Do we need other people in order to understand ourselves better?

Take just a few seconds to consider this question.

OK, now: unless you were too rushed or distracted to actually invest those few seconds, you found that your mind automatically began forming a reply.

Questions can be great for kicking the brain into a productive mode, because:

• Questions stimulate thinking, and…
• Questions provide focus.

[I've been devoting my Thursday blog posts to the topic of All Things Academic: reading, writing, 'rithmetic and the other school subjects.]

Here’s a Thanksgiving feast for your brain, a few of my favorite websites for educational games and videos:

Sporcle has quizzes on all sorts of subject matter. How well do you know the countries of Africa, or the periodic table, or sports teams? What countries have the highest populations of turkeys?

On Quizlet you can make your own flash cards (online or printed), or use sets in their extensive collection. Brush up on your vocabulary (excellent for test prep!) or your times tables or your French verbs. I really like their “Scatter” game, one of several flashcard-flipping options you can try.

Several factors have thrown me off my nice, comfortable writing routine, including some extra part-time work and then a freak snowstorm that left us without power or Internet access for a week.

I stopped blogging because my routine had been disrupted. My morning writing time was no longer available, and that’s when my head was in “writing mode.”

I am “packing” right now and getting ready to head to the Cape for a few days.

“Packing” in this case means “throw a sweater and some books in the trunk,” because LisSurMer is a place to be casual, comfortable and private.

Every walk I took this week, I had to keep reminding myself to ENJOY THE SPRINGTIME. I live in a beautiful New England town of antique houses, rolling hills, white churches and nature preserves. Through my window as I write this, I see a blaze of yellow forsythia rising behind the red barn.

I already live in a beautiful, serene place…and yet I am struggling right now to appreciate it!

So what does this have to do with parenting?

I’ve been quiet here the past two weeks, because I’ve taken on a part-time job in addition to my usual tutoring.

So, I’m a lot busier, yes.

But what’s getting in the way of my blogging isn’t so much the scarcity of time. It’s the nature of this new job, which is a writing and editing job.

Test preparation is big business these days, and I’m part of it.

I’ve been prepping kids for the SAT, ACT, PSAT, SSAT, ISEE and other tests, for decades now.

Is test prep a plus? Or does it do more harm than good?

In my opinion, it depends on how the preparation is done.

Is the goal merely to achieve a higher score? One common approach is to teach tricks and shortcuts, which supposedly produces higher scores quickly. JenBee wrote about how harmful this sort of coaching was for her:

I received this thoughtful response from to my last post about standardized tests and your child’s self-esteem:

I’m 36 years old and I’ve been harboring bitterness about the PSAT since I was 17. We took it in 10th grade and I got a really high score. This made me feel like the bar was set pretty high. Well, when I took it again in 11th grade… I bombed.

Your eleventh-grader is about to receive an early holiday “gift”: PSAT scores get sent home in early to mid-December.

For most kids, these scores (and other standardized test scores, such as the SSAT, ISEE, SAT, ACT, etc) hit hard, whether they’re bad or good! And it’s important to give kids the perspective and support they need to turn their results into personal empowerment, and not discouragement.

Yesterday, several of my students took the October SAT exam. It’s a long and challenging test, and we all worked hard to prepare for it.

One of my SAT mantras is this: The easy questions are worth just as much as the hard questions.

And it’s true. On the SAT, every question is worth exactly one point: the easy ones, the medium ones, and the super-toughies. They’re not equal in effort, but they are equal in value!

I repeat this fact to my students many times, because it’s counter-intuitive. Surely ultra-easy math Question #1 isn’t worth as much as crazy-hard Question #20? But, yes, it is!

Why do they have these timed tests, like 25 problems in 3 minutes?

This is an excellent question.

I currently work and have worked with quite a few students who receive extra time on standardized tests, and I know for a fact that colleges do not factor this into their decision.

Meaning, if we have two absolutely identical students A and B, and A scores a 2100 out of 2400 with regular constraints while B scores a 2200 with double the time, B gets in and A doesn’t.

So, first, does time really matter? And second, if it does, why does time matter?

My sister has argued that students should not freely be given extra time. I think my hypothetical identical students identified this problem. Her basic point is that in the real world (or a college environment), speed and time are factors. Take two engineers applying for a job: it’s obvious that the guy who’s faster at math has a practical advantage.

Yet, I’ve worked with students who just need more time, and for each of them, I’m so glad that they get the opportunity to let their true intellectual power show.