A college success story

Not all the students who took "Strategies" were troubled.  Some of the top students in the school also gave up some of their precious elective credits (not easy to do since this course had a basic rating which can easily reduce honor society and class rank averages).    Jill was one of those students.  She had been a student of mine when she took Algebra II Honors.  She was hard working, very likeable and creative.  I believe she took the class that first year more because she knew me and what it was like to be in my class.  I’m not sure that she really believed she needed to learn anything in it.

Jill and others like her found techniques in this course that they had not ever heard of before either in school or out.  They found some of them to be incredible simple – which they are – but they also realized that these easy sounding strategies truly work.  Jill was the type of student who tested out the strategies and reported her findings back to me and the other students.  She found that many of the techniques she learned helped her be even more successful in the challenging courses she was taking. 

I heard from Jill recently and she wrote to me that she still uses the strategies she learned to this day as a college student.  Her appreciation has not waned. In fact I’ve heard from many former students as they began their college careers.  Most said that what they learned in my course prepared them more effectively for the transition to college life than their fellow freshmen.