What Do You Mean by Student Mastery?

Every important job or profession provides training. This training usually involves teaching of the best techniques for becoming proficient in a given area.

These techniques are known as the "best practices" for each job.

The job of “student” is rarely taught. Students get snippets of advice from various teachers. But most of these well-meaning teachers are focused on teaching the subject matter of the class, as opposed to how to be a top performing student. In addition, most students have a great big “why?” in their minds --

“Why am I studying this stuff?” “Does it really matter?” “Do I have to do well?”

Students lack the context — the motivational basis — for understanding why they should do well in school.

Parents and teachers typically focus on why they (the adults) think the child should do well in school. The message, as repeated to us by countless teenagers, runs something along the following lines: "You need to do well in school in order to get into a good college in order to get a good job so you can pay for a good lifestyle and provide for your family."

Essentially, adults tell children to care about issues (careers, paying bills, raising families) that have no emotional meaning to young adults.

At The Learning Consultants we have developed a proprietary methodology for shifting the students' psychological energy toward academics. Our success as a company has stemmed as much from inspiring students as it has from teaching the technical aspects of effective studying.

Once we develop a solid foundation, we are able to teach the more technical aspects of how to be a top student. We divide the concrete, nuts and bolts aspects into: daily studying (including time management), classroom performance, and tests/projects.

Each of these areas certainly has many general and obvious components (active participation as a best practice for classroom performance, for example). Where we stand out is that we are better placed to give advice because we are “not the parent.”

Even then, there are many subtle techniques that are part of our proprietary framework for success that most parents never even think to suggest.

For example, we teach students to shift their studying intensity through a process we have entitled called "study bursts.”

Students who follow the process as we prescribe it are stunned to discover they are not only more effective, but also more efficient in their studying. They are happy with their improved grades but are also happy that we have made studying more engaging and less time-consuming.

On a more formal basis we have been asked to teach study skills to students and guidance department at The Williams School, in New London, CT, the Grove School in Madison, CT and Daniel Hand High School in Madison School.

The Learning Consultants
(860) 510-0410
dcapuano@learningconsultantsgroup.com