Teaching students how to learn.

From Lorri

I spent 15 years as a classroom teacher, and part of my daily work was teaching students how to learn. When I began working with students outside the classroom, I saw how widespread that need had grown. Teachers, experts in their subjects, presume students pick up the skills and behaviors of learning somewhere along the way. Some kids had. Many (many) had not.

So I began teaching these skills directly. It is a bit of an art, folding them into what students already must do for school, because few subjects are more mind numbingly dull than learning how to check what work is due, read directions, or remember to actually turn in finished work. If your kids have balked at this work with others, that is likely why. I do it with kids, and I do it pretty successfully.

During remote learning, a parent asked me to work with her frustrated, disengaged son, who also struggled with executive functioning. He needed more fun than even my most animated self could generate, and it is not easy to compete online with video games. I knew Bryan could offer something with technology that would engage him more. And an idea was born.

How children interact with video games has much to do with the guidance they receive.

Executive functioning in Minecraft

Video games can lure a happy player into blowing up aliens and eating power pellets. They can also offer chances to practice mindfulness, patience, logic, and sequencing, the cornerstones of executive functioning. So what if we combined the two? Minecraft offered the way.

We work collaboratively with students in Minecraft, following their interests to build stories and games of their own design, block by block, in an immersive three dimensional space. Fostering the habits of mind that working memory, flexible thinking, and self control require helps students apply the same skills when it is time to face less pleasant tasks.

Traditional executive functioning support

All of the skills above, applied to real homework. It is not as fun as playing Minecraft, but sometimes a student has to get the homework done by tomorrow, pass a test next week, or dig a smelly sandwich out of a locker to find a missing worksheet. We offer this support for elementary school through college students in all content areas.