When working on a writing assignment, always make sure to answer the prompt directly. Students often read through the instructions once and then hurriedly get started on a first draft only to discover later that they've not really delivered what was asked for.

We usually practice close reading on passages in literature, when we're asked to pay detailed attention to a section and record insights about specific word choice, syntax, scansion, patterns, repetitions, contradictions, symbolism, etc. We're taking a microscope to the author's work and interpreting what they are seeking to convey.

When we transfer this practice over to a teacher's assignment instructions, we can capture exactly what they're asking for. Instead of writing our broad response to our general understanding, we can directly answer the question at hand.

This often requires highlighting, using a bolded/larger font, and/or copying key phrases and putting them in a list for easy reference as we work. Important information is often buried in a longer prose description of the assignment. It's your job to identify and isolate it. This piece of detective work makes your writing more exact. Plus, you save time and have more fun!

Flow, the zone, engagement. It's what everyone wants in their work. We're asked for results, but we know they're not the end. There's always a next item.

Flow is natural and easy when we are following a personal interest or long-held competency. Many students who have attention challenges around academic work can hold deep and calm focus when pursuing their own interests. 

I'm constantly investigating how flow around their natural interests can be copied and pasted across domains into their academic lives. It begins by witnessing enthusiasm for their hobbies and then talking with them about how it might relate to their academics.

Sometimes, this takes the form of a redirect during a digression. Maybe it's more aikido than copy / paste. They're still in the emotional energy of their personal interest, but suddenly you're talking about the history paper, using tone and energy as bridges, which often leads to a new discovery about a direction to take with the academic work.

Inspiration and engagement don't usually come from bearing down and fighting resistance, or being told to get it together. Linking interests opens doors. 

Reflecting on your own progress is essential. Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset has become a classic of educational thinking. She clearly advocates for  mistakes as the foundation of learning. She goes further to reveal how honest self-assessment releases one from perfectionism and allows for continual improvement. But if students are stuck in a performative, fixed mindset, they develop ideas about themselves that resist change or external input.

Take the student who abandons all effort in English class, saying, "I'm just not a good writer." This set image of themselves does not allow for any chance of improvement. Maybe they have so many good ideas that they need to learn to type to be able to get them out without feeling stuck. Maybe they need to explore essay structure and outlining so those good ideas can stack logically and add up to something coherent. 

Then there's the student who gets an encouraging grade from an overly generous teacher and thinks, "Writing is easy." When they get low marks from other teachers, they might just assume they don't like them. It doesn't occur to them to improve. Things go downhill from there.

Even a simple one-question prompt can lead to a world of discovery: "What do you feel you did well and how do you think you could improve?" If there is some of each every time around, and adults give feedback about the accuracy of the self-assessment, students will regulate as they work and bring better and better results.

For some students, handwriting, voice-to-text, or another alternative is going to be the superior choice. But if you're finding yourself returning to the keyboard, it makes sense to dive in.

I learned the old-school way, an hour a day on a manual typewriter for a semester in high school. We taped pieces of paper to the top edge of the keyboard so they'd lay over our hands. Our teacher would load stubs of chalk into a length of aluminum tube and sling them at us if we tried to peek.

Today, there are lots of (less brutal) choices for typing training on the internet. Here's the thing: you'll work two to three times faster if you learn to touch type. That first draft that took two hours to bang out? Maybe it only needs to take you 40 minutes.

Ever struggle to get to a first draft and then resist editing suggestions from your teacher? No more. Ever fail to take notes on an important video? Now it's easy. Ever get dinged for not developing your ideas enough, or feel pressured to get everything in your head onto the screen during a timed class exercise? Those days can be over.

Even though the chalk attack factor was a bit brutal, taping that piece of paper to the top edge of my keyboard and typing under it worked really well. Add that to a typing program that always shows you a view of the keyboard on the screen. Practice five days a week until you hit 50 or 60 wpm without too many errors.

​It will be a whole new world.

There's usually some kind of narrative pattern in what we do and how we think. Part of academic coaching involves previewing these patterns so students have the opportunity to course correct when they veer off the path.

Take the typical school semester. Students often report being happy to be back at school, seeing their friends, and having a relatively easy time in classes. 

​Before they know it, a few weeks have gone by and work starts to pile up. Procrastination happens, sports and activities take up time, and many start to fall behind.

Drafts of papers are due, but annotations are incomplete. Homework is missing. Teachers and parents start to apply pressure. Conflicts increase. Shame mounts. Sleep is lost. Mid-terms are coming. They feel overwhelmed.

What happens next varies. Some bomb and take it as a character trait they can't change, others dig deep and pull out of the nosedive, some have escaped the worst of the arc by pacing their efforts and staying organized all along.

Helping students see the patterns in their school stories helps them identify how to change direction before things get out of control the next time. 

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It is every parent's and educator's dream that students own their work. At the same time, students are confronted with an endless sea of requirements about what they do.

The old trick of giving a young child two options becomes stale as they mature into an awareness of everything the world has to offer. Defiance and shutdown are endemic in the teen years, just when inaction (and unwise action) begins leading to more serious consequences.

The trick lies in evolving your own process. If you have the agency to do this, choosing from among the options happens quickly, intuitively, and easily. This leads to a lighter, more expansive attention that allows you to get to work instead of resisting.

Organizational process involves making lists of what needs doing, and in brainstorming out the smaller pieces of larger, longer-term projects (like papers and test prep). By breaking it down, pulling from all the portals and sources your tasks come from, you make a thing of your own. You're driving.

When it's all in front of you, you can reshuffle it. Maybe it's in a Google doc. Maybe it's on index cards. Could be a bullet journal, a whiteboard, sticky notes. That's the first choice: how to see it all. 

Once your style of organization and arrangement becomes a daily habit, it's surprisingly fun and easy to estimate how much time each piece will take, and select what's next.

Each piece may not be fun, but when you have the agency to choose how to proceed, you liberate the energy to move forward.

Glued to a desk, glued to a chair, glued to a screen? No wonder you might be feeling a little trapped.

​Brains and bodies need movement. With all the time we spend locked into position, the freedom of standing and walking can be a great relief.

Try brainstorming while pacing or out walking. Leave the laptop on the desk (or the notebook in the pocket) and let your gaze wander as you mull an essay topic choice, run through memorized class vocabulary, or practice a presentation. 

Stop periodically to record your insights or review your notes. Witness how movement puts the learning in your body while maintaining your energy and attention.

Pro tip: combine this with "working out loud". This is how actors memorize all those lines. It works for processing all kinds of material for many types of learners.

There's plenty to read about the difference between these terms. In my experience, they go best together. Any session, semester, or year might  require a different balance. Definitions can vary. I like to think of it as the difference between content, process, and vision.

For example, tutoring can help you understand essay structure and public speaking skills. Coaching leads you to develop the habits, capacity, and confidence to write and present effectively. Mentoring shares practical wisdom around using your unique voice to navigate your future plans for school and career.

Students of all ages can usually use some of each. The best client relationships have a fluid, nonlinear interplay between all three that reflects individual learning style, choice, and discovery in the moment.

Ugh. Multiple portals. A calendar or three. Emails from all sides. Tasks and reminders trickle in from everywhere. I've even encountered students and parents who have to deal with more than one site or app that supposedly unifies all their tasks!

Switching screens and tracking notifications can be crazy-making. For some of us, it works better to collect it all in one place as we go. One pass through the portals daily keeps it updated.

Seeing it all in one place will bring peace to your brain and allow you to make quick, intuitive choices about what's next. It also reduces the amount of time students and parents need to spend in monitoring progress and checking things off.

Take control. Keep it simple. A Google doc is easy to use, easy to share, easy to read, and easy to have on your phone. 

A clean list that's all your own. Boom - a command center you can live with. Make it so! 

A writing assignment is like a door that won't open if you walk straight across the room to it. Instead, you have to cover every inch of the space, and talk to yourself about everything in it and what it means. Then it's time to get rid of a bunch of stuff, rearrange what remains, dust it all off and keep tinkering until the door pops open by itself.

Yes, this is a bit weird and obtuse. So is writing. For example: this thing called a thesis. Your main argument. The thing you're going to prove with quotes from the reading. So often, your first formulation falls apart under the weight of your evidence, and you find that your conclusion brings it all together. Great! No. 

Move it up to the end of the introduction, where it belongs. What's in the conclusion, then? Better to answer the question, "So what?" You've proven your point, now what does it mean? Not just what you learned as the reader, but what you'll do with that knowledge. What would the author want?

But I thought I was done! Don't make that the goal. Keep your prompt and process notes next to you and continue sifting. It's a slalom course, not a drag race. You're cracking a code, not ripping open a package. Pace yourself, proceed gently, repeat things, talk out loud. Play.