We are just at the beginning of this rhythm in time. Students of history will already be thinking about Cassandra, the 1918 pandemic, Isaac Newton's productivity surge during the Great Plague, and so on, reminding us all that history and nature play out in cyclical narratives with repeating patterns.

For the immediate future, my local students in San Francisco will be joining those I already work with online. I've taught literature and writing to small groups on Zoom since last year and am happy to have a head start using this technology. I'm confident I can help you make the best of remote learning with tips both for school classes and tutoring.

Working on writing and organization can even be easier online, since we're dealing with shared documents much of the time. Now we don't have to crane our necks to look at each other's screens! This format will affect everyone a little differently. It will accentuate challenges for some, while others may find they prefer it.

There's so much to discover and adjust to. Change is the only real constant. Let's keep our positive attitudes, compassion for one another, and remember to take breaks from our screens as we dive in. 

Literature comes alive when read out loud, and best if it's done with some panache, even if you're working alone. Characters make their impression based on what they say, what they do, and what others say about them.
Note these qualities and infuse your character's dialogue with them as you read.

Stand up. Physicalize the character traits. Smile if they are happy, smirk if they're nasty, turn up your nose if they're snobby, grit your teeth a little if they're angry. This will help bring the right color of emotion into your voice. 

You'll be surprised at the insights and questions that come up. Note them. By living the story from within the characters this way, you'll start to more fully understand their motivations, making it easier to see what they stand for in the story and bring your knowledge into your writing.

This even works with history. Or math. That's right. The strange and complex beauty of the quadratic equation has character. Play around. Talk yourself through the steps of calculations adding a little emotion, or an accent. This can make it fun, helps with focus, and get you unstuck when you're bogged down.

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.