ON BUILDING BETTER STUDENTS
By
Joseph A. Caulfield
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Joseph A. Caulfield on Smashwords
On Building Better Students
Copyright © 2010 by Joseph A. Caulfield
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This book is dedicated to Conor Reilly, my first grandson.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgment
Prelude
To Teachers & Parents
To Students
Introduction
Segment One - Is There a Generational Responsibility?
Segment Two - The Research
Segment Three - Are There Exceptional Schools?
Segment Four - Ripe for the Learnin
Segment Five - Are We Missing Something Here?
Segment Six - Is Money Really A Problem?
Segment Seven - My Decision and Some History
Segment Eight - Analyze Everything
Segment Nine - The CSFL Are Born
Segment Ten - The Words Got In The Way
Segment Eleven -A Worldwide Human Frailty
Segment Twelve - Beware of Leaking Boats
Segment Thirteen - Be a Fanatic
Segment Fourteen - How to think versus what to think
Segment Fifteen - A Graded Change In The Magnitude
Segment Sixteen - Mind Maps® Added
Segment Seventeen - The Proper Order
The Empowered Student Course
Part Two
Observations, classroom Tactics and Conclusions
CSFL 1 – Look up words
CSFL 2 – Behavior as a symptom
CSFL 3 – Testing as you teach
CSFL 4 – re-teaching until 100%
CSFL 5 – Demonstrate application constantly
CSFL 6 – Small gradients in learning
CSFL 7 – Mind Maps
CSFL 8 – Show and tell
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank my wife, Catherine, for the absolute support given, for my years devoted to this project. As well, I would be remiss to not acknowledge my children Michael, Amy, Jeremy, David and Curtis for their contributions of time, energy, and being willing subjects. I would like to also say thank you to all past employees that were sometimes the unwitting "lab rats", in the discovery of what works in teaching students how to learn.
To my public and private education teachers, from Mrs. Koehler to Dr. Ballard, I am indebted for your dedication to your noble profession. To the teachers I asked for help during this project, including family members, Amy Reilly and Dr. Joan Caulfield, you have been wonderful -- thank you all.
Prelude
Teaching has a need for processes that can enable each student to better understand and apply data. Such processes should encompass the existing system and curricula, so that what is already working well, remains. This book will focus on methods to empower the student, to pick up and apply any subject, independent of outside resources – making the student responsible for their own learning.
The challenge in any revitalization effort is keeping track of what works and what doesn’t. When we dilute the innocence of what works with well meaning ideas, the basic principles can become clouded with complication.
Just exactly, how can we stay aligned and keep our priorities in order? Well, the whole of an education is more than just the sum of its parts; it is also how the parts connect. It is in the connecting of the dots that solutions were discovered. You will see this as you proceed.
In writing this book, I operated on the premise that all of us care about the student, and that sometimes the principles of ‘what works’ in education gets lost in a labyrinth of well-intentioned, but counter-productive ideas. The Critical Success Factors for Learning are the fundamentals for all of us in learning any subject.
Much of this material will be considered an aside by most who teach, which means these basic rules are generally not even taken into account, or that most people exclude them from consideration. They just seem so simple. What makes them invisible? Well, they are right out there in full view, but with no intensity, no emphasis added. Develop the habit of doing these steps and you will have a rewarding time as a teacher or as a student.
This book merely emphasizes known principles, which have not been properly emphasized, and may have been out of order. Presented also, are new concepts that have been tested within the business community. Illustrative examples and some theoretical solutions will also be posited. It is my opinion that this information needs to be broadly available and utilized by every teacher, and every student regardless of age or circumstance.
To Teachers & Parents
"Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger." (1894) Theodore Roosevelt
To Students
It is your responsibility to learn. It is your willingness to take charge in your own education. The nuts and bolts for building a better student (you) are contained in these pages – the puzzle has been solved. If these Critical Success Factors for Learning are acquired and applied, there is absolutely nothing that you cannot learn and then do.
You know that in all things are fundamentals that if not strictly adhered to, create undesirable outcomes – all games have rules, including the student game. The Critical Success Factors for Learning are the rules for all of us in learning any subject. This is really simple stuff. Much of it is considered an aside, by most who teach, which means these rules are generally not taken into account, or that most people exclude them from consideration. This has made them almost invisible – they are right out there in full view, but with no emphasis added. Develop the habit of doing these steps and you will have a rewarding time as a student, and in life.
Introduction
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo Galilei 1564-1642
This book represents one of the simplest solutions you have ever come across, for what initially appears to be a complex set of problems. Elementary solutions, however, often get overlooked. Simple solutions from our historical past always seemed to get caught up in what I call, ‘a worldwide human frailty’ (see Segment Eleven). At the end of this book you will have eight fundamentals of education that are the Critical Success Factors for Learning (CSFL). The following is a brief history, and some stories on how the CSFL were arrived at.
Solutions to anything should never be attempted until we have found what is specifically wrong, by analysis. Pre-supposing that we know what’s wrong may find us doing popular actions as a solution, which can leave us with a result that is costly, time consuming and send all of our efforts into chaos and limbo.
The data contained herein was arrived at through the utilization of Pareto’s Law and Analysis, and other data mining techniques to determine the actions that were delivering the ideal result in the corporate classroom, i.e., a student who understood and could apply data to achieve a desired outcome.
What preceded the analysis was a precise definition of our current state of affairs, as compared to our ideal state of affairs. Doing data mining was crucial. It was the analysis that kept the project on track and focused on knowledge discovery for predictive outcomes. Data mining itself became the process of extracting a blueprint for success.
On Building Better Students is a compilation of Critical Success Factors for Learning, uncovered by observation and analysis, and then verified in corporate classrooms, and validated in the workspace – These factors have been essential to learning and application. The Critical Success Factors for Learning (CSFL) offers students a personal and direct route to student mastery.
Any heuristic program, this among them, is a commonsense set of rules intended to increase the probability of solving a state of difficulty. CSFL provides experience-based techniques using readily accessible solutions as a declaration for being a better student.
The techniques and strategies empower students to be at cause and achieve success. It is intended to be used as a prerequisite course every year as school begins, or as a traditional summer course, or online (virtual) course. Its principles should be diligently adhered to in all study, and strongly emphasized in every classroom.
CSFL students subjectively and objectively begin to see and understand the linkage between cause and effect. They grow personally as they self-discover that the commonsense rules of CSFL increase the probability of them getting smarter, understanding and applying data.
Up until teaching CSFL the student will have been largely the effect, as they are dependent on others (teacher, parent, classmate, tutor). Furthermore, student dependency upon others can suppress individual creativeness while increasing levels of irresponsibility. Teachers utilizing CSFL will be astonished at the student’s discovery of the crossroads of cause and effect. Students begin to realize that they are both cause, and then effect, in regard to their education. This metacognition is intensely beneficial for the student, and stimulates their participation and responsibility for learning.
Segment One
Is There a Generational Responsibility?
As a grandparent, my thoughts, prayers and every fiber of my being are for optimum survival of each child. I have four grandchildren. They are, in birth order, Conor, Jake, Brigid and Espen.
Espen is the youngest, and he will be starting school soon. This will be a big moment. He is excited to learn new things -- more so everyday. The adult family members are excited as well. Not only will he learn, but also the massive expense of Mom or Dad staying at home to watch him, or the constant worry about what he is doing at day care, or the stress and frustration of finding a family member to watch him simply go away. What a relief. If you have children, you know what I mean.
Knowing that his schooling is just around the corner, I decided to look at what others are saying and doing about the subject of being a good student in our ultra modern world. I am concerned about what the media are saying regarding the state of education. Home schooling is not an option at this time, but I view it as one of the better choices for a variety of reasons.
I know that in the business world we had learned and shared a lot about the subject of education, and I was excited to see any new changes. What I found were academics quarreling over the difference between being a pupil and being a student. Consequently, I went to my dictionary, because I was unsure if I knew the difference either. It seems trivial. I am thinking, though, these folks should keep these kinds of quarrels private.