Richard J. Giordano - Super-Charged Learning: How Wacky Thinking and Sports Psychology Make it Happen

Super-Charged Learning

How Wacky Thinking and Sports Psychology Make It Happen

Richard J. Giordano

Foreword by Benjamin Carson Sr., MD

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2015 by Richard J. Giordano

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 978-1-4758-1307-4 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4758-1521-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4758-1309-8 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to all the fine young men and women, student-athletes, whose exceptional force of will brings them success in their studies, athletics, and lives.

It is also dedicated to Dottie. Because of her ever-present support and encouragement, she helped to made this book a reality. For her, the biblical it is more blessed to give than receive (Acts 20:35, KJV) is not just scripture, but a life purpose.

Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who writes its laws.

Andrew Fletcher , 16531716, Scottish writer, politician, and patriot

Foreword

I f you compare the frontal lobes of the brain in humans with those of other animals, it quickly becomes apparent that, relatively speaking, human beings have gigantic frontal lobes. This is the area of the brain where rational thought processing takes place. It gives us the ability to extract information from the past, merge it with information from the present, and project all of this into the future as a plan. Successful people take advantage of this ability to plan and strategize and alter future events. Unfortunately, large numbers of people behave more like animals with small frontal lobes who just tend to react to the environment rather than shape it. Teaching children to use their massive intellectual capacity rather than be victims is perhaps the most important thing parents can do. That is the focus of this book. When reading it, remember that life can be a great deal of fun when you dont take yourself too seriously. There is a great deal of humor in these pages, but its purpose is to focus on the enormous potential innate in each of our young people and how to develop it. Many of the lessons that are taught in this book are lessons that I learned the hard way. One will see that there are many ways to achieve victory in the development of our youth. As they learn some of the fascinating techniques in these pages, their self-confidence will grow and the old can-do attitude that made America into a great nation will be manifested in their lives. There are a ton of different techniques and methods that can be successfully used to develop the potential of our young people, and Making Up Crap (MUC) is but one of them. There is a lot to be said for common sense and the use of proven methodology to increase potential and confidence. Even if you dont have young people under your tutelage, learning some of the techniques for improving memory and other mental skills can be useful to all of us. Enjoy the adventure you are embarking upon with this unique tool of development.

Benjamin S. Carson Sr., MD, emeritus professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics

Preface

M any issues come together to define todays public schools, and two have become prominent over the past several years. While perhaps evident at all grade levels, these are particularly in play at the secondary level: middle school and high school. The first is that public school teachers have become mere dispensers of information... not truly teachers. They tell students information (lecture), but do not show (teach) them how to go about learning it . Also, as schools become larger and more impersonal, another issue arises. Parents find themselves relegated to a nonparticipant status in their childrens schooling, not knowing what role, if any, they might play.

Whether these conditions are in place by design or default is not what you will be reading about here. The intent is not to affix blame or deal with the why of this circumstance. As annoying as this comment may be, it is true: It is what it is! My goal in the following pages is to show you (parents in particular) an easy yet powerful way to handle things as they are, how you can reengage with your childrens schooling, and make a BIG difference in how well they learn!

With years of work in public education, both as a teacher and high school principal, Ive found that the keys to learning are not often found in complex learning theories, but in some fairly common things. One of these is that as human beings, we have three God-given traits that make us who we are. We are all emotional, physical, and visual beings. It is these three traits that give us our ability to learn complex things. What we must do is choose to apply them to our learning situations. If this is done, we can become superior learners... super-charged learners. If that sounds like car talk, it is!

A super-charged automobile engine enables a car to get off the line (accelerate) more quickly, because its engine has more explosion power and thus moves the car faster. In the same way, super-charged learning gets you off the line quicker, giving you more learning power and making you a faster learner. The principles are the same for both. Its about increasing the things that go into producing more power, in the car engine and in your brain.

An automobile engine gets its power from controlled explosions (combustion) of a mixture of air and gasoline inside a chamber (cylinder). The power of the explosion determines the power of the enginebigger explosion = more power. The explosions are made bigger when the quantities of air and gasoline are increased. A super-charged engine does exactly that. The air entering the combustion chamber is compressed, resulting in more of it being forced into the chamber. Similarly, more gasoline is forced into the chamber. When a spark ignites this mixture, a bigger explosion results, translating into a more powerful and faster car.

Super-charged learning works the same way. Your ability to learn depends upon how much emotion, physical sensation, and visualization you incorporate in your thinking. If you purposefully force more emotion, physical sensation, and visualization into your thinking, you will increase your thinking power, resulting in more-power learning. Just as a super-charged car engine is more powerful and results in a faster car, super-charged thinking is more powerful and results in faster learning.

The following pages are a kind of road trip, a trip to places where you may have traveled in the past on a vacation or a whimsical weekend getaway. On those trips, other than some nice memories and maybe a suntan, you brought nothing home with you. This trip will be different! When you get back from this trip, youll have returned with something that you didnt have when you started out. You will have nice memories, but they will be more than just pleasant reflections on past times. These will be strong, useful, and woven into some new and factual understandings... about you ! They will empower you to become a stronger learner than you ever thought possible, and youll get there just by applying the God-given abilities you were given at birth. The suntan may be absent, but youll be returning from this trip with the souvenir of being a super-charged learner!