Anecdote to set up the big moment: Okay, I’m going to go ahead and date myself here. (I’m bald, so there’s really no hiding my age, anyway, especially in the summer, but I digress.) Let me educate you on the...

According to report put out by the ACT, a college testing agency, the national average in the United States for college freshman retention rate in 65.7%.  That means that roughly one third of college freshman in American colleges will not...

The concept of flow might be the most single important element of style since cavemen picked up the chisel. I generally advise that your reader is like a dim-witted five year-old with a short attention span and little interest in...

“If a student is unmotivated, you might as well not even teach them, because dead cats aren’t good learners.” -Probably Mark Twain Diagnosing a student’s motivation can be difficult, and yet any teacher will tell you without an understanding of...

I often see a shortcoming in the instruction involved in integrating evidence in analytical essay in high school teaching. There is this notion that you have to have a complete sentence followed by a colon to introduce text. This understanding...

At a fundamental level, it’s really simple. Your topic sentence, or first sentence of every body paragraph, should serve three basic roles: Explain concisely and clearly everything that happens in the paragraph that follows. On some level it is an...

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, who knows when the college board will resume testing. They’ve cancelled SAT tests for the spring, and the fall is anyone’s guess. But one thing is certain: they will eventually. While it may...

I’ve never had so much time, or so little. Social distancing has eliminated a lot of typical time draws: commuting, dropping kids off at school, running errands, shopping. It would seem a good time for mental accounting, and yet the...

Helpful Tip: While I’ve experimented with Kaplan, College Board, Princeton Review, etc, the guidebook I’ve settled on is the Peterson’s. It has a diagnostic test that divides up questions by type and then provides the content and sample questions that...

Helpful Tip: For top performance on a three hour test, sleep during the several days to a week beforehand is critical for top scores. The nights preceding the night before the test are, in fact, just as important to cognitive...