Practicing Free Throws

I never did homework in high school but I did practice my free throws. Not that I was an excellent basketball player, I underachieved in academics and basketball, but I always liked the repetition of free throws.

However, it was only in graduate school when I learned to apply myself academically, and that was by thinking of complex math and chemistry formulas as shooting free throws.

I saw that doing these equations over and over was the only way to get better at them, and it definitely worked for me.

OvercomingBias mentions a study similar to what I found about math work: Only Do Math Homework

...we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.

More On The Importance Of Kindergarten Study

Covered previously in Where To Focus Your Resources

The research was recently in Harvard Magazine: Kindergarten Matters

[Via 3QD]

Where To Focus Your Resources

Yes, The Children's House may cost more than the parents' college did. See NYT: Child Care Costs More Than College

But, as reported in the CS Monitor: Why kindergarten is key to financial success in life and other studies indicate the importance of the first six years in a child's life in getting them on the right footing for later in life.

So I have no problem putting resources into child care as I want my kids to be with a professional staff in an environment tailored to their own self-discovery.

A Profile Of The Children's House Head Of School

Via the Record-Eagle: Snowboarder is head of school

A School Is Trying To Work With The Teenage Brain

We all remember how difficult it was to wake up to get to school on time or rouse ourselves up for the 8 AM college class.

Now a school in the U.K. is starting classes 1 hr later and is seeing success with absenteeism rates. If this experiment is successful hopefully other schools will try it too.

See FastCompany: Why Sleeping In an Extra Hour Spelled Success for One UK School

Smart Is As Smart Does

Via PhysOrg: Educate yourself to boost achievement in kids

"If you want your kids to do well in school, then the amount of education you get yourself is important," said Pamela Davis-Kean, a psychologist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). "This may mean that parents need to go back to school.

"A growing number of large-scale, long-term studies now show that increasing parental education beyond high school is strongly linked to increasing language ability in children. Even after controlling for parental income, marital status and a host of other factors, we find that the impact of parental education remains significant."

The New York Times On Bullying

At Last, Facing Down Bullies (and Their Enablers)