EPLCR

San Jose, COSTA RICA – EPL is an educational consulting group in Costa Rica that provides tutoring, college and graduate school application consultations, test preparation, coaching, and educational and artistic enrichment programs for students who are interested in gaining acceptance to both local and international schools.

Juan Jacobo Bernal, a partner and tutor with the organization, organizes study groups made up of students who read The Art of Learning and then develop Spanish language presentations of the material. He is specifically interested in having the students develop an understanding of how the learning principles relate to their own personal experiences. Through an exploration of principles such as “Investment in Loss”, “Using Adversity”, “The Downward Spiral”, and “Stress and Recovery” they will begin to think about developing habits and routines to change their detrimental learning behaviors and begin to push themselves toward higher levels of achievement.

The first group of students who participated in this program were asked to read the student study guide and choose segments that were most applicable to their academic lives.  From there, they translated the concepts into Spanish and created a presentation to teach the learning principles to other Latin American students.

The Art of Bowling, part 2

By JOHN KAFALAS

Earlier this month, I recorded a 4th-place finish in the Candlepin Pro Series playoffs, a season-ending tournament involving the top 40 bowlers in the pro tour standings. I started as the #36 seed and went to the semifinals before losing to the eventual champion. Along the way, several of Josh’s principles came into play.

 

Staying in the present

The day’s agenda: a preliminary round for seeds 25-40, then five rounds of bracket match play. I felt anxious in the preliminary round and had to use a lot of self-talk: Stay in the moment. Believe in yourself. Trust your game – you know it works; do not try to force it. I survived and moved on to match play, where I beat three of the best bowlers in the game, before bowing out.

I know that my game can and will get the job done. But I tend to be too excitable in competition and have sometimes had a problem Josh describes from chess tournaments: investing so much emotion and energy in one match that you’re too spent and lose the next one. I’ve been working on keeping that in check and pacing myself better, trying to avoid putting everything into one match as an end in itself. Josh says, “the solution does not lie in denying emotions, but in learning to use them to our advantage.” That means channeling my excitability into determination and focus. I don’t talk with or even look at my opponent often during a match. After a win (in bowling, when you lose a match, you go home), I try not to react too much or talk about it with other bowlers or spectators; I just drink some water and prepare for the next match.

 

The Soft Zone

In the Pro Series playoffs, my second-round opponent was one of the top bowlers in New England – the winner of this year’s 20-game Easter Classic, in fact. I got off to a quick start and after the first game of the two-game match, had a healthy lead. But early in the second game, just as I was delivering a ball, the public-address system interrupted with a loud announcement related to another tournament going on at the same time. That broke my concentration badly and threw me off my game for a couple of frames, while my opponent threw two spares to cut my comfortable lead to a tenuous one. It was like that moment Josh describes in a chess game, when you have an advantage but then make a small mistake and find yourself in an even game all of a sudden.

At a moment like that, the immediate reaction is to think, “Why does she have to keep interrupting us on the PA? Now I’m in trouble. I had this lead, and the distraction made me screw up and lose it. How am I supposed to get it back against this guy?”

But that’s not what happened. I thought of Josh and said to myself, “Time to make sandals. Stay patient and just get back to business.” I had to trust that my game – which, after all, had staked me to a lead in the first place – was perfectly capable of doing it again. Which is exactly what happened — I got back in gear, defeated my opponent, then won one more match against another of the top bowlers. I finally lost in the semifinal round – but the tournament was my high-water mark as a tour bowler. It also reinforced the incremental theory of learning and the idea that you can always keep getting better. This season was my best ever… but there is still room for improvement.

King Kekaulike High School

KIHEI, HI – Matthew Cerny, the school’s English Department Chair, plans to use The Art of Learning with his 9th grade AVID students.  “AVID is a college prep program for underserved students in the academic middle who exhibit potential, but are underachieving,” Cerny says.  His students will study the book as a class using Socratic Seminars, Learning Logs, journals and reading circles, in hopes that Josh’s story and learning principles will help him to  “inspire and educate the WHOLE student as well as raise achievement.”
He is specifically interested in using the book to assist his students in the college selection process, explaining “one difficulty that we find in sending disadvantaged children to school is that it can become overwhelming to ‘get to know everything about all those school choices.’  One coping strategy I found is that it’s more important to know yourself, and then you can choose more confidently.  The book drew me in with its ability to support this strategy.”

Jackson Elementary

Pasadena, CA – Jackson Elementary School recently received a magnet grant to become a STEM and Spanish/English Dual Language Immersion school.  Fourth grade teacher, Eduardo Chenu, is interested in working on social/emotional skills with his students, many of whom are from high-poverty backgrounds, in order to increase resilience.  “My dream is to first explore the possibility of implementing Art of Learning activities in the coming years in both the Dual Language portion of our school and the Regular Education portion that place an emphasis on viewing mistakes as opportunities for growth and figuring out ways to articulate performing on an optimal ‘flow’ level, and then finding new ways to expand on that” Chenu explains.  He will incorporate the learning principles from the Resilience module into his lesson plans “in a way that is less stressful, more organic, and in line with the partnerships and themes that may arise naturally at our school.”

Art Lives Here

WHITE PLAINS, MD – Art Lives Here is an after-school program with a mission to help under privileged children learn through the creative arts.  Christine Kendrick, the program’s founder and director says, “Our goal is to allow the children to explore art and education, and to foster better study habits by using the tools of looking at the simplicity of a problem and drawing from there.”  She believes that the learning principles outlined in The Art of Learning will give children the necessary tools to “open their minds and learn how to think.”  Through their work with The Art of Learning Project, Ms. Kendrick expects to see proven results from the students in the areas in which they have previously struggled.  She hopes that the clarity they gain through this program will help them to have more self-confidence in all areas of their lives.

Lakeside School

Seattle, WA – Lakeside School is an independent school serving 800 students in grades 5 through 12.  Derrek Falor, the Girls Soccer Program Head, previously worked with The Art of Learning Project in his position as the women’s soccer coach at Cleveland State University in Ohio.
Coach Falor gave his Varsity Soccer team at Lakeside an assignment to read The Art of Learning over the summer and explore the correlation between Josh’s experiences with chess and Thai Chi and their own experiences with soccer.  This assignment provided his athletes with the opportunity to develop an understanding of their relationship to the learning principles and gave Coach Falor a window into their own perceptions of their strengths and challenges on the soccer field.  He has shared a collection of student responses to chapters 4-6, chapters 7-8, and chapters 9-11 on our Resources for Educators page.
In response to the challenges that arose on the playing field as well as the ideas that came up in the student responses, Coach Falor developed a season-long, holistic program focused on examining how the players handled moments of transition throughout their days and developing strategies for working on Stress and Recovery in all aspects of their academic and athletic lives.  In future seasons he plans to work on The Power of Presence and The Downward Spiral to help his athletes remain in the moment rather than focusing on what just happened or what will happen next.  He is also hoping to expand the program to include Program Heads from a range of athletic departments in the school so that the students will encounter these learning principles across the various sports they play throughout the year.