11 HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS

Attend every class. if you miss any classes, you miss important material.

Do all assignments and give yourself time to do a good job. Start budgeting time for the assignment as soon as it is assigned. Don’t wait until it is due.

Study every day. After class type up your notes. Coordinate them with other class readings. Go over these notes every single day. When test time comes, you will have absorbed the earlier material. You just have new material to memorize.

Be an active reader. Annotate your textbooks. Underline important points and write in the margins. Have some shorthand symbols like “EX” for examples or an * for important material. Pay attention to clues like “Three reasons…” Make sure you get all those reasons. Use a journal to write about what you have read. Reread passages that you don’t at first understand.

Understand the difference between main point and support in textbook readings.

Get copies of textbooks before the class begins. Read and annotate them.

Do more than is expected. If the teacher tells you to do problems 2,4 and 6, also do 1,3 and 5.

Introduce yourself to the instructor and plan on meeting with the instructor as least three times during the semester. These professionals can give you tips on how to get a better grade in their classes.

If you need a tutor, get one.

Form a study group, so you and other students can work together. What one student does not get, another one will. Help each other. Learn some memory techniques like chaining, pegging and mnemonics.

Chaining is telling a silly story and including items you need to memorize. To memorize the names of the U.S. presidents.

You are WASHING a TON of Clothes. See yourself by the WASHING machine with TONs of clothes. The door bell rings. A naked man wearing only a fig leaf is standing there. He must be ADAM, the first man except that there are several other men wearing fig leafs. ADAMS. They want to use the JOHN.

You get the idea. Make the story ridiculous so you are more likely to remember it, and visualize as you go.

Pegging is plugging new material to be learned to a list you already memorized. That might be the days of the week, the months, the alphabet.

To learn the names of the presidents you might use yearly holidays. Picture George Washington as the New Year’s baby. John Adams is Cupid for February and Valentine’s Day. Thomas Jefferson is all in green and wearing Shamrocks.

Mnemonics are memory helpers. To memorize Pi or any long number construct a sentence where each word has the same number of letters and order as the number to memorize.

Pi to the tenth is 3.1415926535. (3) May (1) I (4) have (1) a (5) large (9) container (2) of (6)coffee,(5) cream (3) and (5) sugar. You get the idea.

To remember what happened to Henry VIII’s wives: Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.

Invent some of your own mnemonics if none are available.

Repetition is important even if using memory helpers.

THINGS I WOULDN'T KNOW IF I WAS NOT A READER

Things I wouldn’t Know if I were not a reader.

1. Elfshot, small stones believed by medieval people to be arrowheads shot from fairies. These are believed to protect humans.

2. Tattoos are often used as protective devises.

3. A Crayola will burn for thirty minutes. They make great cheap candles.

4, Tarragon, the spice, is used in magic spells for courage as tarragon means little dragon.

5. The Greeks believed in two kinds of fate. Ananke -just because you are there.Hurricane katrina, ten years ago wiped out whole towns. Everyone was affected. Heimarmene, stuff that happens because of the choices you made. Cynics were a cult who spent their time figure out the two kinds of fate.

6. Dandelions are for courage, also to keep from being evicted. Collect dandelions and place them around the apartment or home.

7. Ben Franklin published “Pamela,” the first novel published in the colonies that would become the U.S. Written by Samuel Richardson, it was originally published in England and reprinted by Franklin in 1744.

8. The Hall of Fame for Great Americans is at Bronx Community College in New York. Inductees have a bust made by a famous sculptor.Edgar Allan Poe’s sculptor was Daniel Chester French, who also sculpted the Lincoln Memorial This was America’s first Hall of Fame. The only non American appears to be General Lafayette,who was granted honorary U.S. citizenship. 9. When Teddy Roosevelt was police commissioner in New York, he took steps to preserve Edgar Allan Poe’s home in New York. The house Poe rented is still there on a land called Poe Park.

10. Gerardus Mercator, a cartographer born in 1512 coined the word “Atlas” after a mythical Titan whom he idolized? Mercator used the word “Atlas” for his collection of world maps.

11. Who gets heart and kidney transplants? One prison inmate received a heart transplant which will probably end up costing taxpayers a million dollars. A death row inmate gets dialysis and has been recommended for a kidney transplant.

12. There are 193 nation members of the United Nations.

A question for the research minded. Could General Lafayette who was, of course, born in France, have become president of the U.S.?

WHAT TO DO WITH A POEM

Wednesday is Poems Prayers, Promises Day for our blog. Let’s start with a poem.

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson.

What can you do with a poem?

Memorize it.

Take it apart and study the words and lines.

Write a response. What do you think of lines like “Prancing poetry”?

Listen to it. Some online sites have a reader reciting the poem.

Learn more about the life of the author.

Find other poems by this author.

WORKERS, STUDENTS AND ROBOTS.

WHAT ROBOTS MEAN TO WORKERS BY MARY ANN SLAVCHEFF Are workers disposable like outdated machinery? We may soon learn the answer to that question as robots take over more and more of our jobs.

Dead end jobs are a form of slave labor. If robots bagged all groceries, folded all clothing, scrubbed all floors and tended all assembly lines, the workers who now tend these jobs would be freed from repetition and drudgery. They could spend their hours reading books,walking in the park or grooming a pet dog.

But are we willing to grant these workers their freedom? Freedom from work is one thing. Support for unwanted beings is yet another thing. Society uses people and products and then dumps them. Look what happened to horses when motor driven vehicles took their jobs.

What do we do with unwanted human workers? This is an issue that should concern all of us. Unskilled jobs won't be the only jobs lost.

Several medical, and engineering jobs are now done by robots. Robots can teach, and that alone puts millions of people out of work.

What can we do? Retrain? Lower the retirement wage? Some wages are already at starvation levels.

Education may not be the answer when robots can do anything a smart person can do and do it better. Robots don't need breaks or vacations, and they make fewer mistakes. People with leisure will probably crave learning, and the role of robots in education will be to teach people not other robots. Thus education will change. It will no longer be about training for jobs, but about training for leisure and self enlightenment.

Back to the original question. What do we do with unneeded and, therefore, unwanted workers?

Let's look at our history. Perhaps we can find some answers there.

Workers skilled and unskilled were once necessary.

Survival throughout our history depended on working men and women. Great wealth could not have been created without our muscle. We built the bridges, roads and the pathways to outer space. We have been faithful employees to businesses, big and small. How much have we been appreciated? Our wages were kept as low as possible.

Governments had to create minimum wage laws to help us survive. Even skilled musicians and writers are often asked to perform for free. Labor despite its necessity has historically not been valued.

A leisure class developed. Their freedom met with little resistance. The wealthy could spend their days playing tennis, learning French, writing poetry or sleeping in the sun. They could drink themselves to death; gambling was a gentleman's sport.

These “gentlemen” probably seldom gave a thought to the men, women and children who mined their ore or toiled in their factories. Segregation exists that has nothing to do with race. The wealthy do not eat or socialize with their help. Maids take the bus to work; they don't get a ride home from the chauffeur. Air planes have first class accommodations. Those who can afford to spend a little more, don't want to rub elbows with the working class.

For lower or middle class individuals to be jobless, is practically a sin. The unemployed are called bums and freeloaders. These ad hominem attacks have increased recently. Ronald Reagan's fictional Welfare Cadillac was just the beginning. Listen to the rhetoric when Congress plans its budget. Attacks on the unemployed grow as globalization and robotics put more and more people out of work?

The wealthy take our jobs away, give them to unskilled workers in other countries or to robots, and they call us lazy bums. Then they return to their leisure. Is leisure the right of only the very wealthy?

What do we do with workers when we don't have enough jobs for them?

Do we give them forty acres and a mule and expect them to be self supporting?

Those who don't want the farm can perhaps have an eBay store.

Those ideas seem too simplistic. Too 18th and 19th century. (Yet an eBay store is just a small shop, and Thomas Jefferson dreamed of making America a nation of farms and small shops.) Do we do away with money? Greed used to be one of the seven deadly sins. But some people on Wall Street, and in Congress (and in Ayn Rand fan clubs) have turned it into a virtue.

The rich aren't going to want to feed us or clothe us if we aren't working our butts off. And they aren't going to part with their beloved bank accounts. Look at the currant resistance to taxation among the wealthy. They don't want to pay their share.

Is it possible we will give the working classes leisure?

In a world without other people's work, can we be our own masters as Thomas Jefferson and others dreamed we could be? What will workers do, if we don't have shelves to stock, groceries to bag or streets to clean?

We can write novels and poetry.

We can golf or hike or watch sunsets without being so tired from a day in the factory that we can't appreciate the beauty.

We can watch our children grow up and teach them to appreciate things like old cats and dogs, sunflowers, butterflies and dandelions.

We can grow tomatoes or walnut trees.

We can appreciate life before we get so old we are more ready for death than retirement.

Robots can do the work so men, women and children can enjoy the freedom even Thomas Jefferson never dreamed possible. Robots can provide food, clothing and shelter for all of us.

We can be a society where the different classes respect and support each other as equals, not as master and slave, upper and lower class.

What is the alternative? Robots serving their privileged masters while the rest of humanity dies? Let's hope not.

Please read the following.

http://www.newsweek.com/rise-turing-robots-leads-fall-wages-309498?piano_t=1

SONGS AS MNEMONICS

People in my generation know what year the battle of New Orleans was fought. We simply remember the first line of a Johnny Horton hit song. “In 1814, we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.”

Johnny Horton had an entire album of songs about history, “October 1871, that’s when this great big fie begun.” It was easy to learn history from Johnny Horton.

Many years later Tom Lehrer sang about the “Elements.” Hundreds of kids memorized the lyrics and the elements. Gosh that was fun. And while singing along with Lehner or with their friends, kids didn’t even have to use chaining or pegging.

In my record collection, I have an album that includes campaign songs from each president and another album that includes campaign songs from some of the presidential losers. Google songs about history. A huge list will come up.

There are songs about adverbs, adjectives, nouns and even pronouns. On the old "Mickey Mouse Club" television program, Jiminy Cricket sang about the "ENCYCLOPEDIA." He spelled out the letters.

The days of having to buy these albums are over, thanks to Youtube, where you can find most of the songs I mentioned and more.

LEARNING HACK: PINK NOISE FOR A BETTER NIGHT'S SLEEP

Here is a Sound way to get a better nights sleep.

Insomnia was described by the ancient Greeks as one of the tortures of hell. There are many causes of insomnia and the condition causes problems not only for students, but individuals of all ages all classes and in in all walks of life.

An easy solution to insomnia is “pink noise.” According to a recent article in ”O" magazine pink noise helps shut the mind down and produce sleep. Studies show sleep is deeper and more relaxing with a pink noise background.You tube has several pink noise recordings. I listen to the ten hours of pink noise.

Warning there are commercials. Some people would consider this subliminal advertising. I think the payoff of better sleep is worth a few minutes of commercials that don’t wake me up, and that I don’t remember.

During the day, try “Coffitivity,” coffee shop noises, for increased production.

Go back to You Tube for relaxation music, some of which is designed for study.

It is as easy as it Sounds.

A DOG HOUSE, A MOUSE AND A BUNCH OF PREPOSITIONS

Yesterday I showed you the PAO (Person, Action, Object) method of creating a pegging list. It is a preferred method of memory competition champs and because everybody’s PAO list is different, it is often well suited to the individual student and less boring than the alphabet.

I will be giving you other pegging lists. But practice with this one for awhile.

As a college English instructor , I found an alternative use for PAO lists. I used it to introduce students to the parts of speech.

In class we followed the steps of yesterday’s blog. We created a list of people, and then a list of transitive verbs (They take an object) and finally a list of nouns that named people places or things.

Put the items in the list together in fun ways and you have a PAO list.

Barack Obama (person) sews (action) coats (object).

Lady Gaga buys cats.

Mickey Mouse chases bumblebees.

The sentences can have some nonsense in them because this makes them easier to remember.

Those objects (coats, cats and bumblebees) are all direct objects. They get their action directly from the verb.

I mentioned yesterday there were two other types of objects.

Indirect Object

I bought my brother a car.

Obviously I didn’t buy my brother. I bought the car. So brother is the indirect object.

I plowed my neighbor’s driveway. Surely I didn’t plow my neighbor. He is the indirect object.

Find the indirect object by rewriting the sentence. If I can put either of the prepositions “for” or “to” in front of the word, that word is an indirect object.

I bought a car for my brother.

I plowed the driveway for my neighbor.

Object of a Preposition

When I was in grade school teachers told us if we could not recognize prepositions, we had to memorize the list in the book. I don’t think any of my classmates memorized the list. We all told ourselves we could recognize a preposition.

As a college instructor I have had students come up to me after class and start reciting the prepositions in alphabetical order. Those were the students who memorized the lists of prepositions. They learned them well, and all these years later were able to rattle off the list of prepositions.

“About, Above, Across, At…” These students could do the entire list.

We had a notetaker in class one day, and I asked her how she recognized prepositions. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just do,” she said.

I am like that too. I just know a preposition when I see one. Two of my students taught me some easy methods for those who don’t recognize prepositions on sight and who never memorized a list of them.

The dog house rule:

If I can put the word in front of The dog house,” it is a preposition.

A mouse can go under the dog house: the dog can walk to the dog house. I can hang a bird feeder above the dog house.

Other prepositions are into, on in, of, from, for, beneath.

If you try this with a list of prepositions that you find online or in an English book, some may not work. “During” is a preposition, but it does not work with “the dog house.” There are a few others, but the dog house rule limits the prepositions you might have to memorize

Anyplace a Mouse Can Go

Another student told me a preposition is anyplace a mouse can go. Above, over, under, into, on, off, past, onto.

I hope these grammar tips help.

PAO - FOR BETTER MEMORY AND GRAMMAR

Memory experts have a type of pegging list called PAO. The letters stand for Person Action Object. Memory champions use PAO like any pegging list be it a list of locations or a list inspired by the alphabet or some other recognized order. I sometimes use the names of the forty-four U.S. presidents as a pegging list. Most people would probably prefer PAO. It is more memorable.

Creating a PAO list is fun and easy. First write a list of people’s names. These can be actors, historical figures, cartoon characters, fictional characters or friends and relatives. Let’s start with ten names.

Persons:

1. Elvis Presley

2. Queen Elizabeth

3. George Washington

4. Eva De Neve (my mother) Substitute the name of your mother, aunt or teacher.

5. Mickey Mouse

6. Snoopy the beagle

7. Barack Obama

8. Justine Bieber

9. Snow White

10. Sleeping Beauty

Actions:

Now make a list of ten transient verbs. These are verbs that take an object.

Kissed, kicked, swallowed, ate, read played, broke, carried, caught, cleaned, drank. paid, stopped, helped.

That is more than ten, but we don’t have to use them all. Feel free to look up more transitive verbs online.

Objects:

Now make a list of nouns that name people or things.

fiddlestick, cow, donkey, dog, drums, book, spaghetti, Bugs Bunny, cat, paycheck, lamp, sofa, door, bedroom, bumblebee.

These are just examples. Use them or your own list.

Now let’s make sentences.

Elvis Presley kissed a cow.

Queen Elizabeth swallowed bumblebees.

Greorge Washington kicked Bugs Bunny.

Go on make your own sentences. Comeback when you are finished.

Finished?

Now memorize the list of PAO’s. Add more than ten if you like. Why? Because we often have more than ten new items to memorize. Memory exercises are great exercises to grow the brain. Also a pegging list can be used to more easily memorize something else.

Say I want to memorize ta few state capitals.

To memorize Montgomery, Alabama I see Elvis Presley kiss a cow while actress Elizabeth Montgomery. I connect the two images in my mind, so I can remember the new material easier.

Also you just got a grammar lesson.

The people in your first list are here being used as sentence subjects. An easy way to determine what the subject of the sentence is, us to ask who or what the sentence is about.

Those action words were all verbs.

The last list is a group of words used here as objects. Nouns usually function in sentences as either subjects or objects. There are three kinds of objects. Object of a preposition, direct object and indirect object.

In the examples given the cow, the bumblebees and Bugs Bunny are direct objects; they get the action right from the verb.

Let’s save the lesson on indirect objects and objects of prepositions for tomorrow or the next day.

UNSCHOOLING - HOW ONE STUDENT - ME - MADE IT WORK.

Has unschooling ever worked for any student? It did for me.

I fell in love with American history at a young age. I read books about the American Revolution, westward movement and the presidents. Every week I went to the library and selected two of three books to devour. I read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s and Zane Gray’s books. I loved John Dickson Carr, whose mystery stories included locked room puzzles. They were great lessons in critical thinking, not that I knew that then.

Despite my passion for reading, I was not doing well in school. I was a strange kid with stringy brown hair that would not hold the bouffant hair styles so popular then. I wore thrift shop clothes, had cavities in my teeth and just didn’t make friends very well.

On the bus and on the playground, the bullies tormented me. I was ashamed of not having friends to play with, so I tried to hide in the bathroom with a book. The teachers would make me go outside.

I hated the lunches, so the teachers picked on me about that.

I was bored with the lessons. We studied the same things every year. Apostrophes have to be the most boring thing on earth, not to mention comparative and superlative adjectives.

I did poorly in all my subjects except history and English. I did well in history because it didn’t bore me, though the textbooks were not as good as the books I took from the library.

I did well in English because I was a reader. Maybe I didn’t know the comma rules or the nouns and verbs and other rules, but I had seen enough proper sentences in books that I could recognize the correct version. I was like a musician who plays by ear. I read and wrote by ear.

School did take its toll on me. I stopped even trying to study. I retreated into a world of daydreams. I watched television and read books because the fantasy worlds in both fed my daydreams.

But I did not just learn in books.

I joined a humane society and a writers club. These were adult evening activities, so even though I had no friends my own age, I spent time with intelligent mature people who did not repeat the same boring material over and over.

Unschooling will not work for all students. Most students don’t skip school to go to the library like I did. They have little or no interest in history, animal welfare or writing, but there has to be alternatives to public school for those of us who do not thrive there and cannot learn there.

Homeschooling is a great option, but most parents don’t have the resources for homeschooling. It takes time, effort and money.

What other options are there?

The granny cloud works in India, and I will have more about that and other options in future columns.

TELEVISION: LIMITS AND E-LIMITS

Smart schooling often requires tossing out the television. Or at least limiting the hours it is on. There is nothing wrong with television like there is nothing wrong with wine and candy. But a diet rich in any of these items is unhealthy. Television is addictive, and children are easy victims of its lure. We would all do best on a diet of one or two pre-selected programs a week.

When we do watch television,we need to learn from it. That doesn’t mean we select a television diet of documentaries and news programs. If I watch a CSI program, I can take an interest in the science. If I watch the “Tudors” or any historic recreation, I can take an interest in the history.

Are there any old westerns playing this week? The American west is rich in history, science, ecology and geography.

This article is a must read for all parents. Schools don't just fail our boys.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2015/02/19/why-schools-are-failing-our-boys/?tid=sm_fb

BOOK REVIEW, HOME GROWN, BY BEN HEWITT

Book Review

Home Grown, Adventures in Parenting Off the Beaten Path and Connecting to the Natural World

Author: Ben Hewitt

224 pages

Ben Hewitt and his wife travel the road less taken. They live on a farm where they grow most of their own food, drive a decades old car, wear second hand clothing and un-school their two sons.

The boys, both of them under ten years old, spend their days helping with the farm work, hunting and trapping. The activities were chosen by them. While they are expected to help with chores like any other youngster, the hunting and trapping is their decision.

The children are not illiterate. They read and studied enough about the hunting and trapping to obtain their licenses.

The children pick their own activities and their own learning schedule. The family does not have television, so reading is a popular evening activity. So is fashioning traps and bows and arrows. The hunting and trapping equipment is all homemade.

Reading, “Home Grown,” Hewitt’s collection of essays about un-schooling his children was an adventure for me. The book came to my attention as I was contemplating the future of mankind in a world where workers may soon not be needed. What kind of a world will that be?

It wasn’t Hewitt’s intention to answer that question, but he did give me something to think about. We need people capable of survival. Some people need to know how to produce their own food. There may come a time when we may again have to depend upon such individuals.

Hewitt butchers his own livestock. He says he does it in a way that does not hurt or frighten the animal. I believe him. Still I am a vegetarian, who recently gave up dairy reading about raising animals to kill them is disturbing to me. If I had a cow, I could not kill her. I would not take her calf away from her, so I can drink her milk.

I have long been anti-trapping and have signed several petitions to end the killing. I see no value in hunting or trapping.

But in some ways I understand that some people in our modern world must have these skills.

I debated, not reviewing this book. I am after all almost vegan.

I can’t kill an animal. I can’t ask anyone else to kill or hurt an animal for me. Yet Hewitt and his children can kill animals humanely. They use every part of the animal. They have skinning and cooking skills that start not with a chunk of meat in the grocery store, but with a dead animal. Hewitt’s young sons can not only kill, but can skin and fry a field mouse.

So momentarily I wanted to diss the book. Then I realized these people live close to the animals that are part of their farm. The children have learned real and perhaps useful skills.

But what else are these children learning?

Un-schooling is hard to define. It is a type of home schooling with fewer rules. The child learns, but on his terms. The Hewitt children as I said learned to read and write while studying hunting and trapping techniques. They even make their own bows, arrows and traps. The traps they make according to the book are humane. There are no steel teeth. Some traps kill the animal instantly.

When we’re talking about school, we are talking about ethical issues, and school does not work for thousands of children.

What about un-schooling? It works for this family whether I like what the children are learning or not. They are learning.

INDUCTIVE AND DEDUCTIVE REASONING; DETECTIVE AND SUSPENSE FILMS

This is how I explained deductive and inductive reasoning to my students..

Deductive reasoning:

Say you are at home watching television. The first show to come on is “McCloud’ or “Starsky and Hutch” or “CSI” Anyway it is a detective show. A crime has been committed. The lead actor or rather lead detective looks at the clues.

He is using deductive reasoning. He starts with a conclusion, the victim. He clearly has been murdered. The detective looks for motives, opportunity, and means. He works from a conclusion backwards looking for evidence to support the conclusion. Detectives use deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning

Back to the television. The next program after the detective show is a suspense drama movie. Doris Day or Deana Durbin or some heroine is in danger. She has received poisoned chocolates which the poor dog ate and died. Someone tried to run her over with a car. Someone barely missed her with a rifle shot. She comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to kill her. Her reasoning is much different than that of the detective. She takes close call number one, close call number two and close call number three and decides that she is in danger. She is moving toward a conclusion.

The detective on the first program started with a conclusion and worked backwards. In the suspense drama, the heroine worked toward a conclusion.

Shop Amazon - Get the New Kindle Fire HDX Tablet

A QUIZ ON U.S. PRESIDENTS

This is a month of presidential birthdays. George Washington, February 22; William Henry Harrison, February 9; Abraham Lincoln, February 12 and Ronald Reagan, February 6.

Just for the fun of it, lets learn something about presidents.

Here is a short quiz. Look up the answer if you don’t know it.

1. In what year were each of the four men with birthdays in February born?

2. Who was the first president born in the 19th century?

3. Who was the first president born in the 20th century?

4. Who was the first president to be born after the American Revolution?

5. What president had the campaign slogan, “I like Ike.”?

6. Teddy Roosevelt’s niece Eleanor married a future president while Teddy Roosevelt was in the White House? What was the name of her husband?

7. Who was president when the Berlin Wall was torn down?

8. What president wrote the best selling book, “Profiles In Courage”?

9. How many presidents were assassinated?

10. What president had a popular dog named Fala?

Find the answers in tomorrow’s blog.

LEARNING HACK: BE PERSISTENT

In 1955 singer Fats Domino performed in Ottawa, Canada. Before the performance, he was surprised to find a kid in his dressing room. The youngster insisted on performing a song he had written for Fats Domino. The famous performer had no time to listen. Security tossed the kid out of the building.

Somehow the boy made his way back inside. He was tossed out again and again he somehow managed to get back inside. Finally, if only to get rid of the youngster, Domino's manager agreed to listen to a recording that the boy had.

The boy had performed his song on the demo and to Domino's surprise it sounded great. He had his manager contact the boy's father. The fifteen year old persistent lad was offered a recording contract and that demonstration record became the biggest hit of the year.

The boy's name was Paul Anka. He went on to record a string of hit songs for himself and the theme song to the “Tonight” show when Johnny Carson was the host. . Among his most famous tunes was “My Way” which became Frank Sinatra's signature song. We may never have heard of that boy, if he had not been persistent.

It couldn't have been easy getting past security time after time and it would be even more difficult today in our much more dangerous world.

But like Paul Anka, we owe it to ourselves and to the world to try and get our songs heard.

Keep reading, In future columns, I have some suggestions to help you get beyond the gate keepers.

Persistence pays off in school work too. Sometimes you think you will never grasp that math concept or remember that punctuation rule.Keep at it. You'll learn; you'll succeed.

QUALITIES NOT MEASURED BY TESTS

Personal qualities not measured by tests. from Maria Montessori:

1. creativity

2. critical thinking

3. Resilience

4. motivation

5.persistence

6. curiosity

7. question asking

8. humor

9. endurance

10. reliability

11. enthusiasm

12. civic mindedness

13. self awareness

14. self discipline

15. empathy

16. leadership

17 compassion

18. courage

19. sense of beauty

20. sense of wonder

21. resourcefulness

22. spontaneity

23. humility

Transparent - Only on Amazon Prime Instant Video - Winner of 2 Golden Globes Including Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy

Shop Amazon - New 2015 Wilson Baseball Gloves

Shop Amazon Magazines - Glamour Limited Time Offer: Get 6 issues for $5

MIX AND MATCH QUIZ, FAMOUS COUPLES

For Valentine’s Day here are two lists. The first eleven names are famous wives. The second group of names lettered a -k are famous husbands. See if you can match the husband with the wife. If you don’t know who someone on the list is or was, please look him or her up. This is an educational blog.

For each of the ladies mentioned in the first list, you will find her famous husband in the second list.

It has been said there is a woman behind every successful man. Let me add there is a man behind every successful woman.

I will have the answers tomorrow which is a play day. But if you choose to skip tomorrow, please come back the day after that.

You may also email elfaygo@icloud.com for answers.

wives

1. Elizabeth Barrett

2. Anne Boleyn

3. Julia Dent

4. Amelia Earhart

5. Linda Eastman

6. Farrah Fawcett

7. Alice Hathaway lee

8. Bonnie Parker

9. Alice Roosevelt

10.. Eleonore Roosevelt

11. Joanne Woodward

husbands

a. Clyde Barrow

b. Robert Browning

c. Ulysses S. Grant

d. Henry VIII of England

e. Nicholas Longworth

f. Lee Majors

g. Paul McCartney

h. Paul Newman

i. George Putnam

j. Franklin Delano Roosevelt <

k. Teddy Roosevelt

Shop Amazon Fashion - 20% Off Clothing

Shop Amazon Instant Video - Save on Romance Titles for Valentine's Day

LEARN LIKE A LINCOLN

Abraham Lincoln was an un-schooler. He did not sit in a classroom all day watching a teacher write on a blackboard. He was not surrounded by bullies and class clowns.

In doing manual labor and farm chores, he stayed healthy and fit. In the evenings he read books. Just obtaining a book was difficult for him, but he did find books to read and he engaged his mind with writers and thinkers. As an adult he was a self-taught attorney. Lincoln was in charge of his own schooling, and he received a great education because learning was important to him.

He did not have a teacher or classmates to make fun of his size or belittle his love of learning. We all know bullying is wrong, but schools have not been able to stop it.

Lincoln was fortunate, but today’s students can be fortunate too. Learn more about un—schooling for your children and for yourself. un-schooling could be is a path to life long learning.

Happy birthday, President Lincoln. He was born 206 years ago.

Shop Amazon Instant Video - Save on Oscar Nominees and Winners

LEARNING HACK: TAKE THE SMART BUS

In the the Southeastern Michigan area where I live, we have Smart buses and School buses. The Smart busses are public transformation. School busses, of course, transport students to and from the daily prison we call school.

These busses seem a great analogy for two types of education. There is the school system that has existed in American since Horace Mann advocated disciplinary action and Prussian military school methods in the early 19th century. We have not much changed our model of schooling since then.

Outside of the school system, there are a million ways to learn. I have detailed a few of them here in my blog. There is a growing movement in this country called “unschooling.” It means getting an education away from the proms, sports, fashion shows and other distractions present in many school systems.

Let’s look at the analogy of busses.

School busses go the school. (Duh!)

Smart busses go to malls, museums, libraries and courthouses.

School busses carry bullies and other immature beings like class clowns.

Smart busses carry committed adults.

School busses go a place where learning is difficult.

Smart busses go to places where learning is fun and natural.

School busses have flying gum wrappers, globs of chewed gum, spitting and even kicking.

Smart busses have people reading or speaking to each other in respectful tones.

School busses cost tax payers millions of dollars every year.

Smart busses are an intelligent alternative to gas guzzling commutes.

I am not saying we should place our children on public transportation and let them spend the day doing whatever they want. Un-schooling is not completely unstructured. But it is an alternative to the failed school systems in America.

In the next several weeks I will talk more about home schooling, the granny cloud, and other nontraditional systems of education.

It is time to decide if we will continue to ride the school bus or get on the smart bus.

Transparent - Only on Amazon Prime Instant Video - Winner of 2 Golden Globes Including Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy

Shop Amazon Magazines - Country Living All Access Magazine (Print+ Digital) - Get 5 issues for just $8

Shop Amazon - Textbook Trade-In - Get Up to 80% Back

Learning Hack of the Day: Carry Essential Books

What books are needed on a student's Kindle or bookshelf. Today it is easy to carry a dictionary, several encyclopedias, all of our textbooks and a favorite novel in our purses. With Kindle readers, we don't need to have our book bag weighed down. But the question remains what books, do we need?

That depends on your lessons. A business student needs very different books from a pre med student. Talk to teachers. Read reviews of your textbooks. What other books has the author written? What extra reading does your professor recommend?

I will make a few useful suggestions for any student.

1. Books on alternative uses for household items. These books show you how to reuse items, and problem solve.

2. Books on memory and accelerated learning. I try to cover most of the techniques here in my blog, but I might miss a few and there are hundreds of books out there on the art of memory and learning.

3. a novel. We learn from characters in books as they go about living in society and solving their problems. Novels are filled with great characters and learning experiences.

4. A book on argument fallacies. These include ad hominem, post hoc and hasty generalization. There are lots of these fallacies. As you read about them, look for examples in daily speech and news reporting.

5. A book of daily intellectual meditations. A fact a day. Sure if you are taking classes,and you already have enough to learn, but try to broaden your learning horizons with a book that gives you more. Some are in the form of fact a day calendars.Look at the daily word in dictionary.com

6. Your daily journal.

Of course, don't limit the books either in your kindle or on your book shelf. A writer friend of mine has a book on how to exit sinking ship. He says he has not had to use it for reference yet, but one never knows when one of his characters might have to exit a sinking ship. Of course, that book may not be available in Kindle yet. So we still have to keep some volumes on our shelfs.

Shop Amazon - Textbook Trade-In - Get Up to 80% Back

Shop Amazon - Save on Football Collectibles

Introducing Prime Pantry - Everyday Essentials Delivered to You