…” she fumbled for
words. “It’s not that I don’t WANT to, I
just…lose focus.”
I nodded. “In college, I fell asleep
every I opened a calculus text book. It got a bit embarrassing after awhile,” I
replied. “It was like a learned response. Boom! My head was on the desk, every
time. But something needs to change,
obviously.”
We discussed several options, and
settled on a few study strategies that have helped many students over the years. Bella’s commitment to work would be
reinforced by carrots and sticks that Bella chose, with her mother’s encouragement. If what Bella selected as a stick was not
working, her mother would select something a bit more …stick-like.
“Since it’s hard to focus on topics
you find boring for a long time, set a timer on the computer on her desk for 20
minutes,” I said. “Then, when the timer goes off, get up. Set the timer for a
10 minute break. Stretch your legs. Walk
around, get a healthy snack. Talk to your parents, play with the dog or your
brother, and clear out the cobwebs.”
“When the ten minutes are up, go
back to work, and at this point you should be working on something
different. Reset the timer for 20
minutes. When you KNOW you’re only working for 20 minute stretches, it’s much
easier to focus.”
We discussed playing low, non
distracting music, having some healthy food to munch on, as well.
All of these little strategies make school
work a bit more pleasant. It also gives Bella more control over her
environment. She chooses what music she’ll play. She chooses what healthy
snacks she’ll eat, and what she’ll do during her ten minute breaks.
She will also plan out what work she will
tackle, in what order, so that she would mix up her difficult, boring, and more
enjoyable subjects. For my part, I would
stay in touch with her and add some web pages that would help her review topics
using online games. I’ll also go over how to use flash cards efficiently.
I provided an excel spreadsheet that
would help her keep track of her work, and she promised to use it. Becky,
Bella’s mom, looked on approvingly.
The next week, however, was almost a
replay of the previous week.
“When I work, I do pretty well,”
Bella sighed. “But then I don’t. Work, I mean.”
“She is honest about it, to be fair
to her,” her mother interjected. She pulled out the day’s plan. “She admitted
that she didn’t do any work at all for 30 minutes. She just read.”
Could be worse, I thought. She could
be on Facebook. But the fact of the matter is…she’s not getting her work done.
So I lowered the boom. “My concern
with homeschooling,” I said to Bella, “Is not the quality of work, or the
socializing, or anything like that. My concern is the rigor, the intensity of
the student’s effort.” I turned towards Bella, whom I like very much, and
respect very much.
“You are one smart, capable person.
But if you keep up like this, when you get out there in the real world, you’re
going to get eaten alive.”
She nodded, a bit solemnly. I kept
on like this, in Serious Teacher Mode.
This is a great family, with a bright girl who has a classic 14 year old
attitude – why read Plutarch when I really want to read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?
And therein lays the problem with
homeschooling. So Bella would need to develop that self control, that self discipline
that the rest of us grew when we hit college. We knew that if we couldn’t pull
it together then, we flunked out.
I left her with another, more
detailed plan in place. We reviewed her strategies, including plans to contact
her teachers, spreadsheets to keep track of when she was working and when she
wasn’t, and her promises to get serious.
I held my breath. Would the third
week prove to be the charm?
One week later, I entered the house
through the mud room, patted the dog, Ballou, and stepped over the perpetually
ecstatic 18 month old. I found Bella in the study room. The timer was ticking
down. She was staring at a book with headphones on.
It was not The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
She looked up, startled. “Oh, hi!”
she said. She clicked off the timer.
“This…” I waved my hand at the
screen. “…is good!”
“Yeah, it’s going pretty well,” she
said. “Not perfectly. But ok.”
“So, let’s go over each subject, and
you tell me, on a scale of one to ten, ten being perfect, how the class is
going.”
She gave everything either a six, or
an eight. “So,” I said. “An eight, now,
for biology? Why’s it going so well?”
“I met with the teacher, and she
suggested that as I read I take notes in my notebook on what I read, and I put
down the page numbers, so I make sure I know what I read! It’s really helping!”
“Hmmm,” I said. “Seems like I’ve
heard that somewhere before.”
“Oh,” she said, blushing. “You said
that, right?”
“Sometimes it helps to hear it from
more than one person,” I said, grinning. “And if it works, it works! What else
– you said, an eight in math?”
“I have a regular teacher in that
class, and other kids. So that helps, to, like work on things with them.”
“Makes sense. But a six in Latin?”
“I keep looking up the answers, but
they’re not sticking! Also, I’m doing that with Mom, instead of like, a regular
teacher. That’s sort of…different.”
We discussed online games that would
help, and the following week we would start using flash cards to really get
those Latin verbs down. She would also
schedule a time, regularly, to go over the Latin work with her mother, to give
it a more official, teacher-like feel.
So overall, Bella averaged 7.5 out
of ten on five classes, according to her self-evaluation.
I disagreed. Based on how seriously
she was taking things, this third week, I think I’d give her more like a 9.
It was good to see the change in
Bella. It would seem as if the act of evaluating herself, determining what
worked, and what didn’t work, made all the difference for her. This gave her a
sense of control, and put her in the driver’s seat. With a sense of responsibility,
she started to feel pretty good about evaluating herself, making some changes, and
frankly, the burden of honesty made her commitment to work a bit more serious.
I left Bella surfing the sites we’d
found on deciduous trees, and she looked up to wave good-bye.
“Let me know if you need any help,”
I said, at the door.
“I will,” she said, eyes returning
to the trees.
“Ok, see you next week,” I said. But
I knew my days tutoring this girl were numbered.
“You’re next, kid,” I said. Anthony
grinned and squealed. Ballou just grinned.
