Ease the pressures of endless achievement, and cultivate curiosity.
The front-page article about the academic challenges facing Brookline kindergartners epitomizes the downfall of so-called exemplary schools. As a longtime professional writing coach and tutor, I am guided in the services I provide by an obvious truth: to help students confidently rise to their potential, one should nurture, support and engage them.
Overchallenging them is the exact opposite tack. It brings me students—including, yes, high achievers—with profound self-esteem issues, deeply in need of support.
There’s an obvious win-win here: If our schools swap the fear-stricken presence of endless achievement (beginning, now, at the absurdly early age of 5) with the cultivation of curiosity, creativity, and grit, students will naturally and happily accelerate.
Jane Buchbinder
The Tutor’s Tips: The college application rush
By Jane Buchbinder
Writing and organization tutor Jane Buchbinder shares some tips for high school students working on college applications.
Great writers struggle with getting their best ideas down on the page. So why do students and their parents think that writing is going to be easy? Most likely because we communicate in words every day. We speak, the thinking goes, and so we know how to write. But that correlation is a trick of the mind. Science has revealed that writing and speaking come from two different parts of the brain. The truth is that writing is a craft that requires knowledge of its fundamentals, partnered with lots of trial and error.
As a professional writer and editor for Harvard, MIT, Scholastic, I know this very well. During my seven-year tenure as the Publications Director and Editor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I had the privilege of learning from some of the best teachers in the country how to turn school challenges into school successes. Though each inspiring instructor had an approach of their own, the underlying assertion was often the same: creative thinking, sustained attention, and a belief in the best possible outcome can redirect the running stream of a child’s education.
I was so compelled by these stories that I left the world of publishing to become a writing tutor and organizational strategies coach. Over the years, I’ve worked with students at BB&N, Rivers School, Dana Hall, Shady Hill, Chapel Hill-Chauncy Hall, Belmont Hills, Belmont High School, and Newton North High School on homework planning and preparation, writing assignments of all sorts, SAT preparation, and college entrance essays.
With college applications due at the end of the year, many students are scrambling to put on their best face. Here are a few tips that parents can work on with their students to help their essays do their bidding:
1. Focus on a story that reveals who you are inside: your values, your needs, the way you’ve faced challenges, the fuel for your ambitions. Reveal your character; this is precisely what schools want to learn about in your essay.
2. The story is in the details. One of the fundamental lessons of strong writing is “show don’t tell.” In a short essay, you may need to do a bit of both, but begin by seeking out the details in an important event or life lesson that demonstrate who you are through your thoughts and actions.
3. Let your authentic voice, passion, and experience shine. Don’t overwrite or over polish so that your essay resembles a research paper or a campaign speech. Allow the admissions officers to hear what you sound like when you’re irrepressibly curious, frightened, or determined. The real you is your greatest asset.
4. Do your research. Look at the fine points of the schools you’re considering so your application addresses the nuances of the program, rather than just your own interests. Prove to your favorite colleges that you know who they are as well as who you are.
Good luck to all. May you land at just the right college for you!
Jane Buchbinder is a writing tutor and professional editor.
Turn your teens’ winter doldrums into a writing opportunity.
By Jane Buchbinder
Every winter, high school students push their stringy, lumpy, confused bodies through the tedium of dark and frosty days. With outdoor time whittled down to a stump, they’re cooped up at home for far too many hours. Every winter high school parents observe this malaise, wondering what they can do to create structure — even better, stimulating, edifying, fulfilling structure — that will fuel their teenagers’ energy.
The good news is that this is the perfect season to provide kids with the kind of exploratory, self-directed learning experience that schools seldom have the time or the resources to offer. I’m speaking to the parents of budding scientists and historians, as well as fledgling Garage Band rockers, sword dancers, and guacamole chefs. Every passion is fodder for the pen. And whether your kids tell you this or not — as they flop onto the living room sofa for hours at a time — they are filled with dynamic thoughts and ideas.
I know this for a fact.
I also know that writing well is far from a natural phenomenon. Nathaniel Hawthorne may have dashed off the phrase “easy reading is damn hard writing,” but only because he practiced a whole lot. Unlike the spontaneity of speaking, writing requires reflection, consideration, and organization; it helps us to both locate and articulate our best ideas. In my decade of work with students, I’ve frequently seen the sustained effort of writing lead them to surprising depths of understanding, as well as lively phrases that describe their discoveries.
Add the opportunity for imagination to this, and you’ve just created a delightfully addictive homebound experience: creative writing.
My own childhood’s cozy winters mornings started with Road Runner and Pink Panther cartoons before giving way to feral attempts at “poetry” and short stories. Exploration was the reward, so whatever I wrote was just right. Sometimes I did this snuggled into the sofa — yes, with purpose — beside our lethargic tabby cat, while my older brother drafted a fictional newspaper (he was ahead of the times) that I would find under my bedroom door the next morning.
I had no idea that my winter pleasure would grow each year. I certainly didn’t anticipate that my passion would earn me a free ride through a graduate writing program, or that my stories would get published, or that a professional path would open for me as a writer and writing coach. I just did what I loved.
That’s the point. No matter what your teenagers enjoy, unstructured time can provide them with the space to focus their attention on becoming a diabolical videogame champion, if that’s their desire, or a social media giant, simply by writing about the nuances, complications, and triumphs of those fantasies. Creating the opportunity for teenagers to delve into their secret ambitions is enough to keep them coming back for more; it also turns the dark and aimless winter months into a mind-expanding, confidence-building experience.
Jane Buchbinder is a writing tutor and professional editor.