Dear Ben,

I know I have not written recently.

Some exciting opportunities have come my way.

I have been off chasing them.

I hope you are doing well. How did that boat trip go in April?

I just love boats and the water.

I could not think about you without a tinge of covetousness.

Let me go ahead and tell you what has been filling my time and thoughts recently.

International Congress on Medieval Studies

I went to a conference in Medieval Studies!

My background is in Early Christian literature, as you know.

I went on behalf of the publisher I work for.

Conferences are such a marvelous environment.

Being surrounded by learning ad scholars is empowering and inspirational.

I love to cut deep into topics while respecting their general value.

All learning needs the safe environment of the conference to try out new ideas and say “unpublishable” things.

Academia is not just learning, but speaking.

It is about taking the raw materials of facts and data and turning them into the brilliant sculpture of argument and conviction.

I really felt that I re-found my voice while I was there.

I also got some interesting books.

1. Commentary on the Psalms by Jerome (Latin)
2. Life of Saint Alexis (Old French)
3. A Roman Women Reader (Latin)
4. Life of Simeon Stylites
5. Early Christian Hagiography
6. Giving Reason
7. A Rulebook for Arguments
8. The Annotated Hobbit

Pedagogy of Going Deep

I am going to be teaching a few courses this summer! I am so excited and cannot wait to tell you more about it!

Right now, however, I am in a course for teachers.

This has really gotten me thinking about how to teach.

Going deep is so vital, especially to avoid boredom or shallow knowledge.

I believe the best way to create depth is by making the topic the student’s own.

In a class, you learn about a topic and you get the general overview.

Then comes the magic.

Now the student can work within that new enlarged world of knowledge.

He can discover new things and use new pieces of knowledge within this world.

For example, if I were to teach about the rise of sensibility in the 18th century, I would then offer my students the opportunity to write in the style or show me how to enliven an existing texts with the hallmark tropes of sensibility.

The student is now using the knowledge he just acquired.

In so doing, he will come up with questions and problems.

When he comes to me with his questions and concerns, the knowledge he acquires from my feedback will be twice as valuable and connect with him.

I would rather go deep through questions and problems than just by me talking more.

“I’m busy”

So may people have noticed that this seems to be the busiest generation that has ever been.

Hustling and rushing is the norm.

Working for hours on end is expected.

In reading and absorbing myself in historical literature, I have remembered that life did not always run at hypersonic speed.

A desire to regain the peace and quality of this “simpler” life welled up in me.

I am going about this from two perspectives.

1) The sound of silence. A few weeks ago I did a “Dana Girls Week.”

I stopped watching TV, though I allowed myself “radio” in the form of podcasts.

Neil Gaiman gave a great nugget of advice in his Tim Ferriss interview: “write or do nothing.”

This is how my week went.

I wrote or did nothing.

I could hear myself think and found myself less pressured to perform.

Since then I have greatly reduced time on Youtube and have regained much of the peace gained from the experience.

2) Instead of just saying “I’m busy,” I try to define exactly what I am doing.

When I put into words what I am doing, it gives me perspective.

Maybe I am not as busy as I think, or maybe my list is too long and I need to cut down.

Either way it gives me something profitable to say instead of just “busy,” like that is an achievement in and of itself.

I have only scratched the surface.

I do hope to renew our regular conversations as to not let too much time elapse again.

Thank you,

Maria

Maria Johnson

I have a passion for helping students, young and old, improve their writing and study skills. I am a tutor and proofreader.

tutoringwithmaria.com/

Another week has passed. I am keeping it short this week. I will discuss rediscovering some old books, The Dana Girl Mysteries, and more on critical thinking in reading comprehension.

The Dana Girls

I love a good mystery.

I’m an avid Murder She Wrote watcher and a total Psych-O (from the show Psych).

When I was a young girl, I enjoyed a book series called the Dana Girls Mysteries.

They were written by the same team of authors as the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries.

The Dana Girls are now out of print and won’t make it to the silver screen anytime soon, but a worthy read nonetheless.

Written in the 1930s, they have a different style than our modern children books.

The vocabulary is better and the turn of phrase more astute. A small example:

“On the still December air floated the notes of a plaintive whistling in a minor strain. It was not the warbling of a bird, nor did it seem like that of a human being.”

In the Shadow of the Tower, p. 1

Good literature is easy to find; I am not in doubt.

These are just so accessible and short.

You get all the eloquence of a bygone era in an action-packed mystery for children.

Why am I telling you?

Well I went to a used bookstore the other day.

Whenever I go to one, I always ask if they have The Dana Girls.

This time they actually said yes. I was dumbfounded.

We bought a whole bunch. I’ve been reading through them with great pleasure.

The Dana Girls, Nancy Drew, and The Hardy Boys (original books, not modern ones) are great reads for Middle Schoolers and early High School kids.

They are very easy to read, but also introduce the student to uncommon vocabulary and an older style of talking.

Not to mention, mysteries are fantastic tools in developing critical thinking in children!

Fact vs. Opinion

I want to continue to discuss with you my thoughts about critical thinking in reading comprehension.

Read the first part of the discussion here!

This week I turned my attention to fact versus opinion.

I am a huge fan of The Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn

They have very fun dialogs and exercises to help you get thinking about thinking! 😉

There is not just fact and opinion but also inference.

I found this middle step was the hardest.

A statement of fact is any statement about something which can be directly observed by others or checked for accuracy.

Inferring is a logical conclusion made from verifiable fact.

Opinion is a statement of inference that is not entirely facts.

The Thinking Toolbox, Lesson 4

We went through the different exercises and examples.

I realized often it came down to the tone of the words.

Did the writer sound authoritative?

Did he add something extra, using such language as “must have,” “inevitably,” “probably?”

You can say the same thing but in completely different ways.

That colors the meaning.

This deeper thinking about how people say things and not just what they say plays a big role in comprehension.

This week’s post is shorter.

I have a secret project I am working on that I am excited to share with you soon.

Stay tuned and subscribe in order not to miss anything!

Maria Johnson

I have a passion for helping students, young and old, improve their writing and study skills. I am a tutor and proofreader.

tutoringwithmaria.com/

Another week has passed! March is over! Here I will discuss visiting my student, reviewing the book Excellent Sheep, and thinking about reading comprehension and critical thinking.

I appreciate your patience as I have been away much longer than planned.

I got sick again and did some traveling.

Those are not excuses.

Overcoming circumstances has been a major goal for me this year.

I want to be able to get things done regardless of the unexpected occurrences that come up.

Thomas Frank mentioned even putting money on the line to force yourself, but I am not ready to do that yet (link).

Visiting a Student

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit a student of mine!

A long time ago, I actually did in-person tutoring, but since then I have remained physically distant from the lovely students I get to teach.

The experience was wonderful!

It is such a privilege to be welcomed into someone’s home.

All teachers see their students in their lessons, but to cross that threshold into the home is not to be taken for granted.

My student’s personality shined in many settings and scenarios within the comfort of her own day-to-day life.

Those moments that either reminded me of a lesson or taught me something new about her were so enlightening and enjoyable.

We went to several places.

Those experiences were educational because I found all these little teachable moments.

However, I also learned more about her and how my teachings were fitting into her thinking and life.

Some can say that a big disadvantage to working online is the lack of human contact and “living behind a screen.”

I won’t debate that here.

I can say that connecting with my student was a joy, and I came home refreshed and more passionate than I have been in a long while.

Thank you to her and her family for that!

Excellent Sheep

During my visit, I was introduced to a few new books.

The book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz stood out to me.

I want to share some of my thoughts and findings about it.

Now, at face value, this not a book for an English tutor of Middle and High School students.

However, I am always thinking about the future for my students and how they can prepare now.

a. The Role of the University

I agree with his thesis that Ivy league schools are not serving us today and are not the answer to success.

He correctly asserts that it is more beneficial to learn how to learn than to gain a diploma.

He lays out the role of the university in the process of learning and growing as a person:

“To put it in the language of computers, you can download all the data you want, but it won’t be any good to you unless you have the software to make use of it. That software, the ability to operate on information—to understand it, to synthesize it into new combinations, to discover and create with it—is what college is meant to ‘install.'”

(p. 174)

b. Student burnout

I found his description of student burnout and overwhelm to be particularly moving.

He painted this picture of the student who does everything asked of him but has no inner voice or life path.

Students were encouraged to rise above the white noise of “what you must do” to find what your own voice is saying to you.

He writes:

“To find yourself, you first must free yourself. You won’t be able to recognize the things you really care about until you have released your grip on all the things that you’ve been taught to care about. And we already know, in the case of today’s young high achievers, what those are.”

(p. 90)

On the other hand, he had the difficult job of telling the reader that not every student is equally worthy to be in college.

More importantly, their perceived worth does not equate with reality.

In a marvelous anecdote about the old days at Yale, he quotes a man who mapped the change in the welcome speeches given to the freshmen.

In 1957, the speech encouraged the student to try because he was chosen among a very few:

“It was the duty of each of us over the next four years to prove that Yale had made the right choice by picking us instead of giving our place to someone else.”

(p. 213)

By 1969, the speech turned into a laudation of each student before they had even done anything.

Wouldn’t we be the wiser for humbling our students before they set out so they can feel a sense of deserving their achievements?

c. Teachers Transform

Lastly, he answers what is the difference between colleges and just on your own book-learning: the teacher.

Teachers need to be truly present — adding in their own experiences and stories into the content (p. 179).

A real teacher is a real person. We can read, but a teacher transforms.

This was a poignant reminder for me.

Crossroads Between Comprehension and Critical Thinking

I have been thinking about the crossroads between reading comprehension and critical thinking.

Now, let me say, I am writing to you at the beginning of my search to articulate this and not at the end.

Stay tuned for something more concrete; in the meantime, just enjoy the ride.

As adults, we take so much of reading comprehension for granted.

Holding all the details in our mind and picking up on subtleties is second nature.

For young students, though, this can often be so hard.

Reading is the cornerstone of writing so this is very important to me.

I want to get to the bottom of it.

I found, when I read with my students, the questions would be part of the problem.

“Who?” or “what?” was a no brainer, but taking it a step further resulted in confusion or shallow answers.

Thinking and reading go hand and hand.

Not just any kind of thinking, but critical thinking.

When I was in college, we did a lot of analyzing of texts.

We found patterns and arguments like prizes inside cereal boxes.

It was the hunt and we were equipped with the tools.

Now I am bringing this into all my lessons.

Temporarily, I have stopped just reading and writing with my students.

We are learning how to think better.

It is going well.

More on this topic to come.

Here are some books I have been consulting or planning to read.

• Thinking Toolbox by Nathaniel Bluedorn, Hans Bluedorn
• The Theory Toolbox: Critical Concepts for the New Humanities by Jeffrey T. Nealon, Susan Searls Giroux
• Raising Reading Achievement in Middle and High Schools: Five Simple-To-Follow Strategies by Elaine K. McEwan

Thank you for reading! Until next week!

Maria Johnson

I have a passion for helping students, young and old, improve their writing and study skills. I am a tutor and proofreader.

tutoringwithmaria.com/

I reflect on my week — resting, proofreading opportunities, and how to begin the research process with Wikipedia.

Rest

This week I was sick.

It was one of those colds that brewed under the surface for a year in order to give the biggest punch once it surfaced. My dramatic flare is warranted after how much it messed up my schedule.

That, however, was a blessing in disguise.

It gave me a chance to slow down and not jump the gun.

I am not the most patient of people, so it was a forced slowdown.

Proofreading

I have been working on something behind the scenes, this week I was able to truly debut it.

I began to offer proofreading services.

Although I believe most students and young professionals can benefit from it, I am most eager to help non-native speakers edit their English.

I learned English grammar through having my work edited.

I truly believe it is the best form of writing education for anyone.

Wikipedia

Helping young students learn how to research is a great joy.

My background is in Medieval Studies, so plowing through bibliographies and keyword searches excites me.

We all have been warned not to cite Wikipedia as a source.

Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can write on there.

That said, I am a huge proponent of using Wikipedia at the beginning of the process. Just this week I discussed this with a student.

Wikipedia can provide you with a general overview of the topic, keywords, and helpful links.

If you know nothing about the topic, read the Wikipedia article on it. Learn the keywords attached to the topic.

Then, at the bottom, read the external links section to start out your search.

When you return to Google Search, you will be equipped with general knowledge and terminology that will speed up your search time.

Start with Wikipedia but end with reliable .edu/.org sources!

This week was a bit unusual but such a blessing.

See you next week!

Maria Johnson

I have a passion for helping students, young and old, improve their writing and study skills. I am a tutor and proofreader.

tutoringwithmaria.com/

This week (February 16 – 23, 2018) I am thinking about connecting phrases, reading in context, and passion. Join me!

I truly feel like starting this off by saying “I’m back.”

“Fell off the planet” is dramatic, but I did spend five months in Russia and focused on other projects.

Now I am back and ready to write.

I am starting a new series.

I want to take you along with me each week.

You can see what I discover and am thinking about.

If something sparks your interest, then don’t be shy!

Leave a comment or write me an email.

Here we go!

This week I thought about

1.Connecting phrases

Sometimes, we take things for granted.

Make that, we often take things for granted.

Since we tend to communicate through conversations, the essay style can be jarring.

When we talk in a conversation, the other person can follow our train of thought.

However, when my student faces the blank page, he is forced to play both sides and write understandably.

With my young students, I find they put two thoughts beside each other without any glue.

Consider, two best friends sit beside each other.

In the first scenario, they do not interact or even look at each other.

You know they are friends, but there is no visible proof.

In the second scenario, they laugh together and lean in on each other, blurring the line between them.

Which is better?

The same is true for thoughts.

We want to see their connection.

I have always known this, but I was encouraged to see the mechanics behind it this week.

Example:

I hate writing. I took a course, and I am now a writer.

Initially, I hated writing. After I took a course in it, I fell in love. Now, I am a writer.

Read about how to write descriptive scenes with your Middle Schooler here!

2. Context while reading

As a Latin teacher, I read with my students every session.

The reading always goes better the more they engage with the passage.

If they are following what Quintus is doing, then they read effortlessly.

They become superheroes and even read words they have never seen before.

How?

They read in context.

When they reach a new word, they consider everything around it.

Cheesy example in 3…2…1…

I am so [apple] to see you today.

Wait, I think I put the wrong word in, but I am sure a student of mine could correct that. 😉

My students that actively consider cognates and context always read amazingly.

Remember this, if you find yourself reading in a foreign language this week.

For more on Latin for beginners read: How to Understand Latin Through the Eyes of English Speakers

3. Passion

You will soon learn that I am a huge fan of Mel Robbins and self-improvement books.

For this last slot, I wanted to put the spotlight on passion.

We all believe that “our passion” is a thing inside of us.

It is something we can lose or gain.

We could take it on a walk even.

However, Mel Robbins shatters that.

She recasts passion as energy and excitement.

Our greatest interests give us excitement.

When I sit down to write in Russian, I am energized.

Russian is my passion, but that passion is not a thing, it’s a force.

I cannot lose it.

If I get discouraged about Russian, for example, I feel I lost my “passion.”

In actuality, I lost my energy.

Energy can be refilled or repositioned.

My power is my passion.

However, my passion is formless energy projected onto what excites us most at the moment.

I offer you all my passion.

Not because I dreamed my entire life of doing this, but because I am energized.

I am eager to bring you new strategies and tips to help you or your child succeed.

If you enjoyed this and want more, be sure to subscribe!

Maria Johnson

I have a passion for helping students, young and old, improve their writing and study skills. I am a tutor and proofreader.

tutoringwithmaria.com/