When I was in high school, I was a competitive swimmer. Everyday, sometimes twice a day I arrived at the Carrollwood Village Country Club for swim practice. I brought with me my bag with my suits and goggles, towel, and change of clothes. I showed up for practice no matter how I felt, whether I was tired or energized, in a good or a bad mood. And I swam, swam, swam, laps and laps and laps and laps. After years of this dedication I had become captain of the team, team record holder, and national qualifier.

Eventually, my success as a swimmer helped me to get into a great college.

What motivated me to work so hard and so consistently? The honest answer is a combination of three factors:

My own personal drive to be better
My coach
Guilt *

I believe I should clarify number 3. Why guilt? Well, perhaps that is too strong a word. However, I must say that I knew that showing up for practice on time everyday and working hard was expected of me by my teammates, my coach and ultimately myself. If I slacked off or did not meet expectations, I would feel guilty. I knew that the harder I worked, the better I could be, and so each practice was an opportunity to improve.

In essence, the guilt was kind of like a guide. A guide that kept me on the track to success.

As a test prep tutor, I have seen that in general, the equation for student success is quite simple. The students who work harder, more often, and with good methods excel on these tests. Those who work sporadically, half-heartedly, without a healthy dose of “guilt” are not properly prepared when test day comes.

Just as I had the structure of the team and the motivating force of a coach whom I respected to keep me focused and committed as a swimmer, the weekly tutoring session and the coach-like tutor are the ingredients for students’ success on standardized tests.

I know that all students, deep down, want to do well on these tests. Many adolescents are at a critical stage where they are almost, but not yet fully self-motivated. They need help. Solid weekly structure, solid guidance, and a touch of guilt can go a long way!

I was recently working with a student on the ACT English section when a student said to me, “you should make a recording of these strange vocal sounds”. She was referring to a tendency I have when I am trying to teach grammar rules to vocalize and exaggerate the sounds and rhythms of a sentence to illustrate a rule. As it would be impossible to illustrate this here without providing an mp3 clip (note to self), suffice it to say that there are multiple ways of learning things, and that it is not absurd to use “musical language” to absorb a fundamental rule of english grammar. This is not any kind of breakthrough discovery. What makes it interesting is the context. How often do we think laterally when approaching standardized tests? Standardized tests are essentially associated with such words as dry, boring, unimaginative, procedural….

But alas, after ten years of teaching the SAT and ACT, I am seeing something else. If I were to show up at a student’s home, day in and day out and merely explain the content of the test, such as math equations and grammar rules, I would never have survived in this field for this many years. I would have withered up and been blown away like a dustball in the wind.

This has not happened, because I see the training for this test as a critical opportunity for many powerful intellectual and spiritual lessons.

For many students in today’s day (I love that expression: “in today’s day”….like “In tomorrow’s morrow”), the ability to concentrate, for an extended period of time, particularly on the written word, seems to be at an all-time low. Perhaps we can agree that the causes (cellphones, texting, rapid edit television, internet) affect us all. So adults can relate. We are a nation of ADD, all of us! Or to be fair, perhaps our attention is now in a different, more highly tense, gear. Some of us have found meditation, or yoga, or some other path to help us to slow down and to bring us to a greater sense of presence and inner calm.

I propose that for some high school kids, training for a standardized test can be a meditative practice. It can be a meditation in itself. I have had students who I have guided toward a more concentrated, step by step, honest-to-goodness “I am in the present moment with the question that is right in front of me on the page” kind of process. Such a way of working is very powerful, and it can be very satisfying. It unleashes certain mental capacities that one did not suspect one had. Because very often the mistakes we make, both in life and on a standardized test, originate from one simple source: we are not in the moment.

During my early years tutoring for the SAT, I would often start the first session by joining the student in common criticism of the test. I would say something like, “I realize this test is awful, culturally biased, boring, and an overall irritation, but we have to get through it and do well, because it is what stands between you and the rest of your life (college).” I suppose I did this with the hope that I could form a bond with the student and validate his or her negative feelings toward the test and the test situation in general.

These days, however, I look back, and see that I was selling myself short and crippling the process before it even began. These days, I don’t say anything of the sort. These days, I ask the student what his or her feeling/attitude is toward the test and I don’t agree or disagree. I just listen and take it in as information. In my own mind, I no longer feel as I did in those early years. At this point, I’ve seen what kind of transformations are possible in working intensely over time with this test, and I am aligned with the process, 100%.

When a tutor has a vision that is wider and larger than the student’s own, this is the condition for inspiration to happen. When a tutor is always trying to be on the same level as the student (and of course, bonding with the student is imperative for the work to truly move forward), then the sessions might stagnate. Perhaps the student will like the tutor, will think the tutor is cool or nice or fun, but ultimately, this is not the point of the work. The point is not to simply raise the score a bit, but to truly challenge the way the student learns and open pathways to new ways of learning.

To find that proper balance between relating to the student and challenging/pushing him to move forward is where the art comes in to play. For each tutor this is a highly personal process.

This weekend I was out camping in the Catskills with my friend Mikey. I set an intention to think about concentration. I wanted to come up with more specific exercises to use with high school age kids to work on their concentration muscles. We live in an age of A.D.D. and medication, shortened attention spans and quick fixes. One can actually feel a sensation of pain/discomfort when one tries to concentrate beyond one’s typical threshold. Difficult feelings emerge. It is important to have techniques for dealing with the process of stretching the attention chords, and building the concentration muscles. In order to do well on a big test like the SAT, one must be able to slow down and concentrate. This is not a small task, however, because so many things can get in the way.

One thing nature does, it offers such an infinite amount of stimulus, so many things to look at, to hear, smell, touch, that one is quickly overwhelmed. It is amazing that I can feel calmer in the city (which has a reputation for chaos) and then I can drive out to the Catskills, and sit there in my chair in total silence and feel crazy in my head. It really bothered me that I couldn’t enjoy the “peacefulness” of nature. But, I know one thing. It takes time, my friends. Time. So I knew. I said to myself:

When I first went to live on a Kibbutz in Israel over ten years ago (yes it is true, I did!), I remember I went crazy for the first two weeks. I knew that my stay was planned for at least six months (I ended up staying for 10 months), and already at two weeks I was jumping out of my skull with boredom. There was nothing to do. I’d wake up at dawn, go to work in one of my various outdoor jobs, finish by 2 or 3PM and have the entire rest of the afternoon and evening off.  What was I supposed to do with all this time? I was so painfully aware of TIME, I was drowning in it.

But then, something happened. I don’t even remember how it happened or when exactly. I only know that somewhere inside of me, my metabolism started to slow down. I started to somehow match the rhythms of the world around me. Kibbutz life is so much slower than U.S. life, particularly in the city, but really almost anywhere in the U.S. On a kibbutz, if you are walking and suddenly you decide to stop for a moment and just look around, or gaze at at tree, or watch an ant carrying a piece of food, this is accepted behavior. In NYC, however, you have to fight to achieve this quality of slowed rhythm. The city is just too frenzied to encourage that kind of attention.

On the kibbutz, after I had that “click” and slowed down to the pace of the life around me, I found a whole new world open up to me. I could write and write about this new world, but let’s suffice it to say (for now) that it is out there, waiting to be witnessed at every moment.

Back in the Catskills, sitting there in my cheap canvas chair from Target, surrounded by the amazing natural world, I began to mellow out. I felt my breath slowing down. I felt the chaos of my thoughts relaxing their hold on me. Slowly, as if I was coming out of a stupor, I began to look around me and to see things. I began to actually see things as if for the very first time.

And then, later, after spending the night sleeping outdoors under the stars, I was awakened by the sounds of birds chirping. My eyes still closed with sleep, I listened in to the birds. I’d heard chirping before, but this time I really found that I was listening. It was a more active process. I could hear the birds talking back and forth, back and forth. First one would chirp in a particular pitch three times, and then the other would respond with two chirps in a different pitch. Then the first would reply with three chirps again. And then the second would respond with four chirps. And so on and so forth. The birds were talking! And I was listening! At last, I was concentrating!

Drew