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When Academic Support Isn’t Enough for Neurodiverse Students

8/24/2022

Developing concrete connections to motivation, consistency, and resilience aids neurodiverse learners.

How Students Benefit from Coaching

The fall semester is here, and parents are anxious. Uncertainty about their child’s school year is added to concerns about the economy, climate change, health, and conflict. Students are also feeling stressed. If last year’s academic performance was spotty, they may be uneasy about the coming year’s social pressures and academic expectations. Many students are recovering from pandemic learning losses, compounded by emotional challenges they didn’t have prior to the pandemic.

This is especially difficult for students with learning differences and their parents.

What do most parents in this situation do? They generally line up outside support. They may think to themselves, “If I help my struggling learner close their academic skill gaps, and give them organizing tools, they should be off and running, right?”

Unfortunately, adding learning differences to the mix introduces unique planning and organization challenges. Without the right tools, struggling students already know they are likely to fall behind, miss out on a percentage of their instructors’ expectations, and experience stress in association with school activity they do not know how to manage.

What if an academic problem isn’t an academic problem, but an issue of vagueness?

Students with learning differences are saddled with a vague relationship to the world and the responsibilities it demands. Without a solid way of internalizing how to generate steady progress in their pursuits, they may fall short of their potential and reinforce an internal narrative that they are just not cut out for academic success.

To learn more about how a lack of concrete mental associations creates academic hurdles for students with learning differences, read Vagueness: Hidden Barriers to Success for Neurodiverse Students.

For students with learning differences to counterbalance vagueness and truly benefit from academic coaching, these 3 key elements can concretize their experience of how academic pursuits directly benefit them:

Motivation: Students must have the willingness to learn and participate in activities that challenge their understanding and expand their worldview.
Consistency: Students must become accountable so they can reach goals.
Resilience: Students must develop skills they need to handle adversity in order to achieve their potential.

How can you help a struggling student make these elements more tangible so they can gain more traction from academic support?

1. Concretize Motivation

You can help your struggling student make their experience of motivation more tangible in 2 ways.

Mentorship: For a neurodiverse student to recognize why academic tasks should matter to them, it is beneficial for them to form a bond with a coach who can understand and validate learning issues that the student finds stressful.

Guided independent hands-on research projects: Students with learning differences can also unearth personal motivation through scaffolded hands-on exploration into a significant project of their choosing.

To learn more about ways students with learning differences can become more invested in academic pursuits, read 2 Ways Struggling Students Can Make Motivation More Concrete.

2. Concretize Consistency

For learners to accomplish projects successfully, they require both action and traction. A neurodiverse student can develop greater tenacity by receiving mentorship on completing the whole cycle of a task, in order to understand how to do it again, and how to do it on their own. Struggling learners create a more tangible relationship with consistency by having it modeled during coaching sessions. While not every academic coach provides this level of support, it is the key to helping an individual with learning differences generate repeatable methods of managing their work with autonomy.

To learn more about how to make consistency concrete for your struggling student, read The Key to Fostering Repeatable Academic Success.

3. Concretize Resilience

Neurodiverse students continuously have their resilience tested. They become cognitively fatigued more quickly than neurotypical learners, understandably lose patience, and fall behind.

To keep on task and make traction, struggling students need to find ways to make their progress appear more immediate. They also need support to help them get back on the horse when they become discouraged. To learn specific ways to help your learner make resilience tangible, read 2 Ways to Help Struggling Learners Develop Resilience.

To overcome a lens of cognitive vagueness, neurodiverse learners must discover ways to experience their path to success as immediate, real, and visceral. Surface level approaches to coaching may save the day, but they leave struggling learners with a feeling of needing to be bailed out. If motivation, consistency, and resilience aren’t made concrete for an individual with learning differences, they run the risk of perpetually relying on support to put out fires.

Academic coaching alone is not enough to guarantee that a struggling learner will upgrade their routines and make lasting positive behavioral change. For students to internalize an image of themselves as capable of academic, professional and personal achievement, they need to develop a tangible relationship with the challenges they encounter, explore and master pragmatic approaches that yield reliable results, and discover ways to make their academic journey personally significant.

Learn more about how academic coaching can help your child realize solid academic progress. Book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.

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2 Ways to Help Struggling Learners Develop Resilience

8/24/2022

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Struggling learners can strengthen resilience by making progress visible and getting support.

Making Stick-to-it-iveness Concrete

The demands of academia are not always presented in tangible form. Students are often asked to derive a detailed set of expectations from abstract descriptions, general statements, and assumptions that are not made explicit. They are expected to define, chart, and manage their own progress.

This is a struggling student’s nightmare.

Individuals with learning differences experience the world through a lens of vagueness. When the context and scope of an assignment or project is blurry, progress is difficult for learners to conceptualize.

Click here to read more about how vagueness presents significant barriers to struggling students’ academic achievement.

To move forward toward academic goals, neurodiverse students need to conceptualize the world in terms that are concrete to them. They need physical validation of their progress when they are moving in the right direction, as well as tools for course correction when they drift off track.

Unfortunately, learning environments rarely provide feedback on a student’s academic journey until grades come out. It is assumed that they will create their own tracking and accountability systems. When students struggle with executive functioning challenges, they have no idea how to create organizing systems that will work for them.

Operating from a vague understanding of what is expected of them, learners proceed through course requirements to the best of their ability, and attempt to extinguish the resulting academic fires as they ignite. Trying to manage an ongoing barrage of seemingly unattainable tasks is exhausting for struggling learners, and they can quickly burn out.

Resilience is a trait - the ability to bounce back from or adjust easily to misfortune, disappointment, frustration, or change. By contrast, perseverance is an action - getting back on the horse repeatedly. For neurodiverse students to benefit from coaching, they need to internalize qualities of resilience by learning how to get things done successfully. To accomplish this, they must make beneficial study habits ingrained by staying aware of their progress and receiving necessary scaffolding to persevere and stay on track.

The right academic coach can model both how students can make their progress tangible and how they can recover after a setback.

Two Ways to Help Students Become More Resilient: Concretize Progress and Concretize Support

Making progress tangible through physical representation helps neurodivergent learners appreciate how successfully their endeavors are moving them toward their goals.
When a student is mentored in resuming their efforts when things don’t go as planned, they can learn how to recover each time they encounter a setback.

1. Concretize Progress

Struggling students can develop resilience by making beneficial actions and results tangible in several ways:

Make Academic Progress Sensory
Celebrate Academic Progress
Broadcast Academic Progress

Make Progress Sensory: Put a Pin on It

Students with learning differences have a hard time delaying gratification and can become easily discouraged by a mounting cascade of academic disappointments. They do not receive the same reinforcing brain chemistry rewards as neurotypical learners. In particular, their labors do not automatically produce the pleasurable dopamine boost that affects how their brains decide whether a goal is worth the effort.

Seeing no immediate result from all their hard work, they often give up in the middle of a task. In the moment, their efforts just don’t seem to matter that much.

Individuals with higher levels of brain dopamine are more likely to focus on the benefits of mental exertion, whereas those with lower levels instead emphasize the difficulty of a task, and its perceived cost.

Click here for author Erin Bryant’s excellent article on this topic in NIH Research Matters:
“Dopamine affects how brain decides whether a goal is worth the effort”

Struggling learners can overcome this biochemical lottery mishap by externalizing small achievements with physical representations of each success.

Make it Feel Ultra Satisfying to Get Something Done

Without dopamine readily on tap, neurodivergent learners need to artificially simulate gratification. Making even minor accomplishments concrete can be a satisfying way to personalize routine academic tasks and make them more enjoyable.

Some ways to make success physical, visible, kinesthetic:

Drawing checkmarks on a list
Crossing out items on a list
Erasing to-dos off a chalkboard
Affiixing colorful pushpins to a corkboard
Placing colored magnets onto completed tasks on a magnetic board
Creating a tracking method of your child’s own design

Your child may find some options more kinesthetically or visually pleasurable than others. Whichever system your child chooses to make evidence of their academic progress tangible, it should be something they find rewarding.

Celebrate Progress: Savor the Rewards

Students with learning differences often internalize negative messages that they are just not cut out for academics. It can be validating for them to receive an external indication that they did something well - something other people would be proud of.

Too often, neurodivergent learners scramble to just get their assignments in. Often, work is handed in after the deadline, and does not come near to representing what they are capable of achieving.

Short on the heels of the adrenaline rush may be a cloud of disappointment and self-judgment. This mental rollercoaster takes a toll on a learner’s self-confidence. Multiply this scenario by several dozen last-minute submissions over the course of semester, and the adverse impact on their self-esteem intensifies.

Even where the student experiences relief, they may also feel a mixture of shame and embarrassment, especially if they are aware of having made all the adults worried and stressed. They may have moments of comparing themselves negatively to peers who are held up as “model” students.

They may have worked hard, but it may be difficult for such a student to relish unadulterated pride in their accomplishments.

Celebrating large achievements, such as completion of an exam or a significant project, can help students reinforce a more successful academic scenario. Here are some examples:

Receiving recognition from family and mentors
Enjoying an evening at a favorite restaurant with friends
Exploring something of interest in nature
Visiting an amusement park, movie theater, youth art center, or children’s museum
Choosing a long desired-gift

Planning something to look forward to can serve as a catalyst for students to maintain forward progress. Periodic reminders of this vision throughout the execution period can bolster waning momentum.

Broadcast Progress: Give Yourself a Shoutout

Whether your student identifies as an introvert or extrovert, social accountability can reinforce academic habits that will be beneficial to them:

Family and community members can celebrate a student’s achievements online.
Students can be guided to surround themselves with supportive peers and mentors who appreciate and validate their academic successes.
They can become accustomed to sharing their accomplishments with people who are likely to cheer them on.

Getting social validation and support can help struggling students integrate the fruits of their hard work.

2. Concretize Support

Being resilient demands a lot of human character. If your student would have a hard time implementing any of the strategies described above, the good news is that they don’t have to. The skill of perseverance can be exercised and strengthened through academic support.

Neurodiverse learners can successfully develop greater resilience when they receive help getting back on the horse each time they fall off. Your child’s coach can help them develop the muscle to stay the course. For example, they can:

Praise ongoing academic efforts, even when your student cannot see immediate progress.
Encourage your child to request help, take a second stab at a challenging assignment, and continuously improve the quality of their work.
Point out alternatives to solving a problem, and guide your child in testing out different ones until they come upon a solution.
Help your student view an academic setback as a temporary blip, and encourage them to stay focused on their goals.
Steer a struggling learner toward an academic come-back. Yes - given appropriate support, it really is possible to bounce back!

Concretizing progress and support reinforces the completion of baby steps that lead to gratification and pride. This is a great self-esteem builder for struggling learners! An academic coach can model for the student resilience-building practices that will benefit the student for years to come.

To learn more about how academic coaching can help your student develop greater academic resilience, book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, independence, and career direction.

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The Key to Fostering Repeatable Academic Success

8/24/2022

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Learners become more consistent when they get help navigating challenging tasks.

How Mentorship & Modeling Make Academic Consistency Stick

When parents initially contact me to request academic coaching for their child, they often report that other support hasn’t worked. For example, previous coaches generated academic to-do lists, but their child didn’t follow through. The student followed instructions to begin their assignments, and then abandoned them. I have heard parents complain, “I am right back where I started before I lined up support. I had to remind my child to do everything. Nothing happened.”

It’s hard to be academically consistent when words on a page mean nothing to you.

Well-meaning educators sometimes rattle off lists of what needs to be done, assuming that this will leave a student prepared to take action. “You’re smart, you’ve got this. Some quick verbal instructions should do the trick. You’re all set - go get ’em!”

Unfortunately, students who struggle with organization and planning have trouble with both initiation and follow through. They also have difficulty visualizing the steps in a process. As a result, manageable tasks feel harder to do than they actually are, and then they can’t establish traction.

When my father taught me how to drive, he described how I would change a tire if I needed to. He spoke with confidence, reassuring me that if I followed such-and-such steps, I would be successful.

Needless to say, I have only a vague notion of how to change a tire. Yes, any automotive mishaps I contend with are covered by a popular emergency roadside service, but the point is…

My father, may he rest in peace, meant well. I have no doubt that for some teenager somewhere, one without ADHD, a verbal download would be sufficient to prompt them years down the proverbial road - to not only know enough to get out the lug wrench - but also how to use it properly.

I wish every challenge in life were that simple to master!

Neurodiverse students need to experience expectations and instructions as something tangible. To make academic consistency concrete, the coach your child is working with should guide them through every task that is a source of procrastination. While to-do checklists are helpful, your student’s coach should also mentor your child in persisting through the process of completing academic tasks, and helping them address each obstacle along the way.

We should not just tell struggling students how to get something done. We need to show them, and then let them practice it on their own, while making mistakes, and learning from them. Let students take a turn at it, and encounter everything that could go wrong. Then, help them make corrections along the way.

It’s not that supporting adults should do a student’s homework for them, but that we need to stay with them while they are struggling their way through to successfully completing each step in the process.

Before even starting an assignment, a student may first need help with logistical preliminaries: finding their backpack, locating a notebook, getting a working writing implement, finding a charger for their computer, retrieving login credentials for the academic portal, unearthing assignment instructions, interpreting instructor’s prompts, tracking down the teacher’s email address to request clarification of the assignment, etc.

The student described in the above paragraph has not yet even attempted to begin their homework, but they may already feel exhausted. A learner who struggles with organization needs more support than one might expect, if they are to arrive at the point where they can begin and complete just one task, let alone tackle multiple projects.

To have a prayer of developing consistent academic habits, neurodiverse learners need a level of support that not every coach provides: a mentor who will get in the trenches to help them succeed with the minutiae of each learning challenge.

We need to hang in there with them while the learning process is taking place, bearing witness to the student’s false starts, cheering on their continued exploration, and celebrating the resulting “aha” moments.

To develop greater tenacity in their academic pursuits, struggling learners especially need modeling when taking on tasks they dread. With support, they can experience actually getting them done - from start to finish. Rather than continuing to reinforce a habit of procrastination, they can be mentored in successfully completing anything, including things they dislike doing.

Ground-level support trains your child to understand and cull all the components that must be included in their academic life. Mentors can help learners persist in meeting challenges, and see that process through until the student experiences success firsthand.

A coach can comb through academic portals with students, explain course expectations, catch homework items that are missing or incomplete, interpret assignment instructions, help the student create a detailed plan for responding to prompts, model self advocacy, highlight and reinforce a student’s strengths, and provide a beneficial context for any struggles they may have with their learning process or environment. Along the way, they can help your student identify and practice organizing and planning techniques that will serve them in the future.

To make academic traction stick, struggling students must internalize the use of mental outlooks and systems that are effective for them, and make them repeatable. When we help a neurodiverse learner practice the completion of tasks, while receiving support, they discover beneficial problem solving skills and attitudes they can dependably use on their own. They encounter and make friends with their own grit. They come to recognize that they can learn ways to accomplish anything they want to, on their own.

Having experienced what progress feels like, my students typically report that assignments and projects are not especially unpleasant. They might not be as much fun as their favorite computer game, sport, or social activity, but they do uncover the willingness to do them.

They start enjoying the fruits of academic success, plus all the self esteem and external validation that goes along with that. They realize that even if they hadn’t identified as “academically oriented” before coaching, they actually COULD become an architect/marine biologist/entrepreneur/psychologist/composer, etc.

These talented young people start daring to dream!

And these transformational moments in a student’s identity rock my world as an academic coach.

To-do lists and goals are meaningless without an opportunity for a student to practice follow up and experience traction, but the right academic coach helps neurodiverse learners confront challenges on the ground level. To learn more about how your student can receive mentorship in improving their academic consistency, book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.

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2 Ways Struggling Students Can Make Motivation More Concrete

8/24/2022

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Struggling students can become more motivated when concepts are made tangible.

Making Academics Relevant

When a neurotypical student faces an academic task, the anticipation of meeting the challenge alone can provide them with a sense of motivation. They automatically see how it is to their advantage to satisfy external requirements in school, social settings, and the professional arena. This helps them maintain commitment to a variety of goals, even those outside their sphere of interest.

It doesn’t work this way for students with learning differences.

Struggling learners find it difficult to uncover academic purpose, especially when a task seems remote or irrelevant to them. Without sensing an innate connection to outside expectations, students with learning differences have a hard time making themselves complete, or even begin, required assignments and projects.

In order to feel committed to completing a particular academic task, struggling students need to understand how doing so will further their personal goals.

Fortunately, these 2 support options can motivate neurodiverse students, breathing life into otherwise tedious academic pursuits:

1. Mentorship can help students feel more engaged in academic tasks: The right coach understands what it means to be neurodiverse in an academic or professional setting, and has the curiosity and patience to listen and respond to the inner world of a struggling learner. They also help neurodiverse students understand how they benefit from learning to navigate academic, personal, and professional.

Struggling students often experience themselves on the outside of things. In group learning contexts, their attempts to contribute may go unnoticed, reinforcing a self-perception of invisibility. Their participation in academic settings may at times be trivialized by well-meaning learning communities that are not optimized to promote that student’s potential. Over time, a learner may internalize an inner narrative that they are just not cut out for school.

Students may first need to trust that the world is understanding them, before they are willing to understand and learn from a world outside themselves.

They may need to, for the first time, discover how playing by “the rules” can work to their advantage.

Academic coaches offer critical mentoring during pivotal moments in a young person’s life, helping them see how their values and perspectives have a place in school environments, professional arenas, and society at large.

2. Independent projects give neurodiverse learners something to care about: Struggling students can garner purpose and momentum from developing research projects that are personally relevant, hands-on, mentored, self driven, and based on a topic of their choosing.

Students with learning differences often avoid tasks they consider boring, especially when those tasks are components of complex projects that need to be executed in phases. However, many class assignments demand that students identify, organize, and navigate a detailed sequence of actions. Struggling learners can overcome their avoidance of projects that involve multiple steps by successfully following through on a major pursuit that genuinely interests them.

When they do this outside the constraints of an academic setting, with the support of a coach, they can customize their research and problem solving methods to learning methods that work best for them. This helps them harness cognitive skill building opportunities that may fall through the cracks in traditional learning environments.

Why is this important? Neurodiverse students may not always shine in a classroom, even where their innovative ideas contribute to the learning discourse. Operating on their own timeframe, with a guide, struggling students can tailor their exploration process, pairing their growth edges with an independent intellectual or creative pursuit.

Researching and building something substantial that they already consider to be relevant allows neurodiverse learners to practice problem solving, innovation, and communication skills in the context of an area of passion. They will already have the benefit of increased focus, and can leverage that to strengthen analytical skills they would normally find cognitively taxing.

Click here to learn how struggling students can discover increased motivation by creating a unique project.

Learn more about how mentorship and support exploring an independent project can help your child develop more solid motivation. Book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.

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Vagueness: Hidden Barriers to Success for Neurodiverse Students

8/23/2022

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A lack of concrete mental associations creates barriers to academic success for neurodiverse students.

When Having a Learning Difference Feels Like Being from a Different Planet

As an individual with ADHD, I have at times experienced the world through a lens of cognitive vagueness. Struggling with executive functioning, the real world and all its demands have sometimes appeared foreign and hazy. Principles of cause and effect appeared far off and indistinct. I observed peers rushing around with a purpose I couldn’t see cause for, taking actions I didn’t feel an innate sense of urgency for, or want to emulate. While others were studying, applying for jobs, rushing to get places on time, I felt like John Lennon, “just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.”

It’s not that I didn’t want to be doing important things, or understand the need for them. In theory, I could appreciate that they were good things to be doing. I just couldn’t connect to the necessity of getting them done right then. Unfortunately, when “right then” doesn’t happen, and many tasks are handled this way - or not handled, as the case may be - it can mean that a lot of things just don’t get done.

Some might say that choosing to step back from the hustle and bustle to philosophize is a good thing, in moderation. What happens with neurodiverse individuals is that we cannot count on moving beyond those moments into productive phases where we reliably take needed actions.

Because neurotypical individuals can visualize initiation and follow through, they can achieve great results with or without support. However, the ability to respond pragmatically and systematically to academic challenges is not how things play out for individuals with learning differences. It’s as if we are living on a different planet.

Struggling learners experience academic challenges through what I have come to call a lens of vagueness. In other words, they miss both the large picture and individual pieces within it. Pressing actions seem indistinct. Significant goals feel remote and blurry. Urgent to-do items seem irrelevant.

Without a solid tie to need, individuals with learning differences may see academic responsibilities as something outside themselves, dictated by others, with standards of excellence that don’t resonate.

While the challenge of vagueness is an ongoing hurdle for struggling students, it’s nothing the average learner needs to overcome. When neurotypical students are faced with a standard academic challenge, they automatically translate it into concrete action. For example:

Neurotypical students are able to apply hierarchies and priorities to tasks.
They can predict how long academic projects will take, create lists, and manage time.
They are also able to visualize their path to success, and anticipate the satisfaction they will feel when the task is complete.
They are able to confront setbacks in the learning process with specific problem solving techniques.
They get rewarded on a biochemical level for planning and executing in a way that is likely to lead them to success.
They have confident self talk patterns and an inherent sense that they can do whatever they put their minds to.

By contrast, neurodiverse learners may not easily form connections with how externally imposed criteria, including deadlines, tasks, and grades, relate to them. Individuals with learning differences may struggle to successfully navigate critical requirements and constraints, even when they wish they could do this with ease. Not being able to connect meaning to essential components, and to connect those components with each other in the right order, and at the right time, creates a barrier to completing tasks.

Struggling students may not understand the full scope and relevance of a project, or see how completing a specific task will work to their advantage. They may not recognize why they need additional tutoring or coaching help to achieve those goals. Thus, they may not take advantage of available support at crucial moments, such as the weeks prior to finals. As deadlines get closer, the student may take shortcuts with assignments just to get them done.

Without a concrete, personal connection to the need for learning concepts and completing tasks, learners may feel distracted during tutoring sessions, and then the opportunity for critical “aha” moments of discovery that could happen in that one-on-one interaction may be lost.

While academic coaching may help students maintain a steady academic track record, it does not guarantee that they will adopt better study practices, cultivate new organization habits, or see themselves operating in the context of a community of learners and educators. In order for learning support to help a neurodiverse student internalize more motivation, consistency, and resilience, concepts need to be made tangible and relevant.

To learn more about how struggling students can overcome vagueness and make learning concrete, book a free consultation now.

As an executive functioning coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.

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Ace Your Learning Blog
Easy Study and Life Hacks

When Academic Support Isn’t Enough for Neurodiverse Students

How Students Benefit from Coaching

2 Ways to Help Struggling Learners Develop Resilience

Making Stick-to-it-iveness Concrete

The Key to Fostering Repeatable Academic Success

How Mentorship & Modeling Make Academic Consistency Stick

2 Ways Struggling Students Can Make Motivation More Concrete

Making Academics Relevant

Vagueness: Hidden Barriers to Success for Neurodiverse Students

When Having a Learning Difference Feels Like Being from a Different Planet

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Ace Your Learning​ BlogEasy Study and Life Hacks

When Academic Support Isn’t Enough for Neurodiverse Students

How Students Benefit from Coaching

2 Ways to Help Struggling Learners Develop Resilience

Making Stick-to-it-iveness Concrete

The Key to Fostering Repeatable Academic Success

How Mentorship & Modeling Make Academic Consistency Stick

2 Ways Struggling Students Can Make Motivation More Concrete

Making Academics Relevant

Vagueness: Hidden Barriers to Success for Neurodiverse Students

When Having a Learning Difference Feels Like Being from a Different Planet

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Blog Categories

Blog Archives

Who Am I?Why Do I Care?

Ace Your Learning Blog
Easy Study and Life Hacks

Who Am I?
Why Do I Care?