In sixth grade, I took a class called Study Skills that was taught by an extremely tall, young-ish guy named Mr. Smerdon who kept a stapler in his pocket and would excitedly staple his pants whenever students answered questions correctly. The class, which was aptly named, was meant to improve our academic habits: note taking, time management, materials organization, research paper writing, and test preparation. I can’t actually remember any of the specific techniques that Mr. Smerdon taught us, but I do recall understanding that these skills were important enough to warrant their own dedicated class.
Years later, in tenth grade Algebra 2, Ms. Nix required us to follow her preferred organization system, which actually was pretty simple. It involved a three-ring binder, filled with loose-leaf paper for daily notes and three-hole-punched handouts and tests. Everything was arranged chronologically, with new materials filed at the front. That was it. This departed dramatically from the complex systems we'd used before: those labyrinthine arrangements of composition notebooks, detached accordion folders, and divider-laden binders. Though, at the time, her quarterly notebook checks felt overly prescriptive for us high school students who presumably could manage our own materials, I soon discovered the brilliance in her efficiency. Her system worked so well that I began applying it across all my subjects.
I’m telling you about these two experiences to show that, first, study skills should be explicitly taught, and second, simplicity often yields the best results. Today, the middle and high school students who I see in my practice rarely receive formal instruction in study skills, and anything they do receive is grossly inadequate. Therefore, the students either lack these skills entirely or overcomplicate them to the point of ineffectiveness.
The problems manifest in various ways. Some students completely forgo note-taking, while others become so fixated on formatting and creating aesthetically perfect notes that they miss the actual content. Materials management swings between extremes, from shoving worksheets into backpacks (or, worse, pockets!) to creating byzantine systems across multiple digital platforms and physical folders, inevitably leading to misplaced materials. Writing assignments suffer from either a complete absence of planning or an excessive, time wasting series of redundant preparatory steps. Time management follows a similar pattern: students either maintain no schedule at all or create overwhelmingly detailed to-do lists that generate more overwhelm than organization. And when it comes to exam preparation, the situation is so dire that I need to write a separate post about it sometime in the near future.
Executive functioning skills–the mental processes that enable us to plan, organize, focus attention, and juggle multiple tasks–don't develop in a vacuum for most students. We can't expect kids to implicitly learn these crucial abilities. It's time to bring back dedicated Study Skills classes like the one I took in sixth grade. These classes would serve two vital purposes: emphasizing the importance of strong academic habits and teaching students that the most effective approaches are often the simplest ones.
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This show was gorgeous. Highly recommend!