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    Study Smart: What parents, students, and teachers should know
    Study Smart: What parents, students, and teachers should know
    Study Smart: What parents, students, and teachers should know
    Ebook197 pages2 hours

    Study Smart: What parents, students, and teachers should know

    By Queena N. Lee-Chua

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    About this ebook

    How can parents motivate their children to study hard, without becoming “tiger parents”? How can students prepare well for exams? How can bullying be minimized? Why doesn’t multitasking work? What are the ways to manage plagiarism, cheating, and other shortcuts to learning? Bestselling author Queena N. Lee-Chua addresses these questions and other topics chosen from her popular column “Eureka!” in the Learning section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. 

    Part of Anvil’s Learning series, this volume includes more than thirty learning issues for parents, students, and teachers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnvil Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateNov 2, 2017
    ISBN9789712729300
    Study Smart: What parents, students, and teachers should know

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      Book preview

      Study Smart - Queena N. Lee-Chua

      Dear Parent

      Brain Rules

      How can our children best thrive at work, at home, and in school?

      Our son Scott stayed in Guangzhou, China from October to December 2011. One hundred thirty Grade Seven Xavier School students, supervised by a dozen teachers, immersed themselves in Chinese culture, language, and studies. Days and nights were hectic. Aside from tests, assignments, and intramurals, the boys did chores such as doing laundry and bathroom cleaning.

      Scott loved it all. With excellent teachers (from Xavier and from South China Normal University), a stimulating environment, and fun-filled activities, Scott was thriving. He stayed strong and alert. His secret? He took a nap during the day.

      The boys were up by six and did not sleep till ten at the earliest. So after lunch and before afternoon studies, Scott napped for half an hour, waking up refreshed and ready for more. Some friends followed his lead, with good results.

      Sleep Increases Learning Ability

      Scott and his friends did the right thing. In mid-afternoon, it can be nearly impossible to get anything done, and if you attempt to push through, which is what most of us do, you [will be] fighting a gnawing tiredness, says US molecular biologist John Medina. The brain really wants to take a nap and doesn’t care what its owner is doing.

      NASA scientist Mark Rosekind found that a twenty-six-minute nap made NASA pilots perform 34 percent better. Other researchers found that a forty-five-minute nap made students sharper, an effect lasting more than six hours.

      What if businesses and schools took [naps] seriously? Medina says. No meetings or classes … no high-demand presentations and no critical exams … would be scheduled at these times. Instead, there would be deliberately planned downshifts. Naps would be accorded deference … People hired for their intellectual strength would be allowed to keep that strength in tip-top shape.

      Exercise Improves Cognition

      In his remarkable book Brain Rules (www.brainrules.net), Medina culls from his lifelong work on the brain and lists several principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Aside from the importance of sleep, Medina also touts the benefits of physical exercise, especially aerobic activities.

      Exercise makes blood flow to our brains, increasing glucose to burn for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that remain. Twenty to thirty minutes of walking increases protein production which makes brain cells communicate better. Aerobic exercise just twice a week decreases our risk of dementia by 50 percent and Alzheimer’s by 60 percent.

      Physician and athlete Dr. Antronette Yancey found that when children exercise aerobically, their minds work better, and when they stop exercising, the cognitive gain disappeared. Kids who are fit grasp ideas and focus on them better than their sedentary classmates.

      Yancey says that kids who exercise are less disruptive in class. Since they have higher self-esteem, they are less depressed and less anxious. They are likely to be happier.

      To give more time to other subjects, physical-education classes have unfortunately decreased throughout the United States, and in many schools in the Philippines. Cutting off physical exercise—the very activity most likely to promote cognitive performance—to do better on a test score is like trying to gain weight by starving yourself, Medina says.

      Brains Cannot Multitask

      Multitasking is a myth, Medina says. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. Even if students claim that they can multitask, studies show that attention, and therefore performance, suffers.

      Medina describes several processes when we try to multitask, from alerting the cortex and firing of appropriate neurons to engaging different parts of the brain and activating various commands. These steps occur every time we switch from one task to another.

      [The whole process] is time-consuming, and sequential, says Medina. That’s why we can’t multitask. That’s why people find themselves losing track of previous progress and needing to start over, muttering things like ‘Now where was I?’ each time they switch tasks.

      Studies show that people who are interrupted take 50 percent longer to finish something, and worse, make 50 percent more errors in everything. Students who try to write a term paper while instant messaging, playing games, and rocking to music will not do any of these things as well as if they had done them one at a time.

      Multitasking can literally kill. Eating, putting on makeup, talking on the cellphone while driving have been proven to lead to significantly more accidents.

      Cellphone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes in emergencies, slower to return to normal speed afterwards, and more wild in their following distance behind the vehicle in front of them, he says. In a half-second, a driver going 70 mph travels 51 feet. Given that 80 percent of crashes happen within three seconds of distraction, increasing your amount of task-switching increases your risk of an accident. More than 50 percent of the visual cues are missed by cellphone talkers, [so] they get in more wrecks than anyone except very drunk drivers.

      Never Stop Exploring

      Scott was excited about their science experiment: Testing whether China-made sticky tape is better in quality than those made in the Philippines. His group gathered data from manufacturers and designed tests of adhesive strength.

      When he was growing up, Scott turned our house into his own lab. We never knew when the fridge would have mixtures of oil and water, when the bathroom would house real or plastic insects and reptiles, when a solar toy car would suddenly zoom by. Mishaps occur, but all of us have survived so far.

      We do not outgrow the thirst for knowledge, Medina says. Scientists used to think that we are born with all the brain cells we were going to get, and that they steadily eroded in a depressing journey to old age.

      Research now shows that even when we are grown, our brain creates new cells for learning, and that our brain responds to new experiences. Let us never lose our sense of wonder.

      The Best Gift for Our Kids

      How can parents help their kids do their best in school and in life?

      When the Ateneo College Entrance Test (ACET) results came out, I was inundated by appeals from friends, family, strangers, requesting help so that their children could be accepted into the school.

      Many of the emails went like this: Our children took entrance review classes in the summer/for two months/for many weeks in one/two/three review centers, so why didn’t they make it? We got tutors for our kids. Why didn’t our children make it?

      Simple. The most effective way for a student to get into a good university (though nothing is guaranteed) is not by cramming crash courses in review or tutorial centers, but by steadily mastering the fundamentals and building stock knowledge in all areas of study, a process that takes years or decades, not weeks or months.

      Many good schools hold review classes for their own students, at a fraction of the cost (or even for free). A principal said, Instead of giving our students lengthy and hurried reviews of math, science, or vocabulary, we teach them test-taking skills. We give handouts of formulas and terms, but unlike what outside centers do, we do not try to reteach everything. Since we know our students best, we also know how best to help them do well. In some cases, we give students realistic advice about what to expect in college admissions, given their performance so far.

      As for tutors, wise ones help students develop study habits so the latter can soon learn on their own. Ineffective tutors do kids’ assignments for them, fostering a cycle of dependency so insidious that kids never learn to study by themselves even after they turn eighteen.

      In my college classes, the worst-performing students are those who had multiple tutors all their lives. These tutors sometimes gave different answers, causing more confusion.

      Since students are the ones who take the college entrance tests (and not their tutors), parents should not be surprised that their kids did not do well. After all, they never mastered the required skills needed to do well in the first place.

      Not Giving Up

      The best gift we can share with our children is our time and presence. We should not be stage parents, hovering over our kids and doing everything—or hiring someone to do everything—for them. But neither should we be absentee parents who relinquish responsibilities, such as tutoring, to help our kids fulfill their potential.

      In the Best Practices Study of Ateneo High School achievers we conducted some years back, more than 80 percent of the top students say that they have never had a professional tutor, and that instead, their parents were their first and only tutors. (Read Helping Our Children Do Well in School, Anvil, 2004.)

      These parents were mostly not honor students themselves, nor did they have education or psychology degrees. Some were working mothers, some were homemakers, but practically all of them sat down with their children (as early as Nursery or Prep) and made "tutok." (Parents are hands-on with teaching their children themselves.)

      Day in and day out, these parents were available in case their children needed help. They made sure that their kids finished homework before playing. Parents created drill sheets and sample tests, which they asked their children to answer.

      These parents were not saints. At times they got irritated or frustrated with their children, but the important thing is that they never gave up. After years of training, they reaped the rewards.

      Their children could study independently by middle school. They knew how to study with friends and consult teachers in school. Their grades remained consistently high. They were accepted into the universities they applied to.

      Raising Pinoy Boys

      Mary Rose Fres-Fausto, the author of Raising Pinoy Boys, left her investment–banking job to be a full-time homemaker to three sons, Marty, Enrique, and Anton, and never regretted it. She says, My sons are happy and doing well in the Ateneo, but this did not come on a silver platter. Developing good study habits in my sons involved a lot of work, trial and error, arguments along the way, years of monitoring, encouragement and active participation on the part of my husband Marvin and me, and the boys’ cooperation.

      Fausto established a homework routine for the boys. She learned patience, lots of it. "If you wish to help your son with homework, ‘magbaon ng pasensya (keep some patience),’ she says. Even Marty who is interested in school was easily distracted. I would argue with him because I did not have enough patience, or well, I didn’t know how to handle my expectations well yet. I would get impatient when

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