NLPhilia Blog

Amanda Ripley, author of the truly excellent book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why, is, it appears, also interested in the education of children. In a very recent blog post titled “What Makes a Teacher Great?“, she refers us to some conclusions on the subject:

Finally, we can identify extraordinary teachers—with data, not hearsay—and investigate what they are doing differently. We can even make more of them. The question is, Will we?

Her blog entry points to an extensive and well-written article in The Atlantic, also written by Ms. Ripley.

(See also: Teach for America)

Do you know any teachers like this?

I read an article today on Stepcase Lifehack and found myself impressed. The author, a teacher, developed a model of how to help children be happy:

…every Mother’s Day I would ask my students to give me advice on being a mother. They were to think about things their mother or guardian did for or with them that made them feel happy or loved. The classroom would go silent as the students wrote intensely for longer than they had ever written before. Often smiles would appear on their faces as they reflected on the happy experiences they were remembering. After reading their responses I would add to my list all the ideas they mentioned. Surprisingly, many of the responses were the same. Year after year, in every country I taught, and in every type of demographic, the students were saying the same things and had the same message…

It brought to mind the woman I love. One of the things I find so compelling about her is her focus on her kids’ happiness. They’re lucky to have her.

The Top 10 Things Children Really Want Their Parents To Do With Them

A January article from the Victoria News, published by the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, shares some research by Paul Sulzberger, PhD into the teaching of languages:

Dr Sulzberger has found that the best way to learn a language is through frequent exposure to its sound patterns – even if you haven’t a clue what it all means.

“However crazy it might sound, just listening to the language, even though you don’t understand it, is critical. A lot of language teachers may not accept that,” he says.

Now, people who are good at learning languages have long said that immersion makes a massive difference, but they’ve never talked about why that’s the case. Dr. Sulzberger asserts that aural exposure to the language actually changes the brain, re-wiring it to understand what is being said:

Dr Sulzberger’s research challenges existing language learning theory. His main hypothesis is that simply listening to a new language sets up the structures in the brain required to learn the words.

“Neural tissue required to learn and understand a new language will develop automatically from simple exposure to the language—which is how babies learn their first language,” Dr Sulzberger says.

It’s an interesting idea, and it makes a lot of sense to me. You can read the rest of the article here.

And in the spirit of this snippet from the article:

“Teachers should recognise the importance of extensive aural exposure to a language. One hour a day of studying French text in a classroom is not enough—but an extra hour listening to it on the iPod would make a huge difference,” Dr Sulzberger says.

…by way of Lifehacker, here is a master list of free online language lessons.

Security guru Bruce Schneier brings us one of those things that flies in the face of conventional wisdom:

People confess to crimes they don’t commit. They do it a lot. What’s interesting about this research is that confessions—whether false or true—corrupt other eyewitnesses…

Yep. People will believe someone’s confession over their own experience.

How can we put this to work?

Schneier on Security: Confessions Corrupt Eyewitnesses

Many years ago, I went into (high-interest) debt to help a friend keep her home. She was battling a Worker’s Compensation insurance company for the settlement to which she was clearly entitled, and they were jerking her around, making her sue them in court every time they owed her something. Anyway, it was my first taste of living with massive debt.

When they finally paid her what they owed her, she paid me back. Instead of blowing that big check, I paid off my massive debt.

It felt so amazingly good to be free of it that I haven’t had any long-term debt since. (Long-term debt is a contract for more than a year. I bought a new vehicle in 2002 and financed it for twelve months.) And I’ve been saving a large portion of my paycheck for years, too.

So the $4-a-gallon gasoline didn’t bother me. The current “credit crunch” can’t really touch me. I didn’t buy a poorly-built, overpriced McMansion with a subprime mortgage, either.

All around me, though, are people who make two to five times my annual salary and who don’t have a pot in which to urinate. And people who are absolutely flat broke who trade their food stamps for snacks and sodas and spend their government stipend on expensive skin care products and cell phone contracts.

The only thing I can think of that separates me from them is that I’ve been where they are, I’ve been where they aren’t, and I know which one works better. They’ve just been where they are.

In times like these, get-rich-quick schemes really do well… for the grifters who purvey them, that is. And I’ve been active in online NLP forums for ages, so I’ve seen hundreds of “How can I use NLP to get rich?” messages. I just recently responded to one about that so-called “Law of Attraction” nonsense, and since I didn’t get a response I’m guessing I wrote something the poster didn’t want to read. I wish they’d include a disclaimer that said “Only reinforce my delusions, please. No reality checks welcome.”

The funny thing is, even if it all worked, even if all this “huge income with little effort” stuff actually paid off, it wouldn’t help. If you make a million dollars a year and you spend a million dollars and fifty cents, you’re still broke. No matter how big your bucket or how cool and sweet the water with which you fill it, if there are big holes in it you’re going to be thirsty all the time.

So for a little while, let’s put aside our money-making strategies and work on some money-keeping strategies.

There’s a blog called No Credit Needed and I encourage you to read it all. The author started from debt-plus-no-savings and worked his way to financial stability, and he chronicled his journey. Excellent stuff. First-class exemplar of the skill. In a post today, he offers up the10 basic steps he followed to escape the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

There are good books, too, like The Millionaire Next Door and The Millionaire Mind by Thomas Stanley and The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. (FYI: those are Amazon.com links.)

Shop around at local or regional banks, too, for your banking services. They’re less likely to have been caught with their scruples down and are doing a bit better right now.

If we’re going to fix this economy, we have to do it the way we do everything else: go first.

Oh, by the way: stay safe at work. Being screwed by Worker’s Comp is no way to live!

It’s been a while since anything at Lifehack.org caught the attention of the NLPer in me. Don’t get me wrong — it’s always good — but this one is truly excellent:

Success, however it’s defined, takes action, and taking good and appropriate action takes skills. Some of these skills (not enough, though) are taught in school (not well enough, either), others are taught on the job, and still others we learn from general life experience.

Dustin goes on to elaborate on the following ten skills:

1. Public Speaking
2. Writing
3. Self-Management
4. Networking
5. Critical Thinking
6. Decision-Making
7. Math
8. Research
9. Relaxation
10. Basic Accounting

Now, those are all modelable and learnable skills. And each of us probably knows someone who can do each of them well!

Go read the full article at 10 Skills You Need to Succeed at Almost Anything.

Once again, we find Milton Erickson was ahead of his time:

A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That’s right: just holding your body in the right position means you’ll have faster, more accurate access to certain memories. If you stand as if holding a golf club, you’re quicker to remember an event that happened while you were golfing than if you position your body in a non-golfing pose.

Cognitive Daily: Body position affects memory for events

Dustin Wax over at Lifehack.org has written another spot-on article, this time on the five rules for breaking the rules:

• Break the rules as a last resort;
• Rule-breaking gains its power from the strength of rules, not their weakness;
• For every broken rule there are a dozen unbroken ones;
• For every broken rule, there is a reason;and
• Accept the consequences.

I must admit that I’ve followed these rules quite a bit in my life, and it’s worked consistently well for me.

How to Break All the Rules (Lifehack.org)

Adrian at Lifehack.org has Seven Useful Lessons You Can Learn from a Bad Boss:

Macho, insensitive bosses share certain characteristics. Their behavior is arrogant, quick-tempered and controlling. Their motives are typically selfish and manipulative. They show little concern for others and few signs of understanding why others don’t trust them. Most of all, they are quite unaware of their failings and the impact they have on their subordinates. No only do they see no need to change, they often make their high-handed behavior a source of pride.

That’s why you can trust them to be some of your best teachers about productivity and success.

Read the rest of the article at Lifehack.org.

The Freakonomics Blog pointed me today to an article in the BPS Research Digest about how psychologists study what we know about ourselves. It points out the problems with self-reporting:

Nevertheless, self-reports have their flaws. One problem is that self-reports are subject to social desirability concerns, making them vulnerable to misreporting. When people know that someone else is going to hear their response to a question, they may change their answer, even unknowingly. Another issue concerning self-reports is whether people are consciously aware of their self-perception and whether they are able to report it accurately.

Worth reading.