Help your children: Build their Mastery, Build Their Self-Es

Through creating a holistic student training program, The Student Mastery Program has transformed thousands of students from unmotivated, underachieving, insufficiently prepared for college to motivated, achieving, and college ready.

My initial company, The Learning Consultants, has created numerous programs centered upon the concept of mastery.  We all appreciate masters of craft.  Master chefs, musicians, carpenters, anyone and everyone who excels at what they do, demonstrates mastery.  Strangely, there is no course on how to be a student.  Students attend classes in different subjects.  But, they are never given training in how to be a student.

• “Student Mastery” provides full training in how to be an excellent student.  

• Motivation is more art than science.  

• Student Mastery is the chief differentiator for how The Learning Consultants has been able to get remarkable, life changing results.  

Study skills are easy to convey once the student is properly motivated.  Skill development in reading, writing, and math primarily takes time but, again, once we properly motivate our students, we can get them to develop easily enough.

The Student Mastery program’s first priority is moving students from acting solely due to outer-direction (studying only because they are told to do so - nagging - ) to self-direction (performing to their potential for their own reasons). 

Motivation + Study Skills + Skill Development

The immediate desired end result — no more need to nag — is good for the whole family. The even more desirable higher end objective — learning to love learning — leads to a lifetime of success.

We’re often asked, “How did you help change our child so dramatically?”  That’s a complicated question.  But, the simple answer revolves around the effect that any good coach can have on a trainee.  We convince our students to care for their own sake. The “how” involves a deep understanding of psychological patterns in order to uncover each student’s unique motivational triggers.

Consider the development of any skill set:  Tennis. Dance. Violin.  Each requires lessons for improvement.  Remember your first day on any new job?  There likely was some type of training. Now consider the “job” of your child.  

Student is the longest job that many people will ever have.  Yet, there is no training for the job of student.  Students attend classes in individual subjects.  Teachers teach their subject matter, not study skills.  Sure, some schools provide generalized study tips in pamphlets (unread) or quick orientation programs (minimal attention given).  But, most students are left completely on their own to train themselves.  And, most do not do a very job. In each area, we have a methodology for student success– a genuine training manual for “students” – that is imparted to our clients. Self-motivation plus training leads to success.

The program is designed to teach students how to excel in the job of “student”.  “Student” is the longest job that most people will ever hold.  Yet, there is no training for this job.  Motivation is the most critical part of the program.  But, shifting student psychology is one piece of the whole.  There are best practices for student effectiveness that must be instilled after the student is motivated. On the issue of what is we actually do, parents naturally want to know how our program works.   

Not surprisingly, mothers and fathers approach the issue differently.  Mothers will discuss their children and our process for helping their children endlessly.  We usually have to bring such discussion to closure in order to move on with my day. Fathers, on the other hand, want quick, bottom-line, sound bites. So, when asked for a super quick summary of our Student Mastery Program, we respond: motivation plus study skills. But, to create a more vivid analogy, consider what a good fitness trainer provides:

I am an optimist by nature.  I also tend to see the good - the potential - in my student clients.  But I am also a realist and immersed in the observation of those trying to make their way through school-college-career.  The dramatic epidemic of anxiety-depression is linked with under-achievement.  That under-achievement almost always starts in early high school.  If you managed to find your way to this page, then do whatever you need to do to intervene effectively - now.