NY Times: "Rethinking Advanced Placement"

We recently came across this NY Times article, "Rethinking Advanced Placement," which outlines the upcoming changes that College Board is making to AP curricula.

They plan to do a major overhaul of many of their subjects, starting with AP Biology and AP US History. This change is inspired by the sheer amount of content that currently needs to be covered in a year-long class. This has become a major challenge for both students and teachers, and the College Board is seeking to address that.

We think the article does a great job outlining what currently makes these subjects so tough: "What fuels the [students'] panic is that nearly every tongue-twisting term and microscopic fact is fair game for the year-end test that decides who will receive college credit for the course."

This information is particularly useful for students who are thinking of taking the Biology or US History AP tests. If you have any questions or are interested in discussing this with someone, feel free to contact us!

Complaints: Gifts in Disguise!

Recently I visited the Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas. Zappos is famous for its unparalleled customer service, and while I was there, I got some really fascinating insights into their approach. At NW, we pride ourselves on providing the best tutoring, but we also take a lot of pride in our superb customer service. I was pretty confident in what we were doing. Little did I know I was in for an attitude adjustment...

It all started with a seemingly innocent discussion question posed by Zappos: "How many of us like complaints?" Everyone sitting around me had the same reaction:

"Uh...NONE of us...obviously!"

Well Zappos, being Zappos, had a different take on this matter. The leader of the discussion group smiled sagely at us. "Complaints are GIFTS, people!"

Hm. This was a new idea for me. Please explain how something painful, time-consuming, and draining, like dealing with an unhappy customer, is a gift? As usual with Zappos, the logic was simple and brilliant:

Complaints give us a chance to fix things, and to know what to improve. They help us identify our weak areas, so we can make them stronger. A customer has the choice to voice their concerns, giving you a chance to transform their experience, or to just stop being a customer altogether. In the long run, which would you prefer?

They even took it a step further:

Complaints challenge us to be better. If we look at every complaint as a learning opportunity, and take a moment to step back and evaluate the situation objectively, complaints can make us better people and a better company!

If you're reading this and there's something we can be doing better to help you, please share your complaints. We are eager to help you!

-Pari Schacht

Tutor Snapshot: Elizabeth Guess

Elizabeth Guess is a versatile tutor with Nurturing Wisdom in Chicago. She has her B.A. in English and Spanish from DePauw University, and is currently pursuing her Master's in Education. Elizabeth tutors everything from writing to Spanish, math to the ACT. Though Elizabeth is originally from rural western Kentucky, she has fallen in love with the bustling Windy City streets.

The night Crittenden County High School won the girls basketball regional championship, I had just arrived home for spring break. I walked through the back door to find my parents sitting at the kitchen table, intently listening to the announcer. His fervor was magnetic, and though I hadn’t been home but for a few minutes, I was already rapt in the game. A last second shot, and then—“Rockets win! Rockets win!” His voice was breaking, the crowd's roar from the gym sounded through the fuzzy AM radio, and my parents and I looked to each other in silence, smiling and eyes welling with tears of pride for our tiny county school.

It was the first time my alma mater had ever sent any basketball team to the state tournament, and the excitement ignited the community like wildfire. The next morning, unadorned white banners with plain blue letters hung on the lampposts along Main Street. Despite their crude aesthetic, the banners spelled out a hopeful message: “The Little Town that Could.” Every business along Main Street embellished its windows with similar well-wishes: “Good Luck Lady Rockets!”; “All the Way to State!”; “The Triple Crown: All-A, District, and Region 2011!” Blue balloons, blue streamers, even blue flowers tossed in the March wind of Marion, Kentucky.

Though I live in Chicago now, one year out of college, I cannot ignore the Crittenden County part of myself. It is as if time stops while I’m away from my hometown, for anytime I return, things pick up right where I left them:

there are still just two stoplights;

there are still just three fast food restaurants;

the county newspaper is still published once a week;

the high school still graduates about 100 students each year;

the muddy pick-up trucks still dominate the roads;

the Amish still park their buggies in the grocery store parking lot;

the teens still hang out “up town” in the evenings and go “backroading” for fun;

and the adults still ask me how I’m doing away from home, no matter how many times they’ve asked before.

Crittenden County is a place where the people are “kin” to each other, where you’re “fixin’” to go to the store, and where pulling down someone's pants by surprise is called “shucking,” like shucking corn. And, of course, the typical Crittenden Countian is connected to most other citizens by three or less degrees of separation: I went to prom with my dentist’s nephew; my best friend’s aunt was my swim team coach, her uncle my algebra teacher; and my older brother, Neil Guess, went to homecoming with a girl named Lisa, who ended up marrying Terry Guess (no relation) and subsequently became the stepmother of one of my classmates, T.K. Guess (wait—what?).

Perhaps these quaint simplicities of rural life seem irrelevant to foreigners, but they inevitably constitute my personal mantra as both a student and (future) teacher of writing: from simplicity comes inspiration.

In Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear, Lear famously threatens his daughter Cordelia that “nothing will come of nothing”—she will receive nothing from him if she does nothing to win his love through flattery. Many may think this ideology applies to the simple “nothings” of Marion, Kentucky, but in the case of my hometown and, more importantly, writing overall, there always is something, no matter how seemingly insignificant. The most successful creative pieces I’ve ever written focus on the most ordinary subjects, namely a personal essay entitled “Teeth: A Journey” and “Ole Blue Guess,” the narrative of the 1976 blue Chevrolet I drove during my teenage years: neither grand nor emotionally riveting, these stories simply bring to life common slices of the past that with earn recognition with lively storytelling.

Likewise, academic writing functions in a similar simple-to-inspired manner. When writing a research paper, I read all the material first without having any clue where it will lead, noting every regular moment, every tiny detail, every nothing that could be something. How does it all relate? How do these puzzle pieces connect? What trends, ideas, arguments can I make from these clues? These questions, help me find the inspiration among the simplicities and lead me to my thesis.

This very philosophy manifested itself that day at the Kentucky Sweet Sixteen basketball tournament as I cheered on the Lady Rockets. Throughout the wide sea of blue I spotted moments of my past—old classmates and teachers, family friends and foes, and citizens with whom I simply had that three-degree connection. Just as the subtleties of life inspire creative writing, just as the most minor details enlighten scholarly theses, these individual threads of Crittenden County had joined as a woven tapestry of community pride, reaffirming my mantra: from the simplicities of a rural community came the motivation to support Our Little Town that Could to the very end—and the inspiration to tell the tale another day.

Why I Love Mistakes

Have you ever dropped food on your clothes while eating in public? What's the first thing you did? If you're anything like me, you looked around and hoped no one saw you....even before you cleaned it up. After all, if no one saw it, you can act like it didn't even happen.

All my life, I've been that way with mistakes. Not just the foolish little things like dropping food all over myself (which I do with some regularity), but all kinds of mistakes. If I totally goof something up at work, I'd hope I could fix it before anyone noticed. This is only natural, right?

Even now, when I realize I've made a mistake, I get a knot in my stomach, my skin feels almost prickly, and I start to sweat. Why? I'm still worried about who saw my mistake.

Yet, there's a better goal to strive for. There's a small population of people in our society who don't feel this way every time they make a mistake. They honestly view mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. They don't focus on the humiliation of the mistake, but rather on all that they can gain from it.

When babies first start walking, they fall over and over again, every hour of the day, without getting discouraged. We watch them and know that with each fall, they're gaining strength and learning a little bit more about balance. Every fall moves them closer to walking with stability and confidence. It's sad, but we un-learn this method of trial-and-error so quickly. I saw this recently happen with my own daughter.

When she was two, she adored puzzles. She would patiently sit and turn the pieces over and over again until her puzzle was done. It gave me so much joy to watch this! Then, abruptly, she stopped doing puzzles. I couldn't figure it out. Suddenly I realized: she had come to fear failure. She didn't want to attempt something she wasn't sure she could finish. We talked about it, and made a new goal....to "try hard things" and to "stretch our brains" each day, regardless of mistakes. A few weeks later, she suddenly started picking up puzzles again, even if they're hard, and she hasn't stopped since.

Now it's my turn. I want to value my mistakes. The lessons we learn from mistakes do not end when we become adults. I want to focus on each one as an opportunity for growth, not as a flaw in my character.

-Amanda Vogel

Tutor Spotlight!

Megan Mencinsky is a Nurturing Wisdom tutor in the western suburbs, and also an extremely talented special education teacher.

Megan has endless energy for helping her students succeed, and a passion for individualizing to each student.

This past school year, Megan was selected to be part of a team of writers for an ongoing blog for the Council for Exceptional Children. You can check it out here...

Amanda Vogel on "Make It Better"!

Our VP Amanda Vogel wrote an article a few months ago, titled "Why is my Intelligent and Hardworking Child Struggling in School?"

Her article caught on like wildfire amongst parents -- they were thrilled to see issues that aren't often discussed being addressed in a clear, understandable way.

MakeItBetter.net, a community website for families on the North Shore, loved her article too - so much, that they posted it to their website. Check it out here. We're very excited for Amanda, and we're so happy that her expertise is getting some recognition!

Surface & Deep Structure

My 7-year-old son and I were watching my older child compete in a track meet. It was a chilly day, and we’d been standing outside, huddled under our coats, for about an hour. As we stood at the fence waiting for the next event to begin, my son sighed, looked up at me and said, “Mom, I’m bored.”

The teacher in me always looks for moments like these to squeeze in some mental activity, so we started talking about the track.

“Do you know how many meters long the track is?” I asked. He shook his head. “It’s 400 meters,” I said. “So when a runner does one lap around the track, he runs 400 meters.”

That seemed to make sense to him, so I figured I’d start off with an easy problem. “All right,” I said, “so if a runner does two laps around the track, how many meters is that?”

I’ll never forget the look of surprise on his expressive face. Shaking his head, his brow knit with genuine confusion, he responded, “What? Mom, I don’t know. We’ve studied meters before in school, but we’ve never studied tracks!”

This time, it was my turn to be surprised. My son was in 2^nd grade, so I knew he had the arithmetic skills necessary to compute 400 + 400. But for some reason, he didn’t recognize that this was just an addition problem. I smiled and crouched down next to him so we could talk through how to get the answer. But in the back of my mind, I was at work on a problem of my own: why was he so baffled by what I thought would be a simple problem?

The answer, I found, lies in the concepts of structure of problems, explained by Willingham in his book Why Don’t Students Like School?

Word problems, such as the one I gave to my son, all have two elements to them: their surface structure and their deep structure. We adults recognize immediately that the ‘laps around the track’ problem is, at its core, an addition problem; that is, its deep structure is an addition problem. The fact that we’re talking about meters on a track does not change what we do to solve the problem. Actually, we could quite easily think of dozens of ways to “disguise” problems with the same deep structure:

• If there are 2 gallons in 1 jug, how many gallons are in 2 jugs?
• If you need 3 eggs to bake 1 cake, how many eggs do you need for 2 cakes?
• If there are 5,280 feet in 1 mile, how many feet are in 2 miles?
• If there are 20 ziggiblops in 1 splutzik, how many ziggiblops are in 2 splutziks?
• If there are 12 # in 1 ^, how many # are in 2 ^?

The “disguise” is the surface structure of the problem. And, as you probably noticed in the last two examples, the surface structure need not even be familiar (or pronounceable) for you to recognize the deep structure and solve the problem.

The disconnect that arose for my son is that while he had the skills and knowledge necessary to solve the problem, he got hung up on the surface structure of the problem – laps around a track, which he had never formally studied – and failed to recognize the deep structure – addition, something he’s been practicing for months on end.

Being able to apply knowledge to new and unfamiliar problems is called transfer, and it’s something that we teachers and parents try to encourage in our kids. But, as you may have noticed with your own kids, knowledge transfer isn’t easy. There are reasons why it’s tough, and there are things we can do to promote knowledge transfer – but we’ll get into those another time. For now, see what you can do identify the surface and deep structures in problems you encounter – and have patience with your kids (or yourself!) during the countless repetitions of problems that will be necessary for successful transfer of knowledge.

-Sara McGuinn, Northshore Tutoring Director