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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Daniel Coyle
They wanted to know about each student so they could customize their communications to fit the larger patterns in a student's life.
“The way I look at it, everybody's life is a bowl of whipped cream and shit, and my job is to even things out,” he said. “If a kid's got a lot of shit in his life, I'm going to stir in some whipped cream. If a kid's life is pure whipped cream, then I'm going to stir in some shit.”
The directions weren't dictatorial in tone (usually) but were delivered in a way that sounded clinical and urgent, as if they were being emitted by a particularly compelling GPS unit navigating through a maze of city streets: turn left, turn right, go straight, arrival complete.
What seemed like patient repetition from the outside was actually, on closer examination, a series of subtle variations, each one a distinct firing, each one creating a worthwhile combination of errors and fixes that grew myelin.
“One of the big things I've learned over the years is to push,” Septien said. “The second they get to a new spot, even if they're still groping a little bit, I push them to the next level.” “Push the buttons, push the buttons, push the buttons, and see what you can do,” Lansdorp said. “A mind is such a hands-on kind of thing. It's fantastic!”
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. —Thomas Carruthers
My greatest challenge is not teaching Tom Brady but some guy who can't do it at all, and getting them to a point where they can. Now that is coaching.”
“There's something there that's real. You get your hands on it, and you can make somebody better than they were. That's one hell of a feeling.”
Phonics is about building reliable circuits, paying attention to errors, and fixing them. It's about chunking: breaking down a skill into its component parts, and practicing and repeating each action involved in that skill.
Kaizen is the process of finding and improving small problems. Each employee, from the janitor on up, has authority to halt the production line if they spot a problem.
sat on a bench near the New York Botanical Garden and chatted with every woman who sat down. In one month he spoke with 130 women. “Thirty walked away immediately,” he said. “I talked with the other hundred, for the first time in my life, no matter how anxious I was. Nobody vomited and ran away. Nobody called the cops.”
“The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you to feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.”
They can't unbuild the circuit (remember, myelin only wraps; it doesn't unwrap), so the best way to gain the new skill is to establish and deep-practice a new circuit that connects the traumatic stimulus to normal, everyday events.
The myelin model also highlights the importance of seeking new challenges.
pay attention to what your children are fascinated by, and praise them for their effort.
special fifty-minute session that described how the brain grows when it's challenged.
Each wrap of myelin is a unique tracing of some past event. Perhaps that wrap was caused by a coach's pointer; perhaps that one by a parent's encouraging glance; perhaps that one by hearing a song they loved. In the whorls of myelin resides a person's secret history, the flow of interactions and influences that make up a life, the Christmas lights that, for some reason, lit up.
