TexasCHLforum.com

... an experiment by psychologist Henry
Roediger at Washington University of St. Louis, where students
were divided into two groups to study a natural history
text. Group A studied the paper for four sessions. Group B
studied only once but was tested three times. A week later
both groups were tested, and Group B scored 50 percent
higher than Group A. They'd studied one-fourth as much yet
learned far more....
The reason, Bjork explained, resides in the way our brains
are built. "We tend to think of our memory as a tape recorder,
but that's wrong," he said. "It's a living structure, a scaffold
of nearly infinite size. The more we generate impulses, encountering
and overcoming difficulties, the more scaffolding
we build. The more scaffolding we build, the faster we learn."
When you're practicing deeply, the world's usual rules are
suspended. You use time more efficiently. Your small efforts
produce big, lasting results. You have positioned yourself at a
place of leverage where you can capture failure and turn it
into skill. The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present
abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn't
help. Reaching does.

let ’s say you’re on an airplane, and for the umpteenth
time in your life you watch the cabin steward give that clear,
concise one-minute demonstration of how to put on a life
vest. (“Slip the vest over your head,” the instructions say,
“and fasten the two black straps to the front of the vest. Inflate
the vest by pulling down on the red tabs.”) An hour into the
flight, the plane lurches, and the captain’s urgent voice comes
on the intercom telling passengers to put on their life vests.
How quickly could you do it? How do those black straps wrap
around? What do the red tabs do again?

Here ’s an alternate scenario: same airplane flight, but this
time instead of observing yet another life jacket demonstration,
you try on the life vest. You pull the yellow plastic over your
head, and you fiddle with the tabs and the straps. An hour later
the plane lurches, and the captain’s voice comes over the inter-
com. How much faster would you be?

Deep practice is built on a paradox: struggling in certain
targeted ways—operating at the edges of your ability, where
you make mistakes—makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly
different way, experiences where you’re forced to slow down,
make errors, and correct them—as you would if you were
walking up an ice-covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you
go—end up making you swift and graceful without your real-
izing it.

“We think of effortless performance as desirable, but it ’s
really a terrible way to learn,”

10 WAYS TO SPOT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PSEUDOTEACHING (PT) AND REAL TEACHING (RT)

1) PT delivers long, entertaining, inspiring lectures; RT designs short, intensive, learner-driven sessions

2) PT is eloquent and expansive; RT is concise and focused

3) PT addresses large groups; RT connects to individuals

4) PT doesn’t focus on small details; RT is all about details

5) PT is about talking more than watching or listening; RT is about listening and watching more than talking

6) PT is loudly charismatic; RT is quietly magnetic

7) PT is Robin Williams leaping atop desks in Dead Poets Society; RT is John Wooden, teaching his basketball players how to put on their socks properly (no wrinkles, because that causes blisters)

8) PT dismisses questions; RT craves them

9) PT treats everyone the same; RT tailors the message for each learner

10) PT delivers the exact same lecture over and over; RT customizes each session for its audience