Lindsay Woodard College Consulting

🇦🇺 Well, thanks to the I now have my first international tutoring client! The 16-hour difference between California and Australia will take me a while to get used to 😉
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🍁 It’s almost October, and parents, I need to warn you about something. Even in normal school years, October can be a rough month. The newness of the school year starts to wane, and kids’ motivation begins to drop off. The content of courses starts to become more challenging, and students will begin to struggle.

As we all know, this year has already been insanely challenging—I can’t imagine what we’re going to be seeing in October.

If you’re concerned about your child either academically or organizationally, please reach out to me. I’m here to support kids and their families, especially this year. We can do this!

When my daughter trains 100 miles from home but the Zoom tutoring must happen—welcome to my 😁

So excited to be guest teaching in a pod of seventh-grade boys today!

We’ll be working on keeping track of all the remote-learning assignments and developing a routine for getting the work submitted correctly.

Thanks to Amy Herzog for the opportunity!

If your child needs help with these types of executive-function tasks, PM me for more info.

✏️ I’m a HUGE fan of Cal Newport for all of his great effective and time-efficient study strategies. I especially love his QEC note-taking format, and I teach it to students whenever I can. I even had one girl tell me it changed her life! ✏️

You can read about this strategy on Cal Newport’s Study Hacks Blog or in his book How to Become a Straight-A Student. 📖

Monday Master Class: Part 2 in 60 Seconds or Less - Study Hacks - Cal Newport [Originally sent to Study Hacks Newsletter on 6/18/07] I've received some recent mail asking me to review the ideas presented in Part 2 of How to Become a

📚 My assistant Teddy is helping me prep for some back-to-school tutoring sessions coming up this week 📚

I love BTS time! In many ways it’s like New Year’s—a fresh start and an opportunity to try new things. Maybe even a time to discover a new passion!

I’m so excited to see some of my long-term clients very soon here!

What’s your favorite thing about back-to-school time?

“Simplify, simply.” - Henry David Thoreau

Okay, how many of us thought we had the BEST organizational system in place only to find that it fell by the wayside pretty quickly? Organization is a tricky thing. Some of us seem to have a special place in our brains that makes organization second nature for us (yes, my lesson plan template when I was a classroom teacher was over twenty pages long!). But other people’s brains work differently. There is absolutely NO one-size-fits-all approach to organization, especially when you’re a young person whose brain is still developing! And if you’re a kid who has executive-function issues, binders—the ULTIMATE in being organized, right? 🤪—are actually a nightmare. Opening the binder, finding the correct tab, deciding if the handout has to go at the front or back of the section, opening the rings, inserting the handout, closing the rings—it’s just too many steps for some kids! That’s why parents discover all those “missing” handouts crumpled at the bottom of their child’s backpack! They simply gave up due to overwhelm.

So what’s the solution for keeping schoolwork organized? It’s simple—file folders! They don’t even need to be color coded, but it’s often helpful if they are. Dedicate one to each class, and write the name of the class AND the student’s name in BIG letters on the front and back of each folder. Now all the student has to do is stuff a handout in the correct folder and be done with it! Such a relief for someone with executive-function challenges.

Who has a good story about the “perfect” organization strategy that failed because simplicity was actually the better course?

Several months ago a friend of mine was at a park with her son, and she noticed a boy of about seven going from one end of the monkey bars to the other. It clearly wasn’t easy for him, but he made it the entire way. His mom immediately said to him, “Wow! I didn’t know you could do that!” He replied, “I didn’t either!”

I was thinking about this story again and how it’s the perfect metaphor for the students I tutor, teach, and coach. Sometimes they just need to dive in and try something so that they can prove to themselves that they truly can do it! My role is to be their guide on the side. I can provide strategies they’ve never thought of, and as a result, they can find success.

So what are your “monkey bars”? Share a time when you accomplished something you didn’t realize you could. Bonus points if you had a guide on the side!

I’ve been listening to a podcast called The Gratitude Diaries, which teaches listeners how impactful gratitude can be on our happiness and health. As a result, I’ve been thinking about how grateful I am to be able to support students in their individual journeys. Not only do I get to see them succeed in their academic and organizational lives, but I get to witness them grow into amazing young people!

I’ve lost track of how many years I’ve done private tutoring and teaching, but with the start of a new—and very different—school year, I want to remind everyone that I’m still going strong, even if it’s via Zoom and not in person. And now I can work with students no matter where they live! I have twenty years of classroom teaching experience in grades 5-12 (including AP English and history) and four teaching credentials. Reach out to me (or refer your friends!) if you know a student who could use help with:

📚 writing support
📚 academic support (all content areas besides upper-level, high school math)
📚 executive function/organization support
📚 college application support (especially the essays!)
📚 mentoring and life coaching for teens