TRANSCRIPT:
 

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 106: How study success shows up for the students I work with. Because it’s not just about grades and results. That’s part of it for some students, but there’s a whole lot of other benefits and advantages happening too. 

Hey VIP’s! I hope you and your teen’s are having a great week so far. If you’re on school holidays right now, as I know most students are in the southern hemisphere, or coming up to the end of the school year in the northern hemisphere. I hope things are going really well.

Now, I’ve had some really good conversations with students and parents in my 10 Week Grade Transformation Program and also in Next Level Coaching and I thought I’d share a couple of key things they’ve been mentioning that I don’t talk about as often as I should. Because I often ask students coming into the 10WGT - what would make this totally worth it to you to invest one hour per week - for ten weeks?

What would need to change or happen for you and your study? 

And I ask parents, what would you love for your teen to get out of the 10WGT? 

What would this being a success mean for you?

And then at the end, we review, and discuss what changes they’ve seen. What’s happened.  And in Next Level, we discuss how they want to take things further. What ELSE can we make happen for them?

So I thought it would be a really positive thing to share some of this with you on the podcast. The ways that study success shows up. The more obvious ways, and the side benefits too. Because when we talk about study success, I know that we tend to instantly think about grades, results and report cards. But I know that we do also know that it’s also not about the grades - in terms of the numbers and letters, but what they can lead to or create. 

It’s actually about what opportunities they bring and the confidence they create.  And sometimes, it’s not about the grades at all. For example, we’ve just finalised our Semester 1 Next Level awards - and we’ll have announced them the evening before this episode goes out, and I can tell you that one of the students we’ve acknowledged with an award is in Next Level purely to make their study smooth, enjoyable and a positive Y12 experience, not with a view to create any specific grade results, but to take away the stress and give them back more time for life outside of study, and another student we’ve awarded is wanting to achieve dux of their grade.

Both have been awarded for their participation, positivity and commitment. 
So, here are 5 ways - the obvious and the less obvious but just as worthwhile - that students see, experience and enjoy success when they have the skills, strategies and techniques to create it.

1) Less time studying.

So many parents and students come to me with stories of never ending assignments, late night revision, and lengthy essays, coursework and inquiry tasks. Add to that a sprinkling of daily homework mixed with a committed teen who wants to do well, you’ve got a case of non-stop study in any time that isn’t taken up with a job, music, sport or other commitments that any teen has. Maybe study is even taking over some of those other things.

I can totally relate to this. I was definitely that teen who, during those exam years, when I wasn’t at my job, or doing something specifically allocated for time, I would mainly be studying. Especially for something like revision, where there is no ‘finished’ point. You don’t ever FINISH revision, the way you finish an essay.

Though I also see a LOT of students who don’t ever really FINISH an essay. Not because it’s actually unfinished, but they only totally FINISH it because the due date has arrived. Otherwise it would be continued edits, tweaks or even sections of total re-writes, often because they doubt themselves and what they’ve written. Doubting it’s quite right or good enough. More on students doubting themselves in a moment. But, less time studying comes when your teen has effective and efficient study strategies - such as active revision strategies, rather than the long and arduous and less effective revision notes, making revision cards, or just reading back over information.

Less time studying comes when your teen can quickly and accurately dissect an essay question, like when they use the 2 step Topic and Focus system, and they then construct a solid essay plan using one of the 4 body paragraph structures I recommend. 

Less time studying comes when your teen can independently chunk down an assignment, so they don’t go off on tangents and don’t go over the word count - I see so many students taking as much time again trying to cut a load of content that they already took hours writing. 

So, symbol of success number 1 - less time studying.

Now this ties in with symbol of study success number 2: Less procrastination.

Less putting tasks off, more getting them done. And not quickly dashed off, but getting them done diligently, accurately and smoothly. 

So often students tell me they procrastinate, leave things to the last minute and just can’t seem to get into things. They often think they need to be more motivated. I know that usually they don’t need to be more motivated. They need to be more skilled. 

It’s very hard to be motivated when we aren’t totally sure precisely what to do, what’s required or exactly how to do it. Or, if we look at it the other way, we could be SUPER motivated, but if we still don’t know even just one of those things, we’re not going to make a whole lot of progress, no matter how up for it we are. 

In fact, I have an excellent example of this right now. 

My husband and I have just bought a house. Not moving far, just a suburb along, still on the Sunshine Coast. We’ll never leave the Sunshine Coast. 

I haven’t said anything til now, because we’ve been waiting on one clause to get the contract unconditional and get a settlement date. But we’ve literally just had that through, so I’m sure I’ll share with you some packing and moving stories very soon. And I’m sure I’ll also have some nightmare reno stories to share over the coming months, well, actually most likely years because it’s an older house and it needs a total renovation. 

Now, you know me, I love a project. And I couldn’t be more excited to start planning the reno. But, I also have zero idea what I’m doing. Neither me or my husband does - we’re not DIY people, we’ve never learnt those things, so we’re going to be doing a lot of learning as we go - and hiring tradies and professionals to actually do the work. I promise I’ll try not to bore you, but I can’t promise I won’t. I expect there will be a few reno-based analogies coming up.  

But here’s one for now… even though I’m listening to reno and property podcasts, have a stream of interior design feeds in my social media and have been following a load of forums and randomly drawing out ideas of floor plans, absolutely nothing has been planned, let alone executed yet. Now of course, we haven’t actually moved yet, so we can’t actually get to work on the house, but we could be getting floor plans made or fence panels organised. But none of that is happening, it’s being messed around with, talked about a lot - but not happening because… we don’t know what we’re doing. 

It’s like your teen making more notes, doing more research, re-reading the text, or just anything else related or non-related that puts off the thing they have uncertainty around.

They could be like me: Highly motivated and excited. But lacking some (or if like me a LOT) of the knowledge or skills needed. Now, we’re going to build those skills and that knowledge with help from people who know what they’re doing. Just like I can help your teen build theirs for their study. So they have clear direction, have the knowledge and the skills to make progress and do it accurately and effectively. Because we don’t want progress and action if it’s not the right action. This is what I’m in particular avoiding right now - making a wrong move and bad decision. I want to totally understand what we want and need to create, and how to do it. So we get the desired outcome.

And talking of outcomes…

Symbol of study success number 3 is Results.  

Of course I get a lot of students telling me they want better results: higher percentages or grades in their exams, coursework and assessments. 

Some students need certain results for the next course or qualification or uni entry they want to get into. And yes, there are multiple pathways, but if a student knows what they want to do, I’m all for them getting there in the shortest, smoothest way. 

Some students know they are capable of more than what they’re currently achieving, but aren’t sure where they’re going wrong, or what to do to get there. 
And they are almost always correct. They are totally capable of higher grades, and they do just need to know what to do to get them. And in the mean time, they’re studying longer and harder, but doing the same things that aren’t really working. Hence, when they have the understanding and skills, they can then spend less time studying - as per success symbol number 1.

You can start to see how these things overlap, can’t you? Higher results, and studying less. That’s a great combo. And they both happen concurrently when students have the understanding of how exams, assessment and the education system today work. AND have the skills, strategies and techniques to optimise their study in those ways.

And another link for you… when these things happen, it creates symbol of study success number 4: Confidence. 

This is by far and away the word that comes up the most when I talk to parents and students. And I’ve thought a bit about this in preparation for this episode and I’ve come to see it as a bit of a chicken and egg: 

If we’re not confident about what a task or question is asking or wanting, then it’s unlikely that we’re going to hit the nail on the head and be successful in meeting those wants and needs. And then, when we get a low mark, or a mark that’s below what we know we’re capable of, then that knocks our confidence, and then we doubt ourselves even more. Even if we think we know how to tackle an assignment or answer an exam question, that past experience creates doubt or confusion. And so it goes on. 

So I think this is why confidence is such a big part of this. Because when we’re confident in how to dissect a question, discern exactly what it wants AND we’re confident in knowing exactly how to put that across, at a high level, then that’s likely because we are skilled in doing so. 

I don’t know many people who feel confident in something they’ve not learned or been trained in. And sometimes, if they’re not skilled or knowledgeable and confident - that may not be a good thing. For most things in life, we need to do them successfully, repeatedly a few times before we actually feel confident in doing them. And that’s the key. The success that students create in their study, THEN creates a feeling of confidence. But having the skills and techniques to deal with any task, essay or exam question gives them the know-how to do that AND a feeling of confidence rather than doubt DURING it.

And finally we come to symbol of study success number 5. One that’s often not listed as a ‘WANT’ at the start of the program, but is often shared with me as a notable positive change at the end. And that is around communication:
Having more useful and productive conversations with teachers. Being able to participate more in class. Being able to ask better Qs when they need help from the teacher and being able to answer and contribute more in class.

Overall, having much more effective communication and interactions.
This comes from having a clear understanding of how education and assessment really works, how the teacher or examiner is viewing their work and how they develop questions and mark schemes in the first place. These are all things that I share with students because I know personally, even as a teacher, how much of a difference it makes to how you look at everything when you know them.

Now, I never share anything I shouldn’t, but there is no rule that says students shouldn’t know how mark schemes are constructed. For example, do we go from top marks down, or bottom marks up when writing the descriptors? There is no rule that says students aren’t allowed to know how exam papers are written. Do we select the topic or the level of command first when writing exam questions? And what does this mean for how they should answer? How do we decide how many marks to allocate? 

Students are allowed to know this, but they’re never taught it or shown it. 
Understandably of course, it’s kinda not their job to know it. I never even knew the half of it as a high school teacher until 4 years in, I decided to do external exam marking for the national GCSE exams in the UK. Partly for the extra money, but I also wanted to see behind the curtain of exam boards. I wanted to know how it all worked. But I never realised just how far reaching seeing and understanding it all would end up being for me and my students. And doing this work over the years continues to give me huge insights. I can honestly say now, that that first ever year of external exam board marking made such an impact, that if I were to go back to my 29 year old self now, I would have done it for free, just to get into this world. It was SUCH a valuable experience, and made such a difference to my teaching. And students have much smarter conversations with their teachers when they are armed with this info. 

They’re more across what’s going on in class, in their homework and in their assignments, even in their text book. So when something doesn’t quite make sense, or they aren’t clear on something, they can ask a much more specific and high quality question. They can engage in higher level discussions, and overall get a LOT more out of every aspect of their study and schooling.

So, you might like to have a think about which success symbol you’d most like for your teen. You might like to have your teen think about which one they’d most like.
And then… here’s a little not-so-secret secret… consider this. You don’t even have to just choose one. Because like I mentioned earlier, they all interlink and overlap. One leads to or comes from another.

When one thing clicks, it automatically unlocks another. 
When your teen gets a higher result, directly because of something they now understand and respond to more effectively, that creates confidence. 

When they understand how mark schemes work, they can ask a more specific question about the task criteria and content to their teacher. Which leads to them achieving a higher grade and likely getting there on a more direct path, with less time procrastinating or re-writing.

So, you can definitely choose one or two that sound the most appealing. But also know, that you don’t actually have to choose. They all come in one package. 

But if even one of these sounds good to you, then check out the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program at www.gradetransformation.com/join, or if your teen has completed the 10WGT and wants to take any of these further, I’ll be opening up Next Level enrolment from the 10th to the 12th August and you can get on the waitlist at www.gradetransformation.com/nextlevel.
And I’ll put both of those links in the show notes. 

So, here’s to success in the way that means the most to YOUR teen.
Have a great day and I’ll see you back here on the next episode.

Bye!