Latest / Math Therapy / 3 essential study skills to make exams less stressful for everyone w/ Deena Kara Shaffer

Transcript

3 essential study skills to make exams less stressful for everyone w/ Deena Kara Shaffer · Math Therapy

• 0:00
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: when you reread and reread and reread, that's not studying.
• 0:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When you review, not studying.
• 0:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: flip through your notes, not studying.
• 0:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When you review your teacher's slide decks, not studying.
• 0:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Students aren't sleeping enough, Students are lonely.
• 0:13
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They're not connecting in social ways We want students to have more time to take care of themselves and to do the things that they wanna do, but their so-called strategies are often inefficient because they are not taught them.
• 0:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hello.
• 0:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hi, it's me, Vanessa, and I am here to say welcome to another episode of Math Therapy.
• 0:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, let's be real.
• 0:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's June, which for most of us, aside from the ones who are done already, I'm looking at you, Texas, we are in the thick of exam season.
• 0:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, it's happening right now, and that's why I decided I needed to have a conversation with someone who is an expert learning strategist, whose literal life mission it is to make sure that every single human on the planet understands what it means to prioritize, to organize, to actually learn anything in a way that leads to meaningful retention.
• 1:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because the thing is, anxiety around exams and around math, it's never just about content.
• 1:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's often about feeling too overwhelmed to even see the content for what it actually is, and today's guest, Dr.
• 1:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Deena Shaffer, is going to completely change the way you look at learning.
• 1:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Deena is a keynote speaker, author, mentor, training facilitator, and the founder of Awakened Learning.
• 1:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: She has spent over twenty years promoting more equity and justice in learning and enabling the success of more than five thousand students, educators, and business leaders through learning strategies.
• 1:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're an educator like me, I know that you know that part of the reason students are so anxious in math and in school is because no one has taught them how to learn.
• 1:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: Isn't that crazy?
• 1:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: They go into this building to learn all of this content, English, science, math, whatever, but no one teaches them how to learn it.
• 1:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're just expected to know the, like, scientifically backed best practice for taking notes, retaining information, solving problems, getting unstuck.
• 2:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I always say that learning to think, learning to study, learning to engage, and learning to learn should be taught the same explicit way we teach content.
• 2:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: These are skills that we need to learn.
• 2:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Learning is a skill, just like factoring.
• 2:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: We need to teach it.
• 2:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: But because we don't, I have Deena here today to finally shed light on, number one, the one thing we all get wrong about to-do lists.
• 2:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Number two, the best and worst ways to study for a math exam and any exam.
• 2:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: Number three, how we can use AI ethically, not to do our work for us but as a true study tool tailored for each of our unique learning needs.
• 2:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're gonna wanna take notes because this episode is that good, and you're going to want to share it with every student and educator you know who's in the midst of exams right now.
• 2:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: This episode is the one that is going to move the dial immediately.
• 3:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: So let's get into it.
• 3:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Deena, hi.
• 3:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Vanessa.
• 3:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: There's so many reasons I wanted to talk to you today.
• 3:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Recently, I released an episode of the podcast where I essentially had, I was on the verge of a meltdown, you know?
• 3:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was, like, talking myself through it, and at the same time, you know how, like, sometimes the algorithm, like, does exactly what you need it to do?
• 3:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: the same time, like, you popped up on my feed, and there was a quote.
• 3:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think you had done this on breakfast television, and I believe the quote said something like,"Having a to-do list does not mean getting stuff done," or something.
• 3:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: What was it?
• 3:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: C-correct.
• 3:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's insufficient to getting work done.
• 3:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The to-do list does not equal the work getting done.
• 3:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: That, okay, well, that blew my mind, because for the past three weeks, I have, no joke, been obsessed over finding the perfect to-do list that will allow me to feel organized, because I think, I think if I have the right to-do list, I'll get shit done, and I'll feel organized.
• 4:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: So yeah, we're, we're here because I need this therapy from you but also because have realized that this whole being organized, prioritization, all the stuff we're gonna talk about, is a key reason why so many kids struggle in math, and we never talk about it.
• 4:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: We focus on the math, and we don't focus on these skills.
• 4:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: So hello, welcome to the podcast.
• 4:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: You have a lot of work to do here today with me.
• 4:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Hi, I'm so excited, and obviously this is like a three-hour long form multi-session.
• 4:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like there's so much I wanna respond to.
• 4:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I love it.
• 4:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: with a question, because that's how podcasts should work.
• 4:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Um, question is, why don't you tell us a bit about what you do, because I actually think it's so cool, but I want you to say it in your words.
• 4:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what is your thing?
• 4:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yes.
• 4:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Great.
• 4:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Thank you.
• 4:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm a learning strategist, I help any learner of any age, of any learning profile, of any discipline, subject, program learn how to learn.
• 5:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I help them learn with less suffering.
• 5:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I help them learn in a way that feels like relief and sometimes even joy.
• 5:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So we have, in the agency I run, Awaken Learning, we have math strategists.
• 5:18
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So we combine math tutoring with executive function, social-emotional education, psychoeducation, where you won't even need us for very long.
• 5:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We're gonna teach you how to move through the next math quiz, math homework, math presentation, math data collection and analysis.
• 5:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: I would like you to walk me through what a math tutoring combined with executive function socio-emotional learning hour looks like versus a just one hour of tutoring math.
• 5:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what, what are you doing with that student?
• 5:54
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So what we're trying to do at the same time, of course, this learner is bringing in, I've got math homework, I've got a math test." But what we're also trying to go is,"Well, here are best practices around studying, and what did you get on that last exam?
• 6:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How are we gonna integrate feedback?
• 6:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you even, um, integrate feedback when it's difficult?
• 6:13
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Oh, you've got a math project with other people, but you hate working with other people.
• 6:16
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You just do the, like, divide and conquer group work method, which isn't really a method." What we do is we bring in this layer of you can carry forward these strategies around really solid study practices, test-taking practices.
• 6:32
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if it's multiple choice?
• 6:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if it is short answer?
• 6:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if you have to present about it?
• 6:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if you have to read something in math, like a word problem, but your eyeballs are darting everywhere and you feel overwhelmed?
• 6:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 6:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, this is so fascinating and so timely because been noticing, you know, exams are coming up, so we're tutoring a lot of students.
• 6:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Would say there's a nice little marriage here between what I see in my tutoring
• 6:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And the b-- a big similarity is idea of we use these words, right?
• 7:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: We use these words like show your thinking, show your work, study, learn, and, uh, take notes.
• 7:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is a really I found.
• 7:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Mm.
• 7:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Notes.
• 7:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Students will literally be like,"Okay, yeah, I'm supposed to take notes," but no one has shown them how to take notes.
• 7:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: No one has shown them how to study.
• 7:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: So like, to your point, they could be doing this thing they call studying, studying means I open the book and I read the problem 10 times in a row.
• 7:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: I look at the solution, I memorize how to do it.
• 7:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: So they are studying, but they're not studying in an effective way.
• 7:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: So why do we not teach this in school?
• 7:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yes.
• 7:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I mean, my life is dedicated to that.
• 7:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I don't really know the answer.
• 7:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I can tell you this: it is not taught in teacher education, so we recycle ideas about what studying is there are academics who are studying learning science that doesn't translate.
• 7:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It doesn't get rippled down.
• 7:54
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I don't really know how curricular changes come to be, except where does funding come from?
• 8:00
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Who gets to influence policy?
• 8:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But I'm so impatient for that to happen, and it always feels so political about what happens to be on trend, and then there's always this pendular swing, and then everyone gets mad at that particular way of doing things.
• 8:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And I just think, listen, this is an equity and student mental health and academic performance piece.
• 8:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You would solve, like a multi-solving co-benefit approach would be if you taught directly the skills of how to learn.
• 8:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Because when you reread and reread and reread, that's not studying.
• 8:35
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When you review, not studying.
• 8:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When you flip through your notes, not studying.
• 8:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When you review your teacher's slide decks, not studying.
• 8:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Not studying.
• 8:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And if we add to this, so this is like let's bring in more of the learning strategy piece or the holistic learning strategy piece, students aren't sleeping enough, right?
• 8:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So we want, we wanna buy students more time.
• 8:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Students are lonely.
• 8:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They're not connecting in social ways and in community ways.
• 8:59
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We want students to have more time to take care of themselves and to do the things that they wanna do, but their so-called strategies are often inefficient because they are not taught them.
• 9:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Do you know what studying is?
• 9:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: I like, like...
• 9:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: don't even know what to say right now because I'm like,"Oh my God, all of those things you listed, go through the slide deck, review your note." Those are the things I was taught to do when you are engaging in the act of studying.
• 9:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, what is studying?
• 9:28
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is studying?
• 9:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Tell me.
• 9:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: are only two things that count as studying:
• 9:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: my God.
• 9:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: What?
• 9:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Practice questions and practicing them over time.
• 9:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: If you go to a test or exam, are you asked to rewrite notes?
• 9:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: No.
• 9:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: are asked to solve problems.
• 9:47
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The only thing you need to do to up your confidence and your marks on your next quiz, test, or exam is practice questions.
• 9:57
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Here's the other funny thing students do.
• 9:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So they'll get maybe a mock exam to prepare for, maybe it's like final exam season.
• 10:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 10:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: they'll give, be given a package by your beautiful folks, or they'll AI it.
• 10:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: There's wonderful ways, right?
• 10:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We can use NotebookLM, we can use, um, Wolfram Alpha, we can use lots of different AI tools.
• 10:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Beautiful, beautiful tools.
• 10:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: we're gonna have to go back but
• 10:17
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I obsessed with these ethical AI tools in a massive way.
• 10:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So you can get a practice test made for you,
• 10:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 10:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: For my mock exam.
• 10:32
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I have to prep- I have to study first." No.
• 10:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Take the practice test first.
• 10:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: No notes- No phone, just do the practice test.
• 10:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And it will be a struggle, and it will be frustrating, great.
• 10:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's a diagnostic that will tell you exactly what you need to ask questions about, go back and reteach yourself, do extra practice questions with.
• 10:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my-- Well, and I imagine, like this is the thing, is so many students in my practice think that the problem is that they are not good at math,
• 11:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yes.
• 11:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: in math.
• 11:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not a math person." But I'm looking at this and being like,"No, no, no, no, no.
• 11:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is not a skill issue
• 11:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 11:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: or not learning
• 11:18
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 11:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: you ca-
• 11:20
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Right, and
• 11:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: trying to read the textbook.
• 11:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Or, oh my God, the thing that drives me the most nuts, they'll be like,"Oh yeah, I did all the practice questions." And I'll be like,"Okay, did you check the answers?" And they'll be like,"Well, no." And I'm like,"Oh my God!" so you could just be practicing them all the wrong way though, And also now you feel, the student feels they
• 11:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 11:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: trying.
• 11:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: So it's not even like they're not trying.
• 11:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 11:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: been fucking studying.
• 11:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: They spent hours doing homework, da, da, da, da, da.
• 11:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: But they were doing it in a way that did not allow them to actually learn for real the information,
• 11:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah,
• 11:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: like shit.
• 11:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And maybe in a textbook there are a few questions that they can practice from, and they do them, but there was one that was really difficult for them.
• 12:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But they did it, and they're like,"Okay, well, I guess I learned it'cause I did that one practice question." No, no, no, no, no.
• 12:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Take a picture of that practice question, run it through NotebookLM, say,"Give me five more variations of this." And so then we get to zero in on what is difficult instead of just like,"Oh, linear, I did the five practice questions.
• 12:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I am done." You get to personalize your own skill building that will change what, how you perform o- on the next quiz, test, or exam.
• 12:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: What does that look like?
• 12:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I have a-- someone has a math test, they have a math exam.
• 12:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: What does distributed practice for that assessment look like?
• 12:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The first thing I wanna say as a rough guide, and obviously it depends if you're in grade six or it depends if you're in third year.
• 12:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: a general rule, if it's a quiz, I want students studying one week in advance.
• 12:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: If it's a test, I want them studying two weeks in advance, or if it's an exam, three weeks.
• 12:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Distributed practice then says,"Don't study every day.
• 12:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Study every other day.
• 12:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Study twenty-five minutes or ten questions." You can do it by amount of time, or you can do it by number of questions, but enumerate it somehow.
• 13:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like have a constraint so that instead of studying, which if we go back to to-do lists, is one of the worst things you can write on a list'cause how do you know what you're doing when you're studying and how do you know when it's over?
• 13:17
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Studying isn't a lot of fun, and who wouldn't want to avoid a generic word like studying?
• 13:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But if you say,"ten practice questions," great.
• 13:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm really clear.
• 13:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Uh, it's defined.
• 13:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: There's a beginning and an end.
• 13:29
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I would want ten questions every other day for depending upon if it's a quiz, test, or exam.
• 13:35
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We like the idea of touching the material at least four times, like at a bare minimum because of what we understand about forgetting.
• 13:43
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So you and I will have this conversation.
• 13:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We might talk about some strategies around humane prioritization or non-toxic productivity.
• 13:50
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We might talk about some different methods that really kick to-do lists butt.
• 13:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But if we don't talk again or if we don't revisit it by the end of the conversation or by tomorrow, like half of that is lost.
• 14:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So it's the same with a student.
• 14:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They might understand everything in a math class.
• 14:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: am getting it.
• 14:08
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I am locked in.
• 14:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I really understand what the teacher is getting at today, then I look at the material a week from now, two weeks from now, I'm like,"I could not tell you what any of this means." Can salvage that.
• 14:20
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We can protect that if we practice a little bit tomorrow, and then we practice two days later, and then we practice a few days later.
• 14:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So we really wanna keep touching the material, but we never have to do it for very long, like little increments over time.
• 14:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: What are your thoughts on homework?
• 14:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, do you think, like, kids need to be doing homework in order to be touching the material?
• 14:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's such a beautiful question, and, and for some reason, I just don't-- it doesn't land as very provocative to me.
• 14:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Homework feels like an active practice.
• 14:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The mistake sometimes with homework is there's just, like, a sheet of questions, like uninspiring, that would just suck the joy out of anybody.
• 15:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So what we practice at our home is can you do a couple?
• 15:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can you do one from each column?
• 15:11
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can you do three from each column?
• 15:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You have a student who has first semester high school math and then doesn't have math for an entire year, including a summer, uh, we could call it homework.
• 15:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's just humane to, to practice the material again in small doses.
• 15:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I am not about homework that is purposeless.
• 15:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: do think homework is humane, but not when it just goes on endlessly, and not when it's the same question over and over and over again.
• 15:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I like things like quizzes.
• 15:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I really love low-stakes quizzes.
• 15:51
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I think they are a beautiful way to keep material at the forefront of a student's mind and heart.
• 15:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: So the way we're talking about this too, like it sounds...
• 16:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 16:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, yeah, and this reminds me, I wanna just go back to your question about AI,'cause I actually don't know about these things that you're talking about that sound very cool.
• 16:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: I know you're gonna
• 16:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: not
• 16:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: blow my mind in two seconds.
• 16:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: excited.
• 16:11
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm so excited
• 16:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, no, I love that.
• 16:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's what I was gonna say too.
• 16:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: But the, the reason I bring everything up in this moment is because I'm like, this sounds like unless you had a parent at home or an older sibling who can help you, this sounds very self-guided.
• 16:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, e- especially being like,"Oh, I haven't had math in a semester.
• 16:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not gonna have it until next September." You're kind of like putting it on the student to be like,"I am going to give myself self-guided practice for the next eight months," right?
• 16:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, that sounds not like somebody is...
• 16:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm not saying they can't, but that sounds like a lot for like a young person, right?
• 16:49
  Vanessa Vakharia: This could happen in grade nine, right?
• 16:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're 13 years old.
• 16:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, is it realistic to expect a 13-year-old to do that for themselves or to be able to, to even know how?
• 16:57
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Not at all.
• 16:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And so that's why I go out and teach teachers all the time.
• 17:00
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I be-- It's not in teacher education, and it's way too onerous.
• 17:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How would a student even know?
• 17:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So that's why I think about learning strategies as an equity issue.
• 17:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It is around justice.
• 17:11
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: If a student happens to have a parent who's an educator who knows about learning strategies, if a student happens to have had a teacher or mentor who, who knows this work, I hate luck.
• 17:24
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Uh, luck is so unreliable.
• 17:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I want all students to get learning strategies and, and my mission is to get it at scale.
• 17:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I want families, I want students to, but I also want teachers to have what is not yet, um, in teacher education.
• 17:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So in the meantime, that's why I run a learning strategies agency.
• 17:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's like I was impatient.
• 17:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I'm a, I'm a prof also at, Toronto Metropolitan University.
• 17:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I teach 250 students every semester learning how to learn, I don't want it to be institution specific.
• 17:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I wanna reach every student and students much sooner than they get to my class or when they get to being on probation or when they have to withdraw because they have failed a course.
• 18:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I wanna get in there way sooner.
• 18:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So yes, I think it is too much for a student to do on their own.
• 18:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: But like, let's say right now, I mean, we have exams are coming up for us in Ontario.
• 18:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: If a student was like,"Okay, yeah, I wanna, I wanna do some stuff.
• 18:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I wanna start this, I wanna start three weeks in advance,"'cause actually truly most of our students don't, don't start that early, right?
• 18:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: They have, four to eight exams, and they are just like triaging basically.
• 18:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: But imagine they're like,"You know what?
• 18:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's May.
• 18:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is a great opportunity to just get started.
• 18:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's the first thing I can do?" Like, I've got-- most of them actually don't even have textbooks anymore, but they've got a bunch of worksheets.
• 18:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: They've got old tests.
• 18:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like what is the first thing they can do?
• 18:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: How can they make themselves a three-week program?
• 18:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like what, what would you suggest?
• 18:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: are two wonderful starting places.
• 18:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: of who I support, there are many students with ADHD, there are many students with autism, there are many students who have, um, anxiety, uh, OCD, uh, eating disorder.
• 19:00
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, we, we work with any student, particularly students who are having a tougher time.
• 19:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So here's what I imagine.
• 19:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That student might also have missed a class.
• 19:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That student might have been sick, they might have been in an athletic, uh, commitment.
• 19:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I want them to use NotebookLM and put in from Google Classroom or whatever the LMS, the Learning Management System that their teacher uses, any missed classes or classes that they're like,"I was there, but I wasn't really there."
• 19:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 19:32
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And if you put in those lectures, those slide decks, those lesson notes, even if you were like,"I loved how Crash Course taught that.
• 19:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I loved how at the, at, at your tutoring studio, somebody gave me a, a worksheet and supported me." Put all of that in NotebookLM, which protects your IP.
• 19:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, it's a very, very beautiful self-contained...
• 19:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: What is NotebookLM?
• 19:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like let's, yeah
• 19:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: is a free Google product And you don't have to sign up.
• 19:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: If you are under 13, get your parents to sign you onto it.
• 20:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And instead of scraping from garbage Google, it just is the container that you put in the material, and then you can do a bunch of stuff with.
• 20:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You can ask for practice questions.
• 20:16
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Give me five multiple-choice questions.
• 20:18
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Make me flashcards.
• 20:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Make me an infographic.
• 20:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But there is, there are two, from a neuroinclusive standpoint, there are two unbelievable features.
• 20:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: One is called an audio overview.
• 20:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So you put the material in, and you click on audio overview, and in about five minutes, it will make you an under 20-minute podcast of two pe- two people with very real-sounding voices, like you
• 20:44
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, David,
• 20:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: with--
• 20:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: you hate this?
• 20:47
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It is exceptional, but I'll explain why.
• 20:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So even if Dave isn't on board, I will get David on board, okay?
• 20:51
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Here's why imagine you have a student who for, whether disability reasons or not, loves reassurance.
• 21:00
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They wanna ask 15 questions.
• 21:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They wanna ask 50 questions.
• 21:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can I check this?
• 21:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can I check this?
• 21:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We don't want any student to feel shame.
• 21:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You and I are in the work of dissolving shame for learners.
• 21:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 21:11
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But what that single student needs might be in tension with class community and what the teacher is able to really provide if there are 30 students in that class who have much different needs.
• 21:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You make that audio overview podcast of whatever, this particular calculus unit, not only will it create this broad strokes, kind of filling in the gaps, beautiful content based on what you've given it, you can interrupt the podcast in real time and say,"I don't understand that metaphor.
• 21:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can you give me a different example?" You can ask the podcast your 15 or 50 questions, and it will recalibrate, recalibrate, recalibrate.
• 21:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So now there's no shame or self-consciousness for the student who needs what they need.
• 21:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So here's why it's so beautiful.
• 21:54
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: In learning strategies land, which I really understand is so boring, but it's not boring There's something called an advance organizer.
• 22:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Advance organizer, again, boring words, but what we need is a filing cabinet new information to come.
• 22:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: need to have prior knowledge for new knowledge, right?
• 22:13
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You can't just go to grade 12 calc because you've done all of the stuff up, that leads up to it.
• 22:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But what if I had mono?
• 22:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if there was a loss in my family?
• 22:23
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What if, what if, what if, what if, and I
• 22:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: What if whatever?
• 22:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah
• 22:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How am I, what am I, how am I, how do I study if I missed classes?
• 22:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Use NotebookLM for the classes you missed to fill in the information so it begins to make sense.
• 22:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We can combine
• 22:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: How?
• 22:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: you get the slide deck of whatever you missed.
• 22:43
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Teachers
• 22:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh,
• 22:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Classroom, like,
• 22:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: okay.
• 22:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Okay, I'll get the notes from a peer.
• 22:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: If you're like,"This doesn't make sense to me," look up a crash course.
• 22:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What's the corresponding, or Khan Academy, what's the corresponding lesson that I kind of get?
• 22:57
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: that all in there.
• 22:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You can put websites, documents, PDFs, pictures.
• 23:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Take a picture of a pal's note if they let you.
• 23:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Put that all into NotebookLM.
• 23:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: for an audio overview, and now you have less than 20 minutes.
• 23:11
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Take that podcast for a walk.
• 23:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Now we're incorporating movement and wellbeing.
• 23:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am losing my-- I'm-- Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 23:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, I'm freak- out because already I'm like, how am I doing?
• 23:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: What am I doing?
• 23:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I have a question.
• 23:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 23:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: So first of all, I love this so much.
• 23:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love this because I love the accessibility standpoint, number one.
• 23:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I, I'm totally...
• 23:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, if I'm listening to a nonfiction anything, it has to be in my ears.
• 23:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: I am not reading it.
• 23:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: It will not go into my eyeballs, into my brain.
• 23:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: So, like, I love that.
• 23:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: For NotebookLM, personal, personal question, do you have to input stuff, like, so it won't scrub the internet?
• 23:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's, it's making it...
• 23:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, so it's making it...
• 23:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: your, what you give it
• 23:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: But how is it filling in gaps?
• 23:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what if you have notes?
• 23:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, imagine I had notes from a class and I was, like, I took some notes, but I, like, kinda, like, got it, like, mid.
• 24:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, it was like the notes were really a six out of ten on what the whole lesson was.
• 24:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: How can it fill stuff in?
• 24:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's just-- So,
• 24:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh
• 24:08
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: and the great thing is it's not gonna be inaccurate.
• 24:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So if you're like,"I'm doing six out of ten notes," great.
• 24:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What's the textbook it's based on?
• 24:16
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What's the material it's based on?
• 24:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay
• 24:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: external sites would you include?
• 24:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: then you know that it's not gonna be hallucinatory.
• 24:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's not gonna take you off track.
• 24:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's the beauty.
• 24:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: For me, that's not the risk.
• 24:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's like the opportunity of it.
• 24:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But it gets even better.
• 24:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It
• 24:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Why are you not sponsored by them?
• 24:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I know.
• 24:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But imagine that you listen to that podcast, and you're like,"Ugh, I still need a little bit of support." You can ask for it to create a video overview, and that takes about 15 minutes for it to create, it will create for you a Canva-style voiceover presentation the material with diagrams, with beautiful background.
• 25:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So if that wasn't provided, if you happened to have a supply teacher that day, and it was like mer, mer, you can have an uplifting, visually appealing and accessible walkthrough of material you missed or didn't quite grasp.
• 25:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: The reason we are talking about AI, though, is because of what you said when you were like, studying, really studying comprises of two things.
• 25:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: One of them is practice, and one of them is practice over time, basically.
• 25:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: The g-- Like, you know what
• 25:33
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah
• 25:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: so we're, AI can give us more ways to practice because often I will hear from students,"Well, I did all my homework, so I have nothing left to practice.
• 25:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I redid the test questions.
• 25:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: I have nothing left to practice." And like, you know what I mean?
• 25:46
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is the best way for them to be able to feed something in and be like,"Give me more questions like this.
• 25:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually struggled with this question.
• 25:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: Make me more like this." Right?
• 25:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: So that's actually great.
• 25:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Here's what I wanted to, to, to just focus on for a second.
• 26:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: This is a podcast about a lot of things, but it's supposed to be a podcast about math trauma and math anxiety.
• 26:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: So I wanna know, in your experience, how many students, I mean, or learners of any age do you see come to you with this idea that they are not smart, then realize that it is simply a learning strategy issue that can be rectified, and then all of a sudden they're like,"Holy shit, I am capable of learning this thing I never thought"?
• 26:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Many slash most.
• 26:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Many of the students who we work with have absolutely been traumatized school.
• 26:35
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Some in school, but by school.
• 26:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: School has absolutely beaten me down.
• 26:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: All of my gifts that I thought I had, I don't even know if I have gifts.
• 26:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Uh, I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that, I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that.
• 26:47
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, the list goes on.
• 26:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And so we're in the work, yes, of like, here's the toolbox, here's the toolbox, here's the toolbox, here are new systems, here are new approaches.
• 26:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But really it's like, how can we heal some of that?
• 26:59
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How can we mend that so that you can get on your way to doing whatever you wanna do?
• 27:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We want students to be fully alive in their creativity and ambition, and we just wanna be a stepping stone on their way.
• 27:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And, and what we also know is that all of these are professional skills.
• 27:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We hear from, um, employers all the time about new grads who are struggling with overwhelm.
• 27:20
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Struggling, right?
• 27:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And, and are showing up and being like,"What do you mean I gotta be in a workplace five days a week?
• 27:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What, what do you mean that the deadlines are firm?" We like front-loading and directly instructing learning skills it changes the self-conception of a student.
• 27:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: This is what's possible for me.
• 27:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: These actually are gifts.
• 27:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I can do this.
• 27:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We love that
• 27:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: how can a teacher know if they're working with a student who's struggling in math?
• 27:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do they know if it is a math issue or a learning issue?
• 27:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, how do they know if it's they're not understanding the material or they don't have the learning strategies to understand the material?
• 27:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's such an interesting question.
• 27:59
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: On the one hand, I'm tempted to say, like, I, I don't even-- does it, does it matter at some point?
• 28:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 28:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Everyone in every subject to be integrating learning strategies.
• 28:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We want, whether you're an English teacher, a journalism teacher, or a science teacher, math teacher, to be sharing how to study, to take a te- how do you, how do you write, like, multiple choice.
• 28:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Multiple choice is taught in such terrible ways.
• 28:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: In a way, functional impact doesn't matter.
• 28:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The student is, like, showing you.
• 28:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They're evidencing,"I'm really struggling." On the other hand, how do you solve for that is that's really helpful where, uh, teacher collaboration comes in.
• 28:33
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They have-- If, if a student is really struggling, and they have, and the teacher has capacity, it's a conversation with the history teacher, with the social studies teacher, with the geography teacher:"How's this student showing up in your class?
• 28:43
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Is the, is the student just saying, like,'I'm bored,' or,'I'm unmotivated in this class,' but they're not here?
• 28:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Great.
• 28:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What helps them feel alive?" It's about watching how that other teacher teaches.
• 28:54
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But I don't say that with any expectation.
• 28:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Teachers are stretched beyond thin.
• 28:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They're holding so much in teaching spaces.
• 29:01
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So, um, what I share all the time in keynotes and trainings is that learning strategies multi-solving.
• 29:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They have the co-benefit of supporting students, but they also alleviate teacher burnout, alleviate student retention challenges.
• 29:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm a big fan of when we can co-benefit.
• 29:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What would help that student across their subject areas?
• 29:24
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What would help the teacher feel less burdened?
• 29:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What would help institutions actually keep more students?
• 29:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: I do really believe that the way AI is being used is teaching students how not to learn, right?
• 29:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, it's like unethical AI is like actually do the opposite of learning.
• 29:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: For any students who are listening, we just interviewed to take on a summer student, and we, because of our commitment to neuroinclusion, we provide the questions, no matter who we're hiring, professional or student, hours in advance.
• 29:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Why?
• 29:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: 'Cause we know that not all people are like,"Okay, I'm-- this is-- I'm gonna respond at this
• 30:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay
• 30:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We explicitly say,"We just want you and your messiness and your heart, but we also wanna honor that there are all ways and modes and paces of thinking." Student comes and is reading like this the most robotic answers.
• 30:18
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They absolutely did not get the job, okay?
• 30:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They absolutely did not get the job.
• 30:23
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And I just want all students to really understand.
• 30:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That they want the skill of being able to think and articulate in situations that matter to them, and an interview is one of those places.
• 30:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They are gonna interview at some point for a job or for a position that they really want, and they wanna be able to have their words with them, their insights with them.
• 30:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And there's interesting learning studies that are coming out right now that are saying you're just shifting the cognitive load.
• 30:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You think that it's making it easier for you, boop, boop, boop, do my homework.
• 30:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But then the work becomes, I have to fact-check, I have to triple, uh, proofread.
• 31:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You're just shifting where the hard thinking work is.
• 31:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It doesn't make it easier.
• 31:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And if it does the outlining for you, if it does the organizing work, then we don't have that skill in us, so we do wanna practice.
• 31:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Of course, there's a time and place.
• 31:23
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's almost ubiquitous now.
• 31:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We have to be careful.
• 31:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And I'll just say this.
• 31:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We know pre-pandemic, pre-AI learning skills were, not my language, deficient.
• 31:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's a study that came out in 2019 that looked at undergraduate students at four universities in Ontario spread out over five campuses, and what they found, learning skills, fundamental numeracy, literacy, how-- time management, how do you write a thesis, how do you find good sources, how do you write summaries?
• 31:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Over 50% of students were either at risk or outright dysfunctional in terms of their ability to learn.
• 32:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, that is so concerning.
• 32:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: and pre-AI
• 32:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: because we, again, we've used the word a lot, but I want to make sure we're defining it.
• 32:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: You were saying they're basically deficient, not your words, in the skills they need to learn.
• 32:14
  Vanessa Vakharia: And learning is what?
• 32:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, if you were gonna define learning, learning is what?
• 32:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I don't love, I don't love it.
• 32:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Learning is experience.
• 32:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: What?
• 32:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: is, is
• 32:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: like when we
• 32:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: new information with what was there before.
• 32:33
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Learning
• 32:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: So it's a whole bunch of things.
• 32:35
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: it's a
• 32:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a whole bunch.
• 32:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: But I, but I do think it's important'cause if we're gonna be like, if we're gonna be like, these studies are coming out saying that students don't have the skills they need to learn, I think we have to be able to argue to students what that even means and why it matters to learn.
• 32:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: What does that even mean, right?
• 32:52
  Vanessa Vakharia: To be like
• 32:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: though is, is that they're deficient in learning skills, in the tools and in the practices of doing the work of school.
• 33:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I
• 33:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah, but that sounds like who cares then?
• 33:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Well, if they're in
• 33:07
  Vanessa Vakharia: That sounds
• 33:08
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: school and they're paying tuition, and if they want to move in the direction of a goal, then it really matters.
• 33:15
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So it's not school as school, but if they wanna do the thing that is in their heart, if they're like,"Oh my goodness, I have such big dreams about this," fill in the blank, XYZ, I wanna become this, and the school series of courses, this program is the pathway to that or is a pathway to that.
• 33:32
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And because I didn't ever encounter how to study or how to prioritize, I f- I'm like failing this course.
• 33:43
  Vanessa Vakharia: If our argument to students is,"You need these skills.
• 33:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: You need to not use AI because it's not teaching you the skills you need to get through school to reach your goal," I feel like a student could be like,"Yeah, but I know how to u-" I, I honestly think really right now especially, you could get through school using non-ethical AI, and you could probably get away with it.
• 34:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: You could pass your courses, you could whatever.
• 34:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: But that's not the thing.
• 34:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: The thing is kinda what you said before of being like,"No, we want you to be able to, like, in an interview, be able to think for yourself.
• 34:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we want..." And so I do think learning has to be positioned, and I really do think this is what you mean.
• 34:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's why I'm like, I really wanna define our terms.
• 34:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, this is the mathematician in me,'cause I'm like, I do really think it's like we don't want students to just have these learning strategies that you teach because they need to get through school.
• 34:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like you said earlier, these are life skills, right?
• 34:32
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, these, these skills are going to help students ultimately not be overwhelmed by the very real things they wanna do that require multiple steps, that require organization, that like all of this stuff
• 34:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'll, I'll just step sideways for a moment.
• 34:47
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And, and part of-- I was doing my PhD in holistic learning strategies, I remember the moment that I was in a research class, and I mean, I can't even believe that I made it this far and this, I'd never had this sensation before, but the professor made me feel like I could generate knowledge, that I was no longer just a recipient of other people's knowledge making, a consumer, that I could make new knowledge.
• 35:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I want other students to be able to do that.
• 35:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's so cool.
• 35:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: so
• 35:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: a cool feeling.
• 35:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: to be, to
• 35:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah
• 35:29
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: uh, something that doesn't exist I could put out into the world or
• 35:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 35:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: is, that is, that is me.
• 35:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And so it is absolutely, like that ship has sailed using AI or not AI.
• 35:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm just interested in helping students use it ultimately to their benefit, like with integrity to their benefit.
• 35:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And when you say I'm sure students could do-- Th- there are public stories of people who have bragged about going through really elite school systems, like,"I didn't do a single word of my own work." It's
• 36:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah.
• 36:01
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: that, that's terrifying.
• 36:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And, and big profiles, and then successful businesses.
• 36:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, o- okay,
• 36:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: But like that's also what happens when we look at, like, this is a whole other convo, but not really.
• 36:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's what happens when we look at education as a means to an end and when, when the entire purpose of education is to get through it for a grade to, like, when that's not the destination, like when the process is not the destination and it's just like fucking get through it however you can to get to some end goal, we actually miss the point of the process, which p- probably is like a full circle moment of like we all kind of-- University isn't just about like learning your content area, it is about learn...
• 36:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: You know what?
• 36:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: I actually remember I had this job second year university in the summer and my, my, um, boss, she was amazing.
• 36:45
  Vanessa Vakharia: Her na- name was Debbie, and she was like, she was like,"I only hire university students." Like, and I was like,"Why?"'Cause like the job didn't require anything I was learning in business school.
• 36:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Do you know what I mean?
• 36:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: And she goes,"I wanna know that the people that are working for me l- know how to learn, like can learn something, are dedicated to learning." I mean, again, this was a long time ago, so I don't think university students are the only students who know how to learn.
• 37:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: But her point was, oh, my assumption is if you're in university, forget what the content is that you're learning, but you're at least interested in learning things and in doing the work to learn something.
• 37:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: And I was like, I think, I think that's kind of the bigger picture here
• 37:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I love what you are articulating.
• 37:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When I think about note-taking, note-taking on the surface, boring, boring, boring.
• 37:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: note-taking isn't just about, uh, like increasing functionality at school.
• 37:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You are gonna be in a meeting where you are gonna be listening to lots of people talking, and you're gonna be like,"I have to pull meaning out of this conversation." So what I'm actually learning when I learn note-taking techniques is how do I discern what's important, the many things that are what's important, when there is a ton of input headed my way?
• 38:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When I talk about studying, it's just around how do I remember and apply for a situation that has a little bit of a pressure squeeze, right?
• 38:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The, the squeeze of time and the squeeze of maybe a metric value that's, okay, this is worth 35% of your mark.
• 38:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: do I articulate what I think, know, feel in a, a circumstance that's been made harder?
• 38:33
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, there's always an underneath worthwhileness.
• 38:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I am not a big proponent, like carte blanche with university is essential for every human.
• 38:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's just
• 38:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yeah
• 38:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: uh, like experiences to learn life skills.
• 38:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: These never go away.
• 38:50
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Being able to manage your time, it's such bullshit language, but being able to be in relationship with time, how do I sequence work when it all feels like it's pressing?
• 38:59
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: These are with all of us all the time.
• 39:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do I harness my focus when everything around me is pulling against it?
• 39:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So this is my life.
• 39:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: This is my love is learning strategies.
• 39:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, but hold on.
• 39:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do we do that?
• 39:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do I harness my focus?
• 39:13
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do I prioritize?
• 39:15
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, can we make this more about me?
• 39:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, we haven't talked about my issues in the half an hour.
• 39:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: I need help.
• 39:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know how to do it.
• 39:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I can help
• 39:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: what would you tell me?
• 39:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: But what do you mean?
• 39:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Can you help me right now?
• 39:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, what would you tell-- I know there's a million overwhelmed teachers that are listening right now.
• 39:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Well, not a million, although let's manifest that.
• 39:31
  Vanessa Vakharia: Being like,"Okay, so like, yes, I feel like I have a million things to do.
• 39:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: I don't know how to prioritize.
• 39:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I've learned a million things." Like, what would you say?
• 39:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The first thing is we let go of the to-do list being the end, and we let go of the search for the perfect tool.
• 39:43
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So really beautiful work if people ever wanted to read Oliver Burkeman, a kind of existential appros- approach to time management is it's all kind of an illusion to control.
• 39:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Stop thinking that your to-do list equals that it's gonna get done.
• 39:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: There's enough research about this, like enough.
• 39:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yeah.
• 39:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: W- what, what am I reading?
• 40:00
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm putting it in my Audible right now
• 40:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: um, is it Meditations for Mortals?
• 40:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Time Management for Mortals?
• 40:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Something like that.
• 40:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's so good.
• 40:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I think it's Meditations for Mortals.
• 40:09
  Vanessa Vakharia: confirmation.
• 40:10
  Vanessa Vakharia: Confirmation meditation for mortals.
• 40:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts.
• 40:16
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Okay,
• 40:16
  Vanessa Vakharia: Buy with one credit.
• 40:18
  Vanessa Vakharia: Next
• 40:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: that's, that's not strategy, that's just framing.
• 40:21
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: The second thing is, just go with me for a second.
• 40:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: There is a very common time management tool called the Eisenhower Matrix or the Dump and Sift or the Urgent and Important, I don't want to throw it out for people.
• 40:37
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's where there's a matrix of what is highest importance and highest urgency, and that we align our work that way.
• 40:45
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: challenge is, if I were to ask you or any other professional or any parent,"Hey, how's it going?" What would their answer be?
• 40:51
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Just like any student,"I'm stressed, I'm busy, I'm
• 40:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Busy, yeah
• 40:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: maybe even,"I'm burnt out." If we look at that matrix, and if we look at iterations, that high importance, high urgency is almost always equated with crisis.
• 41:06
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I have to do what is crisis mode.
• 41:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What is due the soonest?
• 41:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Da-da-da-da, like it's that frenetic energy.
• 41:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We want to work from a place of high importance and low urgency.
• 41:20
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Bring it back to students for one second,'cause it's a really good example.
• 41:23
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You have a student with, uh, who has eight courses, who has a ton of assignments due, and they listen to me on your podcast and be like,"She's full of shit that she wants me to study for an exam three weeks before." I'd be like,"Great, I really wanna get into a loving fight with you." Here's what happens for most students.
• 41:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Because it's not urgent, it's three weeks away, but they have a lab due, they have a paper due, they have a presentation due much sooner, studying gets left till the end of each night, and because it is boring and undefined, it gets pushed to the next day, it gets pushed to the next day, it gets pushed to the next day.
• 41:57
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: What students need to be doing is front loading what is three weeks away in a much smaller, smaller window that is defined and starting with that before what is due tomorrow or the next day.
• 42:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm gonna do twenty-five minutes of studying before any of my other work.
• 42:16
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So if you said to me, Deena, I'm coming out with my fifteenth book, uh, and I'm trying to record another album.
• 42:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's all feeling do-do-do-do-do,'cause I've got the-- I'm running the agency day to day, and I'm putting out the podcast." Great.
• 42:29
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: goal, how do we break it up into smaller increments?
• 42:33
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And it's the first thing so that it can never get triaged to the next day.
• 42:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: you could be the twenty-first person to watch my TEDx where I actually go all through this, but this is the whole point.
• 42:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like what would happen if we worked from a non-adrenaline fueled, like if that wasn't our strategy?
• 42:51
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm getting simultaneously relieved and anxious.
• 42:54
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, I'm like, oh, like I could start these things that I have due in June.
• 42:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: I could just do 25 minutes a day now, and then when I get to June, I'd be like, holy shit
• 43:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm done ahead of time
• 43:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, number three.
• 43:08
  Vanessa Vakharia: What's number three?
• 43:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I want for teachers who are feeling overwhelmed and students who are feeling overwhelmed, if there's perfectionism, if there is procrastination and avoidance, which are enormous conversations, I want them to use a tool that makes the smallest, most imperfect, most incremental initial step.
• 43:35
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Because we don't wanna wait, wait, wait to get the perfect line and the perfect answer to the formula.
• 43:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like, we, we wanna begin small and messy.
• 43:44
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: When we talk about getting stuff done, one is we're trying to get out of urgency, the, like, toxic, relentless urgency.
• 43:50
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Number two is sometimes we don't start things because we don't have the first step.
• 43:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So my big argument about
• 43:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Yes!
• 43:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: is learning strategies makes all work startable, that's that task initiation piece, more doable, so I have some kind of stamina, momentum, motivation, more finishable, so I'm not stuck in procrastination a- and, and perfectionism land, and then more sustainable, so that I didn't just do it all the night before and then I collapse the day after I hand it in.
• 44:18
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's the big pitch.
• 44:19
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So that's how I'm trying to orient getting work done.
• 44:23
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay.
• 44:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: I think we, this was amazing.
• 44:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: We're gonna stop at three steps.
• 44:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: That sounds like a lot of stuff in the steps.
• 44:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay?
• 44:30
  Vanessa Vakharia: Before we wrap up with the two final questions, please can we answer the question that I still have in my brain?
• 44:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: Because look at me carrying the load.
• 44:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: what happens in your course?
• 44:38
  Vanessa Vakharia: What happens in your course?
• 44:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I teach in my course what I teach in my book, Feel Good Learning, what I teach everywhere, everywhere, which is like, how do you manage your time?
• 44:48
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you prioritize?
• 44:50
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you study?
• 44:51
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you read?
• 44:52
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you write?
• 44:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you take tests without panic?
• 44:56
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you work with other people?
• 44:57
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do you manage your stress?
• 44:59
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And I do that in a way that is six two-week experiential layers.
• 45:04
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So I teach all of the strategies, and I have students read all of the interesting things on procrastination, on sort of screen addiction, I-- all of the components that are true to their life.
• 45:17
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: But underneath these experiential layers, for two weeks, they focus on their sleep.
• 45:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Then they add in, they, for two weeks, they integrate physical activity in whatever way they want.
• 45:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Then for two weeks, they focus on community, so they have a sense of belonging.
• 45:30
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We know that that's the number one variable that accounts for students staying in a program and at an institution.
• 45:36
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: They feel a sense of connection.
• 45:38
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Then we add in social media boundaries.
• 45:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We don't need any more information.
• 45:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: We need them to figure out what are their strategies, so it doesn't eclipse their whole life and eat their attention.
• 45:47
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Then we have them do mindfulness in whatever form they want, so they have some kind of stress reduction tools.
• 45:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And then we have them practice rest that is not the same thing as Netflix or sleep.
• 45:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: How do we sign up?
• 46:01
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Well,
• 46:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, can I
• 46:02
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: you're
• 46:02
  Vanessa Vakharia: honestly come?
• 46:03
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: but
• 46:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: No, I'm serious
• 46:05
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So you don't have to be a TMU student.
• 46:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's why I started a company called Awaken Learning,'cause that's literally what I teach.
• 46:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So student, you can pay much less.
• 46:13
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: So for$39 a month, you can come and just join what I call the Learning Strategy Studio, and we offer workshops to this exact point.
• 46:22
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: How do-- like, create your study sanctuary is our, is the topic.
• 46:26
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm teaching tonight a studying masterclass.
• 46:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Like we-- this is just what we're offering.
• 46:31
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Always with wellbeing integrated.
• 46:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I worked in TMU for six years as their learning specialist for students with disabilities.
• 46:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Then for the next six years at TMU, I co-created an intervention called Thriving in Action that spread across Canadian, post-secondary, and international, all integrating what if you taught students how to learn and how to cope so that they don't have to fail a class, so that they don't have to be on probation, or if they are, so they know what to do to move in the direction of what they are hungriest and what they're there to do.
• 47:06
  Vanessa Vakharia: The only thing I wanted to say, just so we're very clear, I actually wanna, wanna know if I'm right.
• 47:11
  Vanessa Vakharia: When you say non-ethical, uh, AI, it sounds to me like you mean AI that is not like you said, scraping bullshit from Google, but non-ethical AI-- or sorry, ethical AI sounds like AI you use with your own inputs.
• 47:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Is that what it means?
• 47:28
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: inputs, and it's not doing the thinking or organizing or first round of copy editing for you.
• 47:34
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That it's not taking over skill development.
• 47:39
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: it enhance it?
• 47:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yes.
• 47:40
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can it coach you?
• 47:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Yes.
• 47:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Can it encourage you to, like, if, if you need somebody to challenge your ideas, have-- Best, best way of using AI, put in your instructor's instructions, their rubric, and be like,"What's the checklist?"'Cause you know what's so great?
• 47:55
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Now I can recreate that for all of my assignments, not just through AI, through my own capacity.
• 48:01
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Sometimes the questions that teachers, educators, professors ask are convoluted and confusing.
• 48:07
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's another reason why sometimes students procrastinate.
• 48:09
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: "I have no idea what this teacher is asking me to do.
• 48:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Think about data management grade 12.
• 48:14
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm d-doing a research project.
• 48:17
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I don't know what it's asking me to do." The way the teacher phrases something is hard for my brain to wrap my head around.
• 48:24
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Great.
• 48:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Have AI decipher it for you.
• 48:27
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: That's a really helpful tool to help you get started on the next step
• 48:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: But if ethical AI is it's not doing thinking or organizing for you, how is putting a rubric into AI and saying,"Put this into steps that I can understand," not it thinking and organizing?
• 48:46
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: I'm talking about where students are stuck and not starting.
• 48:49
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: And what I'm also asking is, can you then recreate that if no one has ever shown you how to do that,
• 48:55
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh, I see.
• 48:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: So, okay.
• 48:57
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay
• 48:58
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: done that, if you don't have a learning strategist to coach you through making your own, and you are not starting the work because you don't know where to start, then what a beautiful first step that you can then take and be like,"That's the process?" I know it's really easy to just have AI do it forever, but if we're going to do that skill development, wow, I was just shown how to learning strategy the shit out of this assignment.
• 49:25
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Now I can do that for future assignments for myself.
• 49:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Hmm.
• 49:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, we have to wrap up with the two questions I ask everyone, which kind of seem weird, to be honest.
• 49:33
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, the first one will make sense, the second one won't.
• 49:35
  Vanessa Vakharia: The first question is...
• 49:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: Actually, no, it totally makes sense.
• 49:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: So imagine someone's listening to this.
• 49:40
  Vanessa Vakharia: They're like,"Loved it.
• 49:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: Oh my God, Deena, she's an idol, she's an icon, but I love what she said, but it, this doesn't apply to me.
• 49:47
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's not the reason I suck at math.
• 49:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, uh, some people just can't do math.
• 49:50
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm just not a math person." What would you say?
• 49:53
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: You can be.
• 49:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: Great.
• 49:56
  Vanessa Vakharia: I love, I love a si- I love a short answer like that.
• 49:59
  Vanessa Vakharia: Number two, s- I mean, I think we know the answer to this, but let's just ask you, if there was one thing you could change about the way math specifically is taught in schools, what would it be?
• 50:08
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: to pair with learning strategies.
• 50:10
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Don't just give the question or the deadline.
• 50:12
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Explain to a student how to get from the day that something is assigned, whether it is a homework or quiz or a lab or presentation, how to do the work and get from the day it's assigned to the day that it is due.
• 50:24
  Vanessa Vakharia: Ooh, what a good answer.
• 50:25
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, this was...
• 50:27
  Vanessa Vakharia: Honestly, I came on here for myself.
• 50:29
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm leaving with so many strategies for myself, but holy shit, I just feel like you have given us so much.
• 50:36
  Vanessa Vakharia: Thank you so, so much for the work you're doing out there.
• 50:39
  Vanessa Vakharia: Like, this, this really is life-changing work.
• 50:41
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: Blessings.
• 50:42
  Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer: It's the thing that I absolutely love, so thank you.
• 50:48
  Vanessa Vakharia: Okay, I am still not over that point Deena made about the fact that doing problems is, like, the only actual effective way to study because it's the only thing that authentically replicates what you'll be doing on actual exam day.
• 51:01
  Vanessa Vakharia: It seems obvious, but she really nailed it.
• 51:03
  Vanessa Vakharia: Students waste so much time doing things that feel like studying but actually aren't going to move the dial significantly when the exam paper, like, gets plopped in front of them.
• 51:12
  Vanessa Vakharia: I'm sending this episode to every student and parent I know right now because you guys know how it is.
• 51:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: Everyone is frantically trying to figure out how to cram as much info into their heads right now as possible, and I wanna make sure that they're all studying smarter, not harder, and more importantly, that parents know that their kids do not need to be studying for eight hours straight in order to be effective.
• 51:34
  Vanessa Vakharia: If something in this episode made you think, text the podcast.
• 51:37
  Vanessa Vakharia: The link to text us is in the show notes of whatever app you're listening to.
• 51:41
  Vanessa Vakharia: We love hearing from you.
• 51:42
  Vanessa Vakharia: And it is June, which means that one episode this month will contain a giveaway for the brand-new Texas Instruments Evo, so tune in weekly because who knows when it's gonna happen.
• 51:53
  Vanessa Vakharia: And if you're in exam season right now, I am sending you all the good vibes.
• 51:58
  Vanessa Vakharia: I always tell my students that exams are, like, just a fun opportunity to show off everything you've learned over the year.
• 52:04
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 52:05
  Vanessa Vakharia: It's a chance to try the new strategies and mindset hacks you've learned, to bust out the formula you finally mastered, to think your way through a problem in crunch time, and just try something you normally would've been too scared to try before.
• 52:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's it.
• 52:17
  Vanessa Vakharia: That's all it is.
• 52:19
  Vanessa Vakharia: Happy almost summer, everyone.
• 52:20
  Vanessa Vakharia: You rock.
• 52:21
  Vanessa Vakharia: You're amazing.
• 52:22
  Vanessa Vakharia: Stay real, and I'll see you next Thursday, same time, same place, same channel.
• 52:26
  Vanessa Vakharia: Peace, love, and pi, bbs.