It Never Hurts To Ask

From the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2013, I lived in the Rocky Mountain states. I spent one year in Montana, one year in Wyoming, and one year in Colorado. Now, if you’ve ever been out that way, you know two things: 1) it’s absolutely beautiful, and 2) it’s not very densely populated, especially Montana and Wyoming. One thing that this means is that to visit any city other than the one where you live, you have to drive at least an hour, sometimes three or four. I don’t know about you, but I get highway hypnosis pretty bad if I don’t keep my mind occupied while I’m on the road. So, when I would drive anywhere, I liked to call people on the phone.

As you can imagine, though, sparsely populated areas don’t have the best reception. (If you don’t believe me, just watch any wireless provider commercial—the coverage maps are almost non-existent over the Rockies.) This led to some fairly awkward phone conversations.

“Guess what happened? <static static> brother <static static static static static static>.”

“Sorry, you cut out. What’d you say?”

“I said, ‘My roommate’s broth<static static static static static static> pend<static static static static static> yesterday.’”

It would be super awkward for me to ask again. Let’s just smile and nod. “Oh, wow, that’s awesome.”

“What? No it’s not. He almost died. Exploding appendixes are not awesome.”

Oops.

Have you ever done that before? Have you ever not understood something, but were too afraid to ask, and ended up really confused later on? Or what about this one: your teacher or your boss gives you an assignment, and you don’t quite understand what you’re supposed to, but you figure you can guess close enough. And then it turns out you were completely off-base.

Why do we do this? Why are we so afraid of asking for clarification? I think it’s because we’re embarrassed. We don’t want to look stupid. This is especially true if it seems like everyone else understood the instructions or the statement perfectly. As human beings, we have a natural tendency to compare ourselves to others and derive our sense of self-worth and our life satisfaction from such comparisons. We don’t want to appear incompetent, ESPECIALLY when those around us seem to be hyper-competent, and especially in an area as important to navigating life as communication.

Think about it: there are three things every relationship requires in order to be effective, whether that relationship is friend-friend, parent-child, teacher-student, husband-wife/boyfriend-girlfriend, boss-employee, or any of the myriad other roles we find ourselves in throughout our lives. Those three things are trust, respect, and communication. If we don’t have those, relationships fall apart. Now, trust and respect are the easy parts; once they’re established, they have a momentum that maintains itself, provided no outside action causes them to get derailed. Communication, however, is something that we have to work at every time we do it. And add to that the fact that communication is layered with verbal, semi-verbal (i.e. tone of voice, rate of speech, etc), and non-verbal cues, and it’s obvious that clear communication is not an easy thing.

Yet it’s the ability to communicate complex thoughts and ideas that seems to make humans so human. So, whenever we feel we can’t hold up our end of the bargain on the communication highway, on a subconscious level, we feel like we’re failing not just in our role, but as a human being. That’s why, once they reach a certain age, kids start feeling embarrassed to ask questions in class. It’s why we feel awkward asking people to repeat themselves. It’s why we all know how to nod and smile and fake a laugh when we don’t get the joke.

But what I learned on those long rides trying to talk to my friends through the fuzzy reception and dropped calls is that if you don’t ask, and you just guess, it’s even more embarrassing if you’re wrong. Or, if you’re right about the proper response, but you still don’t know what you were responding to, you missed out on a great opportunity to connect with someone. I decided that I would rather be thought stupid for asking a question than miss out on the clarity and connection that comes from effective communication.

So here are my thoughts for you:

1. If you couldn’t hear what someone said, ask them to repeat themselves. Do this multiple times if necessary.
2. If you don’t understand what someone said, ask them to clarify. Do this until it makes sense.
3. If you think you got it, repeat it back to them and ask them to correct you. Do this until there is nothing to correct.
4. If you think the person you’re talking to is confused, ask them if there’s anything they want explained again. Do this until they completely get it.

Remember, communication is a two-way highway, and it’s easy to be distracted, or to simply not be able to pick up what someone else put down. Don’t be embarrassed to make sure that you get what you need from the communication. Ask questions, expect answers, and stop caring so much about what people will think if you do. The reality is that it’s a sign of respect to ask for clarification. It means that you value the other person and what they have to say so much that you want to make sure you have it 100% right. It never hurts to ask. 

Jaselyn Taubel

@suuzuusii

Sales Support, Southwestern Advantage

The Difference a Schedule Makes

We aren’t as busy as we think. Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have extra hours in the day? They go around being involved in about five million different things, plus have time for work, school, church, family, and a social life. And here you sit, just trying to figure out how to make time for getting your laundry done between the homework, the job, and having a least a little bit of a social life. What gives?

The answer is SCHEDULE (or as business gurus call it, time management). Those people who seem to accomplish everything and then have time left over have a schedule and they stick to it. Now, a lot of people react to the word “schedule” the way they react to the word “budget.” It seems to reek of constriction and suck all the fun out of life. But the reality is just the opposite. Being on schedule, like being on a budget, simply means knowing what you are doing with your time and making intentional choices about how you want to use it.

Just as a good budget is zero-sum (that is, there’s no dollar left over from that month’s income that doesn’t have a job to do, whether it’s rent, savings, or going to the movies), a good schedule is also zero-sum: you shouldn’t have any time where you don’t know what you’ll be doing with it, whether it’s for work, studying, or just spontaneous fun stuff.

Now, I personally prefer the weekly schedule to the monthly schedule, because this allows for a bit more flexibility in fitting in things that may come up on short notice that you really want to do. So start by putting into your schedule the things you have to do that are fixed: things like work, class, organization meetings, volunteer time—the stuff that doesn’t change from week to week and you don’t have the option of removing from your schedule. And don’t forget to include travel time in with this. The average American adult spends 52 minutes a day commuting*, so include that time in your schedule.

Now, if you work full-time, you’ll find that you spend 40 hours per week working and approximately 5 hours per week commuting to and from work. That’s 45 hours per week taken up by work. If you’re a full-time college student taking 15 credit hours, and you spend the recommended 2 hours out of class for every hour in class (which, unless you’re a science major, is probably a bit more than you’re actually spending), that’s 45 hours per week taken up by school. Commute time for a college student, obviously, will vary drastically depending on how far from campus you live and the size of the school you attend, but it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I’ll let you do that part on your own.

If we assume that you also get 8 hours of sleep a night, that puts you at 56 hours of your week spent asleep. So we have now accounted for 101 hours of your week. That leaves you with 67 hours each week to do whatever you want with! That’s more than 9 HOURS PER DAY of free time, on average. Crazy, isn’t it? Sure doesn’t feel like you have that much time, does it? 

Here’s why:
First, there’s the obvious fact that your time spent at work or in class is concentrated into five of the seven weekdays, so you don’t actually have nine hours free each day—but that’s made up for by the fact that you have 16 hours on Saturday and 16 hours on Sunday free, leaving 35 hours across the other five days. But that’s still 7 hours a day.

Well, numerous studies have shown that the average American watches between 35 and 40 hours of television PER WEEK. That’s the equivalent of a full-time job! If you’re watching on the low end, 35 hours per week, that’s still 5 hours each day! No wonder you feel like you don’t have any time. And what about Facebook and other social networking sites? If you visit them while studying or working on other things, they sap your time away, and you won’t even realize that it’s not your work or studies taking up so much time: it’s that you’re using your free time up without even realizing it.

Now, I’m not saying you should never watch TV or go online. That would be pretty extreme. (Although think of what you could accomplish with your time if you did!) What I am saying is to be intentional about your time. I recommend figuring out on Sunday night what shows you want to watch that week and how much time you want to spend on Facebook or Twitter, and then stick to that. It’s hard to do, especially if you’re not used to making deliberate decisions about how you use your time, but you’ll be surprised how much more you’re able to get done in a day.

And, as a side note, don’t try to multi-task. All it does is make you less effective at each activity. Whenever you interrupt yourself, it takes you 15 minutes to get back into the flow of it. So that 5 minute break to check your email actually cost you 20 minutes of studying. So when you’re working on something, do everything you can to remove all distractions. If you have a test coming up, put your phone on airplane mode while you study. You don’t need to be worrying about who’s going to that party Saturday night when you’re trying to remember the difference between a nucleus and a nucleolus. Also, it makes the time spent on the distracting activities less enjoyable because you know you still have to go back to finish the work. So just avoid the multi-tasking temptation. It’s not worth it.

So, to summarize: you probably have more free time than you’re aware of. There’s 168 hours in a week, and the typical American uses up 101 hours in sleep and work or school, leaving 67 hours free to do whatever you want with. But if you don’t set up an intentional schedule about how to use those hours, you’ll simply end up wasting them away without even realizing it. If you’re intentional about how you spend your time, and cut back on the TV and multi-tasking, you’ll be amazed at how much more momentum you'll have, what you'll accomplish, and how great you'll feel because of it.

Jaselyn Taubel

@suuzuusii

Sales Support, Southwestern Advantage

*NPR TED Radio Hour Podcast, Sept 13, 2013

Finish What You Start

I follow a lot of people on Twitter. It’s kind of like my daily headlines—if it’s important, it’ll show up. But it’s better than just having a newspaper because I can create the atmosphere of news I want to be exposed to; I can make sure that most of my headlines will take me to things that will help make me a better person today than I was yesterday. That means I follow a lot of people like Dave Ramsey, Rory Vaden, John Maxwell, and of course Southwestern Advantage. (I also follow Mental Floss because I love trivia.) Another one I follow is Inc.com, and last year, they tweeted a headline titled “Want to Be More Effective? Try a Mental Detox.”

Intriguing, right? After all, who doesn’t want to be more effective at what they’re passionate about? So of course I clicked. Now, if you can, I recommend reading the whole article: the author lays out four things you can do on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on the important things and to do them better. But I just want to focus on one of those, #3: Commit to finishing what you start.

Now, here at Southwestern Advantage, we take commitment pretty seriously and we take finishing what you start pretty seriously—at least when it comes to the big things. But what about the small things in your life? The author of the article quotes a man named Jason Selk, who asserts that a lot of people stop when they get things about 90% done. They suffer from what one of our former record-breaking salespeople Bill Zizzi used to call “satisfied-itis.” It’s good enough, so they sort of putter out for that last little bit. What this leads to is a job not quite well-done, or else a to-do list that never quite gets any smaller.

The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that it really does happen. I like to think of myself as a pretty reliable person, and as someone who gives 100% effort 100% of the time. But then I look around my apartment and notice all the half-unpacked boxes, and I think of all the knitting projects where I skipped the blocking at the end because I just wanted to sew the sweater up and be done with it.

Take a minute and think about YOUR life: how many half-done projects do you have sitting around? Maybe a painting you were making, or a book you were reading (or writing!). How many times did you slack off right at the end of that paper, and skip doing that final revision? How different would you feel about those activities if you committed to getting them completely finished and followed through on that commitment? 

So I ask you—no, I DARE you—to finish what you start this week. Take all those little things that you’ve set aside and only half-completed, and just get them done. Finish cleaning your apartment, or writing that novel, or reading that book. Finish getting your bills paid and your finances organized. Finish planning that vacation, and book those concert tickets. Those things you’ve thought about and planned for, but haven’t made happen yet: make them happen. Do it just for this week. And if you don’t like the results, then you don’t have to ever do it again. But I bet you will. 

Jaselyn Taubel

@suuzuusii

Sales Support, Southwestern Advantage

The Black Door

Several generations ago, during one of the most turbulent of the desert wars in the Middle East, a spy was captured and sentenced to death by a General of the Persian Army. The General, a man of intelligence and compassion, had adopted a strange and unusual custom in such areas. He permitted the condemned person to make a choice. The prisoner could either face the firing squad or pass through the Black Door. 

As the moment of execution drew near, the General ordered the spy be brought before him for a short, final interview, the primary purpose of which was to receive the answer of the doomed man to the query: "What shall it be - the firing squad or the Black Door?"

This was not an easy decision and the prisoner hesitated, but soon made it known that he much preferred the firing squad to the unknown horrors that might wait for him behind the ominous and mysterious door. Not long thereafter, a volley of shots in the courtyard announced that the grim sentence had been fulfilled.

The General, staring at his boots, turned to his aide and said, "You see how it is with men: they will always prefer the known way to the unknown. It is a characteristic of people to be afraid of the undefined. Yet, I gave him his choice."

"What lies behind the Black Door?" asked the aide.

"Freedom," replied the General, "and I've known only a few men brave enough to take it."

This story illustrates the situation many of us face each day - a choice between the known and the unknown. Few people have the courage to come alive, to stop being engulfed in a sea of mediocrity. Too many are humbled and dulled by their failure to recognize their own potential. They lack the guts to stop living their lives in a mentally chloroformed condition in that ignoble mass of humanity, the uncommitted. 

William James once said, "The one thing that will guarantee the successful conclusion of a doubtful undertaking is faith in the beginning that you can do it."

If you keep thinking the way you've always thought, you'll keep doing what you've always done, and you'll keep getting what you've always gotten. 

Take a deep breath, and go for it.

Understanding The Common Core State Standards

If you have a child in school today, chances are you’ve heard something about the Common Core State Standards. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have decided to align their instruction to these standards, promising sweeping changes to classrooms across the country over the next several years.

What are the Common Core State Standards? Why are they important? Where did they come from? What is Southwestern Advantage’s connection to the Common Core? The answers to these critical questions will help parents understand exactly what the Common Core is all about, and what it means for your child’s education.


WHAT ARE THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS?

Common Core State Standards are a set of standards, not a curriculum.

The Common Core State Standards are a common set of educational standards defining the mathematics and English language arts knowledge and skills all United States students in grades K-12 need to be successfully prepared for college and the workforce in the 21st century.

The standards are not a step-by-step guide for classroom instruction; rather, they are an outline of the goals to be reached and skills to be mastered at every grade level and upon graduation. It is important to understand what educators mean when they use the word standards. Standards are the end goals for students. They are a list of skills and facts students need to acquire throughout the course of the school year.

The Common Core provides an expected destination, and schools and teachers are free to chart their own course to that destination. This is the important distinction between standards and curriculum. If you imagine standards as a destination, the curriculum is the map to get there. A curriculum outlines the sequence of topics that teachers will cover on their way to the final goal of the standards, building from simpler tasks to more difficult and complex ones.

For example, one of the Common Core math standards for eighth grade expects that at the end of that grade, a student should be able to:

“Construct a function to model a linear relationship between two quantities. Determine the rate of change and initial value of the function from a description of a relationship or from two (x, y) values, including reading these from a table or from a graph. Interpret the rate of change and initial value of a linear function in terms of the situation it models, and in terms of its graph or a table of values.”

In this example, teachers could have students model the relationship between any two variables (rainfall and wheat growth, age and height, inflation and GDP) and students would simply need to fit an equation to the data. Teachers could similarly build toward this end goal in any way they like, perhaps starting with the Cartesian coordinate plan and moving to reading tables and graphs, or vice versa, or even by an entirely different approach.

In short, the Common Core provides a destination, and schools and teachers are free to chart their own course there.



WHY ARE THE COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS IMPORTANT?

Preparing Students to Be Career and College Ready

The main focus of the Common Core is to increase academic rigor and prepare students for postsecondary career and college opportunities. This is a world in which a very high level of preparation in reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, science, literature, history, and the arts will be an indispensable foundation, and in which comfort with ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job.

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.


The standards were developed to be:

· Aligned with expectations for college and career success

· Clear, so educators and parents know what they need to do to help students learn

· Consistent across all states, so students are not taught to a lower standard just because of where they live

· Based on both content and the application of knowledge through high-order skills

· Built upon strengths and lessons of current state standards and standards of top-performing nations

· Realistic for effective use in the classroom

· Informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society

· Evidence and research-based criteria have been set by states through their national organizations CCSSO and the NGA Center


WHERE DID THE COMMON CORE COME FROM?

Improvement over the failed No Child Left Behind

Prior to the Common Core, each state had its own process for developing, adopting, and implementing standards. As a result, what students were expected to learn could vary widely from state to state.

The No Child Left Behind education law—passed with wide bipartisan support in 2001—required all states that received federal education funding to develop standards and tests in grades 3-8 and once again in high school. With the set goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading by 2014, schools were held accountable for improving the percentage of their students that were proficient as they headed towards that goal (known as Adequate Yearly Progress).

Under No Child Left Behind, if a state needed more students to clear a particular proficiency bar, it had two options. It could either do a better job educating students and let the students clear the bar themselves, or it could take the easy way out and simply lower the bar. Unfortunately, many states decided to take the latter option, redefining what it meant to be “proficient” and dumbing down their standards so more students could pass.

In response to this failing, a group of enterprising governors, including Democrats and Republicans, joined together through the National Governors Association to develop a common set of standards that all states could agree to join. They worked with a variety of experts in the field of education to draft and review the standards before opening them up for public comment and finalizing them. As a result, the Common Core was born.



WHAT IS SOUTHWESTERN ADVANTAGE’S CONNECTION TO THE COMMON CORE?

Dedication to Excellence in 21st Century Learning

Southwestern Advantage understands the need for providing best-in-class educational materials that parents and students can rely on for an expert advantage in achieving these rigorous new learning expectations. We are committed to ensuring that students are successfully prepared for college and careers in a globally competitive world. All SkWids and Advantage content is correlated to the new Common Core Math and English Language Arts expectations for Kindergarten through grade 12. These new K–12 standards are built on the most rigorous and effective learning models across the country and around the world. Because of the Southwestern Advantage focus on 21st century learning excellence, students and parents can count on SkWids.com and SWadvantage.com for an ongoing commitment to providing expert and relevant learning content in all subject areas for success in school and in life. 

You can also visit the conversation on our Facebook page to read some parents' opinions about Common Core, and join in by letting us know what your thoughts are. 

5 Ways To Safeguard Your Child From Predators

Recent events in the news reinforce the notion that any child can fall prey to sexual predators. Such a horrifying notion makes most of us cringe and quickly change the subject. But the responsible parent faces this possibility squarely and takes steps to keep children safe. As a parent, here is what you must be aware of:

1. Notice that sexual predators are most often known personally by their victims. They are not “strangers.” Most predators do not snatch children off street corners. Most predators get to know their victims very well. So don’t teach your children to distrust strangers. Teach your children to distrust anyone who acts strangely.

2. Predators often are counted as family friends and are trusted members of the community. This is not an accident. Predators carefully craft their image so that adults admire and trust them. Pay attention if an adult friend seems too friendly and takes too much interest in your child.

3. Predators act like children to cover up their motives. Your child should hang out with kids his own age, not with an adult. An adult who wants to take your child out to the movies, have him over for the night, and take him to ball games – as if the two of them were best friends of the same age – is acting oddly. Think twice before you agree to something that seems on the surface like a friendly gesture but might really be a set-up for a dangerous situation.

4. Predators prey on your child’s innocence and inexperience, so help your child to be less vulnerable. Make sure he knows how to speak up and make a scene if he needs to. We want our kids to be polite with adults but there is a time when politeness doesn’t work. Help your child to know when those times are and support him when he stands up for himself. Talk about how to handle dangerous situations.

5. Predators look for vulnerable parents, so be aware. Predators look for families that are under stress and parents who might welcome a little help in raising a child. Predators may offer a child of financially-strapped parents goodies that mom and dad can’t afford. Don’t fall for this.

Finally, if you think something bad has happened between your child and an adult, tell the police. You owe it to your child and you owe it to every other child this person knows. Too many times situations continue even though parents have some suspicions. They don’t want to make trouble. They don’t want to ruin a friendship or relationship. They don't want to make a mistake.

The real risk you run is the risk to your child. Speak up if you think you should.

Dr. Patricia Anderson is a nationally acclaimed educational psychologist and the author of “Parenting: A Field Guide.” Dr. Anderson is on the Early Childhood faculty at Walden University and she is a Contributing Editor for Southwestern Parents. Learn more about Dr. Anderson at http://www.patricianananderson.com/

There Is Good In Every Situation

What value have you been placing on negative thoughts? What great thing has ever been accomplished by someone who believed it couldn't be done? How much mental energy do you waste on anger, resentment, or envy? What value will these thoughts ever add to your own life or the life of another? 



We are creatures of emotion. Learning to control our emotions is a life-long practice. Negative thoughts will always come to mind. When we choose to allow those negative thoughts to remain in our minds, and to influence our words and actions, we selfishly turn our focus toward ourselves instead of toward the betterment of others. 

What is gained by letting someone or something get you down? Is the satisfaction of harboring dark emotions worth the happiness and meaning that it robs from your life? 

We cannot control what life brings our way, but we can control how we respond. We can always control our actions and attitude. Negatives will always be easy to find, but doing so will accomplish nothing. There is good in every situation. Many times it takes looking hard in order to find it, but it can always be found. 

When we give up our negativity and our desire to control more than our own attitudes and actions, we will find fulfillment and meaning. We will become acquainted once again with our better selves.