Commentary: "Avoid Excessive Over-Charges or Unethical Business Practices"
Overview: Being on your guard for excessive over-charges, even fraud, is more important than ever in our fledgling economy. No one has extra cash to spend needlessly, nor want to waste time with the wrong, unscrupulous specialist. Even recognized professionals can devise ways of increasing payment returns and cash flow, especially when you are in a bind. Some go as far as fraud, as deception can be easily concealed in some industries that have layers of hidden technical know-how, and when problems are difficult to prove as malpractice or negligence.
Nothing is more upsetting than receiving a statement showing hidden excess billing charges or being cheated by an unscrupulous dealer. No one likes to be taken advantage of.
They may be justified or unjustified surprises, some tantamount to being classified as unethical “rip-offs”. Unfortunately, some may be accidental accounting duplications; others may be embedded surcharges that you were not aware that you would be charged for like hotel usage. Others may be fraudulent or deceptive professional services.
The worst types are “scams” where unscrupulous charges are created intentionally, or planted. Some of the most notorious industries that can create excess charges are: hotels, hospitals, auto repair, veterinarians, dentists, plumbers, website designers, and computer repair technicians.
Initially, be aware how you present yourself, inadvertently announcing your income status. Walking in with a Gucci bag, driving a BMW, prices can escalate.
Coming from a frugal, small Dutch Iowa town, we were taught monetary principles ingrained generations back. Immigrating to the United States in the 1800s, the Hollanders wore velvet breeches and conducted business with gold coins. They soon found they were cheated wherever they went, and finally, resorted to an “unassuming-frugal-chameleon survival code”.
In other words, they learned not do display their affluence, or they would be charged more in business transactions. Currently, remaining unpretentious, few drive new high end cars and do not flaunt wearing expensive apparel with flashy accessories.
There is something to be said for this dictum, because if you look foolhardy, or appear pretentious with careless spending habits, you become subject to excess service rates. There is bias with older people, teens, and women, who become targets.
Or, if the proprietor finds that you are in an "emergency situation", you can be targeted, and unethical business practices may come into play.
Auto repair establishments, whether in a city or out “in the middle of no-where” like rural Utah, Kansas, or Montana, will double charge if they think they can “get away with it,” when you lack alternative options and need your vehicle.
We recently had our automobile towed from a near city’s hospital to a local repair garage. Then, the same week, our second car had severe mechanical problems, but luckily, happening near the garage we routinely use, so we drove the car in, limping all the way. The proprietor, knowing we were in a health-state emergency situation, gave us excessive double-cost estimates to repair the two autos.
Refusing to be victimized, the next day I called several other places to compare repair rates, and had both cars towed, a second time, from one garage to the next. I saved nearly one thousand dollars by being alert and on the offense.
One of the most surreptitious situations is when you unwittingly trust an unethical dentist. With many small and midsize towns becoming filled with dental competition, some find unscrupulous ways to create cash flow. They know they can get away with fraudulent work, because their colleagues will not acknowledge investigative inquiries regarding their missteps to the State Dental Board.
For some time, I was fortunate to have a reputable dentist, who did fine, professional work. When he retired, I went to an acquaintance who I thought was highly regarded. Then, a minor traffic accident unfortunately loosened four front teeth. Subsequently, to stabilize the fragile teeth, my new dentist inserted four posts without root canals, which would create abscesses. Much successive dental work would be then required, perfect cash flow. Conversely, the expected consequential plan would back-fire. The damaged teeth all abscessed simultaneously, rather than piece-meal.
Was this dentist merely a bad dentist performing shoddy work? At first, it was hard to determine.
Local consulted specialists were obviously appalled, but had little to say. They advised that they had never seen anything like that before, as root canals for posts were basic Dental 101. I would have to go to another state to get a true evaluation for corrective surgery.
I was further dismayed when I consulted a Dental School regarding the issue, and overheard students joking about how easy it was to practice unethical dentistry without fear of repercussions. And, make good money doing it.
To avoid your own dental horror story, if you question any work at any point of a procedure, find a reputable dentist, or dental school, in another state for a complete evaluation. A local second-opinion dentist will not want to reveal or try to correct any faulty work. Remaining professionally bonded with their local colleagues, they will refer you back to the dentist who created the mess.
The best way to avoid hidden fees and unethical business services is to:
Research the person’s or the business’ background and reputation. Go online. Talk to people (not their references who may be shams) who have used their services. Inquire within other businesses, like real estate firms, if they have conducted work with them.
Be certain you are working with the authorized decision maker or owner when making a purchase or arranging for services.
Up front, obtain second, even third opinions regarding the work to be done.
Ask questions. Obtain firm, descriptive cost estimates in writing, and establish specific guidelines up front.
Be aware of your surroundings; read body language.
Do not sign any document without carefully reading the fine print.
Carefully review all billing statements and inquire if you note discrepancies.
Commentary:"Meeting the e-Learning Implementation Challenge"
Creating Successful e-Learning Practice:
Today’s educational marketplace is being proliferated with educational e-learning programs and products. They each focus on student improvement in learning basic skills such as reading and math, or any subject matter imaginable. Classroom performance will now be measured with each individual learner, not as class averages.
Subsequently, teachers having a classroom full of learning deficiencies will not be blamed for the class’s slow progress. My research demonstrated that with a class full of low auditory and visual memory learners, some of the students made gains latently, one to two years later. There were two types of control groups in the study.
Every classroom has several levels of learners for basic skills in reading and math. They will work at their own pace, possibly with peer partners with a new e-Learning program. Each student’s cognitive skills and learning styles will be recognized. The classroom will be managed with wide differentiation, but some effective training programs will be directed to the class as a whole.
Although continuously evolving as to “who and what” they measure, Performance Management Systems will be in place. Learning performance data will collect how much time each student spends on task and attending to the work flow process, and whether items are completed and answered correctly. This will be sent to the student’s own work assignment dashboard.
This is where benchmarks come into play. Each work unit assignment must be passed before going on to the next level. However, often these are multiple choice questions, which do not always measure a student’s actual performance accurately. This becomes a concern.
The proof-in-the-pudding is through written assignment evaluations. Although they take longer to grade, missteps are easily spotted by a trained eye. These written assignments should be sent home daily for parents to follow.
Easy-to-use data systems will be available to schools for effective instructional decisions. The data will be aggregated into a data base pool as to how the student is performing with each step of the learning process. Scores that are not met, the work will be reviewed and repeated. The benchmarked lessons will comprise program effectiveness summaries.
Parents will become more involved and supervise online learning sessions at home. Students will have their school computerized dashboard transferred to homework assignments. Supplemental online tutorial work – will be explored to high levels. Comprehension will be emphasized, and there will be alternative forms of recitation. Work process flow states will be introduced, and speed of work de-emphasized.
Professional educator development will be instrumental in learning these new procedures and processes. The school culture will become one led to continuous personalized student improvement. In some cases, teachers may sign compliance agreements to ensure the accuracy of the instruction, so that student in-class learning time is highly functional. There will be more of “passing through the grades” with students winding up in secondary school unable to compute, read, write, and communicate effectively.
Schools will chose specific e-Learning programs based upon data effectiveness track records. Data will be aggregated according to student learning performance levels and demographic groups. Only the best e-Learning programs will survive, rising to the top and be in demand.
Determining the most effective e-learning programs through performance evaluations will be challenging.
School district administrators should consider a variety of ways for e-Learning data collection implementation; classes with a particular e-Learning training program, a class or two without any e-Learning, and classes with an alternative e-learning training program. This creates control comparison groups not only for the class achievement as a whole, but with individual learners.
A consideration would be to continue to collect the data from individual students for two years, then, switch around the e-Learning programs, and compare results for the following two years. It may be found that there are some results for many programs. School district administrators, educators, parents, and investors will be interested in the outcomes.
Unfortunately, this data measurement scenario will take a few years for complete evaluation outcomes.
Gradually, but purposefully, new research-based methodologies and systems will be put in place through e-Learning transfer. Educators will find their work increasingly exciting as they watch their students grow and excel to new heights. Students, seeing themselves, and their peer classmates excelling, will develop enthusiasm for learning, thus reducing behavior problems.
Consequently, the e-Learning implementation challenge becomes well-worth-the effort for educational practice improvement.
Erland, J. K (Fall 2000). Brain-Based Accelerated Learning Longitudinal Study Reveals
Subsequent High Academic Achievement Gain for Low Achieving, Low Cognitive Skill Fourth Grade Students. The Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching25 3 & 4.
Commentary:"Online Educational Learning Trends Help Teachers and Parents"
Supporting Teachers in the Classrooms to Make Schools Stronger and More Viable:
Now, more than ever, teachers need parental support for their child in the classroom. No longer will teachers feel isolated in the classroom surrounded by a large group of challenging, inquisitive children with individual learning profiles and demanding instructional requirements. Teaching will cease to be dependent upon dated and often limiting curriculums purchased years back by local school districts and school boards. Schools will want to innovate through virtual online learning to ease multiple pressures.
Parental/guardian participation will be in brief, pleasant, ongoing segments, both in and out of the classroom environment. Yet, sessions will be practical, tutorial, and non-disruptive to the daily instructional routine. In order to maintain classroom pace and momentum, volunteer parents can offer to assist quietly as tutorial helpmates creating a warm, friendly, classroom environment. Student learning pressure can be reduced in the new paradigm, because now each student has double the teaching attentive support.
The visiting parent/guardian will play an important instructional supportive role, but not in a supervisory, watchful mode. As helpful assistants, they can keep their student, or a small group of students, on task. They can help the uncertain student how to understand the assignment.
This type of parental supervisory support can reduce the need for paid paraprofessionals, offering the school district, charter, parochial, or private schools substantial economic savings, thus reducing fiscal and accountability pressure.
Educational Innovation is Now at Your Finger Tips: There will be additional options that will include classroom participation to support the teacher, classroom, and school by offering at-home supplemental practice with auxiliary online learning applications. The outside world’s open learning avenue is now accessible through the internet. Scientific innovation can now be easily located.
Key Trends:
Innovative online Blended Interactive Learning will replace traditional classroom curriculum methods in all subject matter. There are six key online blended learning models outlined by Michael Horn: online-driver, self-blend, online lab, flex mode, rotation, and face to face. (Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. (2008). Christensen, Horn, and Johnson. McGraw Hill.)
Online customized earning will be automated. Teachers will not be required to learn curricula by studying laborious manual instructions. This approach has kept classroom instruction stagnant, because once teachers learned a particular methodology, they stayed with it. Subsequently, learning new methods and applying innovative materials was avoided.
Scientifically tested and tried online learning materials will be in demand, and rise to the top. Educational materials will be competitive for value-added benefits. Numerous companies, large and small, will compete for market share position.
Learning will become a standards and performance-based system. Each student will have their own learning profile established, becoming learner-centered, and performance based with the mastery of skills. Their learning styles will be identified and enhanced. All learners, at all paces and levels, will learn at higher rates, because the interworks of learning will be better understood.
Parents will take a new interest and have a prominent role in their child’s customized learning process. Students moved through grades K-12, and graduating from high school non-proficient in basic skills will be greatly reduced.
Academic progress will be measured through repetitive testing as dictated by national and state guidelines with the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn.
Classroom time will not be spent teaching “how to take the mandated state tests” by learning how to choose the correct multiple choice item. Alternatively, class time will not be a time-driven system, but will be garnered towards students learning basic skills in primary grades, and teaching advanced concepts through the grades leading to high school and beyond.
Commentary:"The Necessity of Understanding Procedural Instructions"
Why Students Do Not Perform Well in Science and Math
President Obama recently encouraged students to enroll in science in math, stating that it was "cool" to do so. What is not understood with this statement is that there is a tragic paradox. There is a reason many learners do not enroll in these subjects. Most do not have enough underlying memory capacity to learn the complex information and then apply it.
Furthermore, assuming this, students are unable to understand and follow procedural instructions basic to conceptualizing mathematical and scientific information.
Why is this? Numerical arithmetic is taught in grades 1-3, and there is a major shift in the curriculum in grade 4. Right-brain spatial numbers shift into left-brain sequencing with advanced concepts. National test scores show that math scores, including advanced concepts, drop off beginning in grade 4.
Understanding science requires not only doing simple experiments and reading scientific stories out of textbooks, but requires procedural, stepwise learning.
Procedural learning requires the mastery of learning step-wise procedures. Following directions is usually taught with simple question and answer worksheets, or now, with online question/answer assignments laced with cartoons.
Nationally standardized test scores do not change for the better. Textbook companies scratch their heads. Innovators come up with practice applications. Still, "No Go."
Why do we fall behind other foreign countries -- how can these children encode-decode information while ours do not? Do they have more stringent learning practices requiring focus and sequencing of difficult material? Do they learn more foreign languages that require intrinsic symbolic encoding/decoding applications? Do they study more musical instruments that require focus, practice, with encoding/decoding? Both musical training and learning a foreign language trains auditory (listening) memory, critically needed for learning technical sequences.
What is missing?
If students are unable to listen to complex instructions (teachers spend hours daily repeating directions over and over), and students then work in teams where one member does the application "thinking" and fills out the responses - even on the computer, how are the others learning? Somewhat? Many are working in small tutorial groups with simple assignments far below grade level work.
The missing link is teaching students how to encode and decode sequential information, and expand their visual and listening memories an underlying requirement for conceptualizing formulas and mathematical equations.
This is done through cognitive skills training, although this is not available in the typical school classroom. Every student processes information differently, with different learning styles and capacities. The teacher can not begin to test and measure every child's cognitive skills, nor are they qualified to do so. It is also expensive and time consuming to have them measured and evaluated through private practitioners.
Assignments will not be learned as expected, and there is much time spent "How to take the interim benchmark tests, or "teaching to the test" for the final end-of-year nationally standardized achievement tests that include reading, math, and science scores. Classrooms spend hours teaching how to select and fill in multiple choice answers on the computer. Pressure is placed upon students who naturally lack the necessary "brain-power" to sequence and code instructions.
Is this fair? Of course not. We are training test-taking robots, not how to assimilate and learn science and math required for understanding and expanding our technological capacities.
How can we attack and get around this, if the necessary brain skills are not taught in schools or in most computer software skill drilling programs? Students are learning only pieces of the information, not complex series that are fundamental to learning science and math needed for technologies.
Parents can now help fill in this gap - the missing link. There soon will be more parent "how to" information readily accessible through internet learning. Applications will be pleasurable, scientifically tested, and learning will be fast.
The ability to encode/decode sequential information will be taught through specific, scientifically tested training regimens. It might be something for all of us to consider. Let's look to future possibilities.
Commentary:"How To Understand Your Child's School Test Measurements"
What State Prescribed or National tests Will My Child Take?
Each State’s Department of Education decides which tests will be given in that state, although the "No Child Left Behind" act is a mandated federal law. Now, States must comply with Common Core Standards (CSS) that require that certain levels of subject matter be taught and subsequently achieved at prescribed grade levels.
Students receive multiple tests regularly in school. Not all tests are the same. Some are formal and nationally standardized which measure content knowledge with thousands of students taking these assessments in all geographical areas. These are typically administered at the end or beginning of the school year.
Reading and math Nationally Standardized Academic Achievement tests are given annually in grades 3 to 8, and at least once in grades 10 to 12 in all fifty states. Students are tested in science at least once during grades 3 through 5.
Many states give additional tests in social science, writing, and language arts in various grades. It will be up to you, as a parent, to discover what tests are given, and when; and where you can fill in by obtaining needed tests for your child.
What are Formative Tests? Other tests are informal measures of learned subject matter like classroom daily written assignments, a spelling test, or simple observations and checklists. These are ongoing on a regular basis to evaluate progress in learning. These informal measures are called criterion referenced and formative. Here is how a parent can be further engaged to help their child:
How Parents Can Engage With Their Child’s Classroom:
1.
Connect with your child’s teacher in the school.
2. Call the school office to ask for an appointment with the teacher.
3. Visit the classroom at the beginning of the year in September, and ask questions pertaining to your child’s daily classroom assignments and homework.
4. Ask to see samples of your child’s work, or request that they bring their daily work assignments home that were completed in class.
5. Ask when your State’s prescribed math and reading formative tests begin, how many will be given in the year, and what information is and will be available for your child.
6. Some interim tests may be called “testlets.” The purpose of the testlets is to guide future instruction to close gaps between current performance levels and target proficiency levels.
7. Although every state will design their own test schedules, generally, there will be two-four interim tests during the months of August, October, December, and February, and two final summative tests during February, March, and/or April. Ask when these tests are given at your school.
8. The initial August interim tests for grades 3-8 will show scores in the basic skill reading and math subject matter areas.Typically, all students begin with the same test level and receive baseline scores. Then, these test scores may be divided into three definitive ability areas: (hard, medium and easy).
9. Then, ask the teacher what test indicators are given and where your child fits into the criteria levels that have been assigned.
10. Ask to see the interim test results to define strong and weak areas, and also to help guide your student at home in weak areas with online learning applications.
11. Indicate that you would like to communicate with the teacher following each of the testlet time frames so that your child can show progress in closing gaps, and move up in the defined ability/achievement levels.
12. Ask, what can I do next to support and backup class work, and when can I visit and assist in the classroom next?
Now, you have begun understanding how your child’s class work is being measured and evaluated. This simple checklist is part of evaluating your child’s learning styles, strengths, weaknesses and personal interests. Once you determine these testing and measurement categories – you can begin identifying the right resources to help your child learn in just about every subject matter imaginable.
Commentary:"Sharpen Your Problem-Solving Skill"
Our work world is becoming ever more complex as we work in teams and problem-solve continuing workplace issues. Even our personal lives are complex. In facing problems, it is baffling why some of us can see them coming, and can diffuse them off, while others stay mired in a constant web of distress. Although we avoid looking for trouble, we often wish we could be better at avoiding it before they appear as full-blown issues to cope with.
Unfortunately, we can stay locked into an analytical mode, do not recognize situational patterns, and miss the point. We become so engrossed with scrutinizing details that we fail to see the big picture. Missing clues that are obvious to others, we stumble along. Unfortunately, this is detrimental to our image and future as we can become pigeonholed at a particular skill level in our work.
It all boils down to having an ability to intuitively spot patterns going amiss with our work and daily life situations. How can we do this?
We need to reflect and understand our own mental machine and our information processing capability. It lies in our ability to encode right-brain patterns quickly and then recognize tell-tale signs of irregularities. This is referred to how "we see into situations," or “getting it,” and you probably know if you are adept in this area.
What can we do to see into situations with their web of inherent difficulties? We can become aware of insightful patterns and improve our encoding ability for spotting pattern breaks which alerts us that something is amiss.
What is a pattern break?
A “pattern break” is something different in routine thoughts, body language, wording, speech, routines, actions, individual’s appearances, or expressions. When you see something differently than expected, or out of the norm, you must become aware of your insightful realizations, and put yourself on “alert,” and react accordingly.
Avoiding Problems at Work: Observe the team members you work with. What are their attitudes, values, and hidden agendas? Are they sincere? What does their body language indicate? Do they appear positive and offer honest opinions? Are their contributions valuable to the project?
Or, are they convoluted and too complex to be practical? Will their input create complications? What are the drawbacks? Do you see their work favorably, creatively, with an open mind? How does the team compliment each other in terms of work quality and input? How will I react to an impending obstacle? Will I remain level headed, as I notice irregularities? Can I systematically solve them by smoothing out the missing links?
Avoiding Problems at Home, ask yourself: Am I taking time to participate and listen to family members? Do I spend too much time "in my own world?" When I see a bad situation, can I work through it systematically, noting the attitude and reaction along the way? Do I hastily react, creating a deeper abyss of trouble? Am I willing to compromise and work the problem out before it intensifies?
Avoiding Your Personal Problems, ask yourself: Do I continuously make the same mistakes, because I do not recognize self-destructive patterns? If I do recognize them, am I unwilling to change the pattern because it has become a habit (like smoking or drinking alcohol excessively)?
How to practice and speed up your encoding of patterns:
Learn a foreign language -- practice new vocabulary words with a tape recorder as a response system. Speaking creates sound patterns that activate the brain.
Learn to play a new musical instrument. Musical notes are symbolic patterns. Reading music involves rapidly encoding notes while scanning the measures and phrasing. It is excellent brain exercise.
Try repairing or installing something mechanical. Note the design or maintenance patterns. Many of us dislike and avoid reading technical manuals. However, noting technical patterns, as on Smart Phones, is good encoding practice.
Becoming ever aware of the evolving patterns in our world will keep us sensitive to things that are out of kilter and which create problems that we can do without.
Commentary:"Blended e-Learning to the Rescue - 6 Available Models"
Today's students eagerly welcome new virtual educational approaches, as new information is readily at their fingertips. To complement the vast amount of available curricula, the high average and overly bright students can upgrade their cognitive skills beyond imaginable depths. Now, we can move forward without hesitation.
For slower students, the typical solution was in-classroom or pull out tutorial assistance of daily assignments. Teachers, not knowing how to implement advanced instructional strategies, remained instructing within this inefficient model. In many cases, teachers feared additional, cumbersome work in learning and implementing new methodologies.
In-class time remains at a premium. Tight budgets prevent ordering instructional materials. Although grant and State monies pave the way, test scores stagnated.
Years of often poor and limited instructional content and video production on CDs-DVD's, inhibited streamlined, high impact education. High tech-quality instruction will now make a difference for both the teacher and now "Screenager" student to achieve quality education meeting State policy Common Core Standards.
Now, the internet booms with educational innovation, paving its way into the emerging high-tech classroom. Teachers will no longer have to learn new methodologies, because Blended e-Learning will do it for them. Interactivity between the student and online lab will be key. Various forms of student engagement practice exist to interface with virtual learning.
A recent article (January 2011) by Horn and Staker of Innosight Institute's Think Tank, reviewed the current six available classroom Blended e-Learning models to relieve the teacher by offering new insights, and recharge all students to higher academic proficiency levels:
Model 1: Face-to-Face Driver; Supplemental Assistance
The physical teacher deploys online learning on a case-by-case basis to supplement or remediate, often in the back of the classroom in a study carrel, or in a technology lab.
Model 2: Student Rotation on a Fixed Schedule; Remote and Onsite – Teacher in Charge
Students rotate on a fixed schedule between online self-paced learning and sitting in a classroom with a traditional face-to-face teacher. The classroom teacher usually oversees the online work.
Model 3: Flex, as Needed, for Dropout - and Credit Recovery Programs
Flex model programs feature an online platform that delivers most of the curricula. Teachers provide on-site support on a flexible and adaptive as-needed basis through in-person tutoring sessions and small group sessions.
Model 4: Online Learning Lab Delivers the Entire Course in the Classroom
The online-lab model characterizes programs that rely on an online platform
to deliver the entire course but in a brick-and-mortar lab environment. Usually these programs provide online teachers. Paraprofessionals supervise, but offer little content expertise. Often students that participate in an online-lab program also take traditional courses and have typical block schedules.
Model 5: Self-Blend; High School Students Enroll in Online Courses
Blended learning among American high schools is the self-blend model, which encompasses any time students choose to take one or more courses online to supplement their traditional school’s catalog. The online learning is always remote, which distinguishes it from the online-lab model, but the traditional learning is in a brick-and-mortar school. All supplemental online schools that offer a la carte courses to individual students facilitate self-blending.
Model 6: Online Driver Platform and Remote Teacher; Home Schooling Option
The online-driver model involves an online platform and teacher that deliver all curricula. Students work remotely for the most part. Face-to-face check-ins are sometimes optional and other times required. Some of these programs offer brick and-mortar components as well, such as extracurricular activities.
These models have the potential to revolutionize education as we know it, offer excitement and learning nuances to the classroom, while additionally solving the budget crunches and raising student achievement performance scores.
Innosight’s 2011 white papers on Blended e-learning: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/innosight/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/The-Rise-of-K-12-Blended-Learning.pdf
Horn, M. B, & Staker, H. (January 2011) The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning. Innosight Institute, Philadelphia, PA.
Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008).
Commentary:"5 Remediation Solutions for Learning Problems"
What are available solutions to activate inefficient learning pathways? My last article reviewed the importance of understanding the four primary sensory learning pathways; visual, auditory, kinesthetic-tactile pathways, (VAKT: Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic-Tactile teaching method, http://www.dyslexia-parent.com/VAKT.html) and these entrances must be in working order. If the senses do not integrate, there becomes a learning problem not only in the classroom, but with everyday interactions.
Unfortunately, learning deficiencies are stigmatized. Although most of us have a learning pathway block, we are afraid to address or identify it, even though it is holding our processing speed down. Advanced processing speed can change your life, and even direct you to a new, more satisfying career. Let alone, determine your child’s future.
If it is your child having difficulties, there are many remedies to tap into their intelligence capacity. Remember, futures are at stake. A processing deficiency, or block, should not be ignored, or minimized.
Parents, unaware of the foundational cause of their child’s learning problems, flounder with eliciting expensive tutors, which can do some good. Practice “Drill and Skill” software training also helps to some degree, although it is like handing an energizing coke to a runner with a broken leg. Like information processing, the race can not be won until the leg is repaired and mended.
To be very sharp you have to have high level cognitive skills; visual and listening memories, plus reasoning ability. That is the bottom line.
So, you agree and say, "What can I do?"
There are five choices:
1.
Tutoring -- Private and public company tutors abound. They teach subject matter, like reading and math. It takes months or years of time to make headway, as learning is encumbered by the student's slow information processing rate.
2. Cognitive Skills Remediation -- Before you seek tutoring, you should find a cognitive skills training program. Many abound. If you do a Google search, there are over four million links. Mem-ExSpan has maintained a #2 position on Google for many years, has not paid for this position, and earned through nearly three decades of research and development, with many published research articles in the ERIC Clearinghouse. Mem-ExSpan, Inc. has a large data bank of age levels of 9-60 in five demographic areas, collected at twelve national test sites.
Regarding other program choices, be certain to check their documented and published results, as many claims are sketchy at best.
And most importantly, keep in mind that each cognitive skills program company applies a different methodology using a variety of theory applications. Have an educational expert help you to evaluate the various programs.
Unfortunately, at this time, only limited private intensive Mem-ExSpan classes are available, as the program is being further developed for virtual learning. Follow-up with tutoring, is rarely necessary. It must be realized that correcting cognitive skills is an on-going building process, and academic achievement results often appear one-to-two years latently with those having serious deficiencies. (research report: Erland, J. K., Fall 2000, The Journal of Accelerated Learning and Teaching. Vol 25, 3 & 4, 5-48).
3. Private Psychologists offer cognitive skills training, and methods vary greatly from individualized private counseling, to small group therapy.
Some offer computerized Brain Mapping and Neurofeedback Training.
These treatments are designed to reduce stress, create focus, and create a new picture of how the brain operates. Most psychologists do not retrain specific cognitive skills. Request scientific data regarding their treatments that promise to create educational or work performance improvement. In other words, request documentation that their methods work to the extent you are expecting.
4. Software learning programs are available for any subject matter, such as reading and math, or cognitive skills improvement like perceptual training. There are many companies that sell these in a variety of educational and self-paced formats. They are good as auxiliary programs, but may often require supervised assistance. Schools and classrooms routinely use these in individual workstations for small groups or for independent practice to accompany teacher instruction. Unfortunately, some students may have deficient capabilities, such as slow visual or listening processing, and can not follow these programs without assistance with the practice sessions.
5. Phonics Programs offer excellent training for improving reading skills. There is a noted leader in the market, Lindamood Bell, which has been around since the 1960s. Their strategies evolve from the early basal reader phonics systems used in the elementary classrooms to teach reading. Individualized training is available in centers for periods of time, taught in small group by certified trainers. The drawback is that although reading is enhanced, overall cognitive skills are not developed to jump-start math, verbal and spoken language, and science capability.
Choices are difficult to make. But, get help right away. However, the long-range benefits will out-weigh the initial up-front cost investment. I worked hard retraining my three children to new accelerated heights. It really paid out. As I told my youngsters from the age 12 on: "They were not going to live at home in their 30s." And, they haven't. With their on-going successes, it is tough to now get placed on their calendars.
Jan Kuyper Erland, President, Intervention Consultant
Mem-ExSpan, Inc.
The Bridge To Achievement ®
email: jan@memspan.com
