Our Son Sam

This month our son Sam started his first year of medical school. Sam attended traditional public school kindergarten until he graduated from high school. He was fortunate to be accepted to an elite Midwestern liberal arts college where he earned a degree in biochemistry.

Sam always did well within our traditional system of education. He went to class every day, studied when he needed to study, and performed at the top of his class. This success followed him through his college experience. In fact, he missed only one question on his first medical school exam (ok, can’t a dad brag once in a while?).

And then the phone rang yesterday.

It was Sam. After catching up with his and our daily activities, he shared with his mom and me that he was considering not attending medical school lectures in-person any longer. It wasn’t that the lectures weren’t interesting. It was more a matter of Sam figuring out that he could use his learning time better if he watched the classroom lectures online after the live event. That way, he could run through the video at a faster speed, while taking notes and creating study materials at the same time. Sam told us that he thought it might be worth testing out to see if it could make his studying strategies more efficient and effective.

I was a proud papa.

You know why?

Sam, even though highly successful with his first medical school assessment, while using what some would call traditional learning practices, wanted to change. He wanted to change because he thought that change would fit his learning style better than a traditional approach.

Sam was changing his learning plan, on his own, based on his evaluation that maybe he could improve his learning to make it more effective and efficient.

Sam recently read Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. He thinks it was this book that made him start thinking about “how” he was learning and whether, even though successful with traditional ways, he needed to adjust his learning strategies.

I ran across a summary, written by Scaling 4 Growth’s  Frumi Rachel Barr, where Make it Stick’s authors offer the following advice when it comes to learning better and remembering longer:

Learning is Misunderstood. Most of us don’t understand learning per se because we don’t spend time studying how learning happens and deciding what learning strategies are right for us as individuals.

To Learn, Retrieve. According to the Make it Stick authors, retrieval, and the practice of retrieving over and over again, is the one single learning strategy that makes the difference between learning and not learning.

Mix Up Your Practice. Both in terms of time and strategy, mixing up both time and strategy works the best when it comes to learning. Spending large amounts of time studying and using a singular study strategy will not allow most of us to learn large amounts of material. Intermittent study sessions, along with mixed strategies, are best when it comes to deep learning.

Embrace Difficulties. The process of strengthening mental representations for long-term memory is called consolidation. In consolidation, the brain reorganizes and stabilizes the memory traces. This may occur over several hours or longer and involves deep processing of the new material, during which scientists believe that the brain replays or rehearses the learning, giving it meaning, filling in black spots, and making connections to past experiences and to other knowledge already stores in long-term memory.

Consolidation isn’t easy. It’s one of the toughest challenges to achieving deep learning.  It takes time and patience on the part of the learner. But, if a learner is successful with consolidation, whatever is learned stays with the learner over long periods of time.

Avoid Illusions of Knowing. At the root of our learner effectiveness is our ability to grasp the world around us and to take the measure of our own performance. We’re constantly making judgments about what we know and don’t know and whether we’re capable of handling a task or solving a problem. As we work at something, we keep an eye on ourselves, adjusting our thinking or actions as we progress.

Get Beyond Learning Styles. Although the Making it Stick authors recognize learning styles as something to consider when building your own learning strategies, it’s really more about what you tell yourself about your ability that plays a part in shaping the ways you learn and perform.

Increase Your Abilities. Learning takes practice, and like any skill, the less you practice, the less likely you will be able to learn at the levels you desire.

Make it Stick. When a learner, no matter their age, becomes serious enough to plan out their learning, then that learner will more than likely see desired results when it comes to successful learning. On the other hand, if learners aren’t intentional when it comes to their own learning, then they shouldn’t expect success.

I’m proud of my son for trying to figure out his learning plan. At the same time, I wonder how many young learners remain clueless about anything laid out in Making it Stick?

My wife and I are lucky. All four of our kids have learned how to develop their own learning plans, mostly without the assistance of their mom and dad, and definitely without the assistance of the traditional school system.

But how many parents aren’t so lucky. How many parents have kids who don’t know how to assess their own learning, and to adjust their own learning plans according to those assessments?

If there was one big change I would hope to see in our traditional school system, it would be taking the time to teach young learners how to define, plan, execute, and evaluate their own learning.

But if that hasn’t happened by now, I’m not hopeful it will ever happen.

I’m away until September 11^th. SVB