Learning Challenges Archives

Netiquette, part 1: Social Media and Message Board Basics

May 2, 2019 Brad Hoffman

When the news media reported in 2017 that Harvard rescinded admission to 10 applicants after discovering inappropriate social media posts from those students, everyone realized that netiquette really does make a difference. Netiquette is the set of manners and expectations for writing on the Internet. How you communicate on message boards and social media matters.

Netiquette exists to help everyone interact with respect. Email and online messages offer the chance to communicate quickly from a distance. This immediacy created connections that were never possible before, but it also seems to let people express themselves more forcefully and thoughtlessly. Writing in the spur of the moment is dangerous, especially now when nothing posted online is ever really deleted, since people can share, screenshot, and recover anything. What seems funny in one instant may suddenly appear horrendously insensitive the next.

As you begin to apply for college, internships and your first jobs, your presentation online matters. Many companies now scan applicants’ social media presence as a part of the hiring process; 91% of hiring managers review an applicant’s social media profile according to Reppler’s 2011 survey of 300 Human Resources professionals. Time Magazine reported that 55% of hiring managers reconsidered a potential hire based on what they found online according to the 2014 edition of Jobvite’s annual Social Recruiting Survey. That same Jobvite survey discovered that 66% of hiring managers held poor spelling and grammar against candidates—not errors on their job applications, but on their social media posts! Be careful and thoughtful now to save yourself embarrassment later.

Many classes now use class message boards and social media sites (like Tumblr or Instagram) as a part of the work. Being curt or rude to other students, let alone the faculty member, on any class message board or social media site will hurt your relationships with everyone in the class. Even when frustrated, make sure you use correct grammar, clear sentence structure, and polite language. Proper netiquette helps you succeed.

Following netiquette guidelines ensures that people stop to think. Always ask yourself these three simple questions:

Is your statement true?
Does it help the situation?
Are you being kind?

The following recommendations consider the specific situations of class message boards and school social media activities, but they apply to private and personal interactions too.

If you are asking a question, always check to make sure the information isn’t already available. Look at previous posts, the assignment description, the syllabus and other materials. You don’t want to waste people’s time.
Be brief. Write what you need but then edit that to the minimum necessary for clarity.
Edit your statements by reorganizing information so that your points are clear and clustered together appropriately.
Thank people for their help by liking their comment or summarizing the helpful advice in one comment that both recognizes the feedback you got and makes it easier for others to review in the future.
Do not disrespect others. This one is obvious but needs reiterating because it happens far too frequently. Even if responding to someone who is callously disrespecting netiquette guidelines, do so politely. If you don’t, you simply reinforce that the loudest, most obnoxious behavior gets the final word.
Be careful with humor. Taking things out of context is easy to do online. Be careful with what you say so that others don’t take your comments in the wrong way.
Be generous in giving and receiving criticism. Imagine that everyone is trying to be helpful. Do the same.

Charlotte Kent, PhD is a tutor and executive functions coach for My Learning Springboard. She has a textbook forthcoming for first year college students, Writing for College and Beyond: Life Lessons from the College Composition Classroom.

Accessing College Accommodations

April 10, 2019 Brad Hoffman

Once at college, students are responsible for managing any and all of their own academic and psychological paperwork. This responsibility is often a surprise and overwhelming for students and their families. For students to get the academic support they need surrounding any kind of learning challenge or learning disability requires documentation that only the student may submit. A parent can’t do it. College accommodations are so helpful but getting them requires that young adults plan ahead.

Confusion around the process of getting college accommodations is common and often creates problems. Parents may try to get the paperwork submitted on time, but too late learn that they can’t. Students may not realize that they are the ones who must manage the paperwork and schedule any required meetings as a part of their orientation process at their college and university. Confusion around college accommodation expectations means that many students wait too long to process paperwork, leading to delays that make the first semester unnecessarily complicated.

Some students avoid the process entirely because they believe they won’t need it or want to try life without the accommodations that have helped them so far. College accommodation paperwork being in place doesn’t mean that students are forced to use it. It does mean that when, and if, they do need it, everything is already in place. For example, one semester, a student managed everything without a hitch until the last crunch of exams and final research papers. At that point, having the official university document to present to faculty that detailed the permitted allowances helped the student to complete the semester successfully.

Faculty are told not to extend allowances without the proper college or university documentation. When faculty refuse to offer medical or academic support and extensions, they are not doing so to be difficult or unpleasant. They have to follow the rules, too. The college accommodations office formerly known for serving learning disabilities, but which increasingly is known as the Accessibility Office, has procedures in place to verify student needs and ensure that all students get the most and best support. When students don’t have the paperwork in place and ask for extensions, they are often not taking advantage of the full panoply of support systems available to them.

This first semester, when students establish their patterns at college, is an unfortunate period for students to experience unnecessary hurdles. Students who qualify for accommodations should have access to extra time for tests or assignments, or the necessary support for anxiety and studying without having to scramble in that moment of stress to get it. Getting college accommodation paperwork in place helps students create a successful foundation for their college experience.

A parent can help a student through this process during the summer before college starts by identifying the office where all this paperwork needs to happen and being supportive as the student learns to independently manage the process to gain any necessary accommodations. Parents can help by being present when the student calls, helping the student take note of any necessary documentation and forms, guiding the student through making appointments, and organizing forms for submission.

Coaching the student to be independent in this way ensures the greatest success later–the student knows who to contact and what to expect when issues arise during their academic years. College accommodations, whether titled the Office of Accessibility, or variations on that name, exists to help students become accomplished self-advocates. They often guide students to the various forms of support in place at the college.

Every school is different and that makes general guidelines difficult. Usually, however, students need documentation from a psychologist, psychiatrist, or physician as well as documentation from the high school to ensure students can register with the office. Once registered, the office provides the documentation for faculty, coaches, counselors, advisors, and others who may need to know in order to provide all necessary and reasonable support.

Start the process early. Don’t wait until orientation. Much of this can be done over the summer before school starts. Gathering official documentation from doctors and specialists can take time, and once received it needs to be processed. If any meetings or in-person signatures are necessary, make an appointment for the period during orientation. Waiting until arriving on campus to do everything often leads to confusion and lost documentation, as panicked families inundate the office and staff.

College accommodations exist to help students, faculty, coaches, and everyone at the college help the student succeed. Managing the process before college starts allows for the most seamless transition.

By Charlotte Kent, PhD, Private Tutor and Executive Function Coach, and Brad Hoffman, M.S.Ed. and Curriculum and Instruction Specialist.

Is Speed Reading Good Reading?

March 20, 2019 Brad Hoffman

Last week, a new speed-reading app was announced by Spritz, a technology developer. The company claims that:

“Reading is inherently time consuming because your eyes have to move from word to word and line to line. Traditional reading also consumes huge amounts of physical space on a page or screen, which limits reading effectiveness on small displays…Now, with compact text streaming from Spritz, content can be streamed one word at a time, without forcing your eyes to spend time moving around the page… Our “Redicle” technology enhances readability even more by using horizontal lines and hash marks to direct your eyes to the red letter in each word, so you can focus on the content that interests you.”

When the app was announced, Internet commenters immediately weighed in, mostly with positive feedback. However, is this app–and speed reading in general–a good thing for reading? According to a recent article in The Atlantic, this is not the first time that speed reading has promised to revolutionize reading and reading comprehension. “In the 1950s, a schoolteacher named Evelyn Nielsen Wood discovered that she could read at a much faster pace than the normal 250-300 words per minute by sweeping a finger along the page as she read, reading entire groups of words at a time, and by avoiding sub-vocalization, or saying each word mentally. These techniques helped Wood reach 2,700 read words per minute, she claimed, and it was these principles she espoused in Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, her speed-reading business. By the 90s, though, the speed-reading craze slumped again. Perhaps because its students found the method to be harder than it sounded, or perhaps because those early Clinton years were simply a more relaxed time.”

People do speed read on their own to a certain extent, by skimming an entire text or reading key sections to pack in the most information in a short amount of time. However, according to The Atlantic, “a 2009 study found that skimmers did not remember very many details, nor could they make inferences from the text.” Most research points to a correlation between reading quickly and a lack of comprehension: that is, as reading speeds up, comprehension goes down.

The fact is, when we allow our brains to process the words individually, we are able to understand the text more fully and be able to speak to various layers within the text. Ultimately, what is important to reading comprehension–and quicker reading–is practice. According to Michael Masson, a psychologist at the University of Victoria, “what differentiates fast and slow readers is not how they read, he points out, but their overall language skills and vocabularies…Beginning readers can expect to read faster as they gain more practice, but eventually we each reach some upper limit. The simple answer, then, is ‘read more.’”

Here are some ways My Learning Springboard thinks about reading:

What Does College Writing Readiness Look Like?

January 31, 2019 Brad Hoffman

When people talk about college writing readiness, they usually characterize the main difference between high school and college writing by saying that college writing is heavily based in analysis. But too often, the conversation proceeds without defining a key term. What does “analysis” mean in this context? And how can parents and tutors help high school writers build analytical skills for college writing readiness?

When I consider the sort of analytical writing that happens in college classrooms, I am reminded of the definition offered by David Rosenwasser and Jill Stephen in the first chapter of their book Writing Analytically. “To analyze something is to ask what that something means,” they write. “It is to ask how something does what it does or why it is as it is. Analysis is, then, a form of detective work that pursues something puzzling, something you are seeking to understand rather than something you believe you already have the answers to.” While high school teachers spend a great deal of time teaching critical thinking and analysis techniques, high school writers tend to deploy those skills by performing the acts of analysis and writing as separate steps — by figuring out and planning all of their ideas, then recording them. High school writers would likely be surprised, and perhaps intimidated, by the notion of “thinking on the page” in this way. Accordingly, a key aspect of facilitating college writing readiness is helping students become comfortable with this concept, and comfortable trying new writing and learning approaches overall.

Parents and tutors can help their high schoolers develop a number of writing techniques that make it easier to engage in college-level analytical writing. For instance, they can introduce brief, low-pressure exercises that make it easy to perform thinking on the page, to generate material that can become part of a more formal composition, and to conceptualize the writing process as a series of small, manageable steps. They can strengthen high school writers’ executive functioning skills by showing them how to set — and meet — deadlines for each distinct step of a writing project. They can help high school writers identify sources of support at their institution, such as writing centers. They can help to remediate weaknesses in reading that inhibit students from fully understanding and engaging with the texts they write about. They can find exemplar essays and help writers examine and learn from them. They can help writers move from perceiving revision as a one-time activity to perceiving it as a process of rethinking and rethinking again, of crafting several drafts, of revisiting a piece of writing and re-engaging with its ideas and its object of analysis until the writer feels that they are saying what they truly want to say.

These techniques pay off beyond the matter of college writing readiness; they help with college readiness overall. Students can employ low-pressure writing exercises to reflect on course readings and to prepare for class discussions, for example, and they can use their strengthened reading skills to navigate challenging technical documents. Stronger planning and time management skills are helpful in countless situations.

More importantly, these approaches bring about shifts in thinking that prepare them for the challenges of adult life. Dividing big tasks into manageable pieces prepares students for a range of professional situations. Visiting a writing center or a peer tutor helps a student realize that asking for help is a sign of initiative, not weakness, and that they don’t have to struggle alone. Moving from a rigid revision process into a more recursive and rewarding one teaches writers the importance of flexibility and perseverance. After all, in life, it often takes us more than two tries to get something right. It is not lost on me that when it comes to the Common Application personal statement — often the highest-stakes essay that they have composed up to that point in their lives — high school writers generally go through six to twelve drafts before the piece is ready to share with colleges.

“Analysis is, then, more than just a set of skills: it is a frame of mind, an attitude toward experience,” Graff and Birkenstein conclude. By helping high school writers cultivate both this set of skills and this attitude, parents and tutors are helping them not only to develop college writing readiness but to prepare for the world beyond.

By Elizabeth Walters, Private Tutor and Writing Coach

Should 9th Graders Study For College Entrance Exams?

January 29, 2019 Brad Hoffman

Worrying about college entrance exams — the ACT and SAT — seems to start earlier and earlier, which can unnecessarily derail important resources during the 9th grade year. It’s important to remember that many of the skills and concepts that you learn throughout high school — starting day one — will help develop the skills needed to succeed when testing time comes.

Freshmen year is an important foundation year to learn lessons that underpin the rest of your high school journey. It’s also when you should establish or continue good study patterns and organizational habits for the years to come. These habits will help when you cultivate test taking strategies and start officially preparing for college entrance exams in January or February of 10th grade. During freshman year of high school, it’s best to focus on a successful transition to high school both academically and socially.

Classroom Instruction and College Entrance Exams

One of the most important ways that students can prepare for college entrance exams is by recognizing that daily classroom lessons are already preparing you! You will encounter terms, concepts, and ideas every day that will serve you in the test taking to come.

Keep in mind that the “boring” basics are vital to your future success. Building vocabulary is key. Look up words as they appear in texts to minimize drilling later. Learn grammar now. English teachers will provide sentence level corrections on essays at this stage so that subsequent teachers focus more on organization, concept development, and higher order writing skills. This is the moment to establish and retain grammar rules because you will have so much more to study later. Math and language classes are strictly sequenced so mastering those foundation skills will ensure you succeed in and enjoy future classes.

The PSAT

Most schools organize a PSAT date during the Sophomore year. Many students worry about and even compete for high PSAT scores, but studying for the PSAT isn’t really necessary unless you aspire to earn a National Merit Scholarship. For most students, the purpose of the PSAT is to provide a concrete experience with college entrance exams and to show what knowledge areas you need to enrich and what types of questions are hardest for you.

The PSAT simply provides an initial baseline from which to judge your strengths and areas that require additional attention. It’s an abridged multiple-choice test, thus stamina and attention factors aren’t pushed to the same limits as full length SAT or ACT test, and it does not include a writing section, so this testing yields only limited information for planning purposes. Therefore, don’t take time away from your school work to study for the PSAT.

Test Taking Strategies

One of the challenges with college entrance exams are their structure, and that’s where learning the format of the test and developing some basic test taking strategies really helps. However, strategies must be taught in conjunction with content. Like tools in a toolbox, students need to know when to choose a particular strategy, or they’ll end up trying to hammer a nail with a screwdriver. As content is mastered, strategies help with efficient pacing and approach.

As a means of demonstrating subject matter mastery and building test taking skills, many students are in a position to take at least one SAT subject test at the end of 9th grade. If a SAT subject test aligns with a 9th grade course that is also a subject area of strength for you, then we strongly recommend taking it. Popular 9th grade choices are biology or foreign language, particularly if the student is a native speaker. Math 2 and physics are usually too difficult to take until junior or senior year. Subject tests related to chemistry, history, English, and literature are often managed during 10th and/or 11th grades. For students enrolled in AP courses, these exams are typically layered in during grades 10, 11 and 12. Students enrolled in IB programs have other specific planning to manage that can be leveraged for SAT subject tests or AP exams.

Regardless of school environment, it’s often the case that a school course isn’t completely aligned to any particular standardized test, or the course pacing isn’t on target to cover all necessary content. In January of 9th grade, we recommend you take a baseline assessment as a benchmarking opportunity so that any supplemental private tutoring needs and/or independent study can be strategically managed.

Timing For College Entrance Exams

Ninth graders don’t need to be thinking too much about college entrance exams, but they should be thinking about developing their intellectual engagement with the world in order to be prepared for those final high school years when tests and applications dominate. Ninth graders should also be thinking about their extracurricular activities and exploring new interests and hobbies, or deepening existing ones. Ideally school breaks and vacations allow students to discover their own pleasure reading, take fun workshops or courses in areas of interest, and/or manage a part-time job. They are, however, also an opportunity to create and launch a study plan for college entrance exams as well as SAT Subject tests, AP tests, or challenging subjects in school.

Most students should plan on taking college entrance exams officially for the first time in the late fall, winter, and/or spring terms of their Junior year. We recommend completing diagnostic testing in January or February of 10th grade in order to make an informed and strategic choice between the ACT or SAT. It’s absolutely not necessary to manage both tests.

Targeted instruction, structured practice, and accountability are all critical to your success with college entrance exams. Baseline ACT or SAT testing will reveal strengths and areas for growth. The summer between 10th and 11th grade is a great time to work more intensively. If a private tutor hasn’t already been established, now is the time to find one that will help address the specific areas of competency that need improvement. Taking the test 2-3 times during Junior year ensures that you have completed one of the major components of the college application process. With college entrance exams completed, you can spend the summer between 11th and 12th grades focusing on college visits and developing the Common Application essay as well as supplemental essays.

For a college planning overview from grades 7 through 12, please click here.

To further discuss high school and college planning as well as private tutoring, please contact our office.

By Brad Hoffman, MS.Ed., and Faya Hoffman, MA, and Charlotte Kent, Ph.D.

Netiquette, part 1: Social Media and Message Board Basics

Related Post:
Netiquette, part 2: Email Etiquette In College

Accessing College Accommodations

Is Speed Reading Good Reading?

What Does College Writing Readiness Look Like?

Should 9th Graders Study For College Entrance Exams?

Classroom Instruction and College Entrance Exams

The PSAT

Test Taking Strategies

Timing For College Entrance Exams

Company Overview

School Planning

Private Tutoring

Test Preparation

Related Post: Netiquette, part 2: Email Etiquette In College

Classroom Instruction and College Entrance Exams

The PSAT

Test Taking Strategies

Timing For College Entrance Exams

Company Overview

School Planning

Private Tutoring

Test Preparation

Related Post:
Netiquette, part 2: Email Etiquette In College