• Lacking discipline
• Academically apathetic
• Zoned out
• Your spoiled ‘lil baby

If your child exhibits these symptoms then ask your doctor about Liveinthevillage^TM. Liveinthevillage is an all-natural supplement that works to cure LAZY by immersing your child in a village environment. Side effects include: going to fetch water, cooking their own meals over a wood/charcoal fire, sweeping the dirt-floor compound with a straw broom, running all types of errands, going to bed soon after sunset and rising just before sunrise, and generally being unplugged from all of the distractions that cause LAZY.

Ask your doctor about Liveinthevillage today!

Ọgbọ́n ju ágbára

I’ve been reading Ìjàpá stories lately. Ìjàpá is the trickster tortoise among the Yorùbá who is always using his cunning intellect to outsmart the people and achieve his (usually greed-based) goals. Ọgbọ́n ju ágbára is most definitely Ìjàpá’s motto. Although this is generally a noble adage, for Ìjàpá there is another issue: Ìjàpá is extremely lazy, and he uses his intellect to avoid any and all work – and thus always finds himself embroiled in some conflict.

Ọ̀ràn kìí yẹ̀ l’órí alábaun (ìjàpá).

The responsibility for trouble never misses the head of the tortoise.

When it comes to our studies, many of us are like Ìjàpá. We are very quick to comprehend new topics and absorb new information, but we refuse to study and practice what we learn. The lecture was exciting, the class was engaging, the teacher laid everything out elegantly and gave us a homework assignment for extra practice. Well, since we understood it in class….it made perfect sense when the teacher explained it…there’s no real urgency to engage in these repetitive homework exercises…we’ve got this. Ọgbọ́n ju ágbára!

And like that, we outsmart ourselves. We become our own Ìjàpá. Of course the reality is that intelligence alone is not enough for mastery. We also need to develop or strengthen our base level of intelligence through study and practice. Jordan and Kobe were genetically gifted athletes with a natural talent for basketball. However, what made them legends of the game was their extraordinary commitment to training and practice.

But of course, we already know that. The issue is that if you want to see how fast a child can run, send him on an errand to the place where he wants to go. Simply put, we often neglect study and practice because it can be boring! This is where we can use ritual as our medicine against what is sometimes unexciting. We have our morning ritual of waking up, showering, dressing, and eating breakfast. We have our ritual related to going to the gym or working out at home. We may ritually pour libations every morning. Perhaps we perform religious rituals every five days, or every eight days, or every 42 days. A ritual is simply a series repetitive actions that we perform at regular intervals.

We can ritualize our study time as well to make it habitual and more purposeful. Here are some ideas that you can use to ritualize your study time. Make these steps a consistent part of your schedule for 30 days and pay attention to how you start to feel about study time.

• Put your phone in airplane mode and place it in another room
• Take a quick bath/shower
• Put on some comfortable clothes that you wear specifically for studying
• Burn a fragrance (incense, essential oil, etc.) – our sense of smell is strongly connected to our memory – that you use specifically for studying
• Drink a healthy, brain-stimulating beverage (coconut water, sorrel, sea moss, ginseng, herbal tea etc.) and treat that beverage like a “pre-workout” supplement for your study-time
• Play a particular type of soft music that helps you to focus
• Recite your list of academic affirmations (i.e. “I am focused, I catch every detail, I will put in the necessary hours to ace my exam,” etc.)
• Work in the same location, preferably a quiet and well-lit place. Use earplugs if necessary.
• Make a to-do check list of topics/assignments that you plan to complete
• Any other ritual elements that you like
• Do the work!

By implementing steps such as these you ritualize your study time and thereby increase its meaning. We train our brains to associate the drudgery of studying with the euphoria of acquiring new knowledge (and getting good grades). It is a lesson in voluntary hardship and delayed gratification that will serve you throughout your life.

Now get to work!

In many traditional Afrikan communities there were special trees under which the elders would sit and discuss the problems which the community faced. They not only discussed “problems,” but – talked about the current news of the day, both good and bad. It was a place where announcements were made, where griots and poet-singers often came to express themselves. We borrowed the phrase “The Chattering Tree” from a movie filmed in Senegambia in the year 1975 under the direction of Sate Faye, one of the few Afrikan women filmmakers. The film was called “The Peasant Letter.” We hope that this small monthly newsletter will serve our community in the same way that the thousands of “chattering trees” served our traditional communities in Afrika, a place where one can come and present his ideas, opinions and news of the day. Also, where one can come and hear the ideas and opinions of others. Remember, the “chattering trees” only served as places where people came to discuss. The trees themselves, never interrupted, never criticized and never contradicted. In like manner our monthly news letter is only a place where one can come by way of articles, letters, poems, short stories, ink drawings and news items about the “third world.”

We invite you to come and sit under NKALA’s chattering tree and learn from those who actually do it.

Well, since today is Labor Day in East Africa. I’ve decided to take a break from the teacher code and tell you all the truth:

Beyond foundational topics, you’ll likely never use most of what you learn in your mathematics classes. The same can be said for many other classes as well.

I once had a student who was interested in pursuing a career in medicine. We were studying calculus and he often lamented about how he would not need to use calculus as a doctor. Being a guardian of the sacred teacher code I knew that I couldn’t let that sentiment stand in my classroom. I approached a doctor friend of mine and asked her to give me examples of how she used mathematics in her day-to-day work. If I could get the backing of a whole doctor, then I’d be sure to eliminate the attack on my classroom’s integrity.

Sɛ ɔbaa no ka anyansasɛm bi ara a, fa w’aso kɔ fam. Ɛnyɛ Ntikuma na ɔkyerɛɛ ne se Ananse kwan a ɛsɛ sɛ ɔde nyansa kukuo no foro dua no? Sɛ mmɔfra no mpo de nyansadwen ba a, fa.

If a woman speaks some wise words, take your ears to the ground (listen humbly). Was it not Ntikuma that showed his father Ananse the Spider what he needed to do to be able to climb the tree with the pot of wisdom? If children even come with wise thoughts, then we should indeed take those wise thoughts.

To my surprise the doctor actually validated what the student said! She told me that, with the exception of simple arithmetic used in calculating patient dosages that they truly did not use much (if any) advanced mathematics in their day-to-day work. When I began to think about it further I realized that, even as an engineer, I did not use many of the advanced mathematics topics that I learned in school. The reality is that if you approach an engineer with 10 or 20+ years of experience and ask him about a calculus or differential equations problem, he will likely have no idea how to solve the problem without first researching it online or in a textbook.

So then what is the point? If we, as professionals in science, technology, or engineering, will likely never be asked to use partial integration to find the volume of cones or be tasked with writing a proof that shows that two angles are congruent according to the side-angle-side theorem, then why do we learn this stuff?

The answer is that in science, technology, or engineering you may actually need these skills in the context of solving more complex problems. And although professionals typically use softwares to perform complex calculations for us, knowledge of the underlying mathematics is still useful in troubleshooting or debugging.

But what if we’re not pursuing a career in STEM?

One thing that most do not understand about education is that the content knowledge – the math formulas and algorithms, the literature passages, the dates in history class, the grammar rules, and all of the chemical formulas – is not the only purpose of our education. The content knowledge is only half of the picture. Learning the content is obviously necessary, but we must also simultaneously learn how to learn.

New college and university students soon realize the difference between their teachers in secondary (middle and high) school and their college professors. One of the main differences is that in secondary school students are taught by their teachers while in post-secondary colleges and universities students must begin to teach themselves. This applies to STEM and non-STEM subjects alike. Secondary school has teachers, post-secondary colleges and universities have professors. A teacher’s job is to teach, while a professor’s job is to profess.

If we think back to who we consider to be our best teacher, it will likely be a teacher from secondary school. College professors tend to have greater content knowledge and more credentials related to their field. However, greater content knowledge and greater credentials do not translate into better teaching. Teaching is a separate skill from knowing. Having advanced knowledge in one’s head does not at all ensure that one will be able to effectively transfer that knowledge into someone else’s head.

The Most Important Skill

So then, the most important skill is not the content that we learn – the math, the science, the coding; the most important skill is knowing how to teach oneself – how to figure things out without instruction. This is one reason why homeschooled students tend to perform better in post-secondary institutions than students from private or public schools. Homeschool students, often due to their parents’ schedules, learn early on to become independent learners. In that way, they get a jump start in learning skills that other graduates will only begin to learn during their years in college or university.

Technology is constantly changing. New programs, new computer models, and new tools are always developing and replacing technologies that were once considered cutting-edge. Having a well-honed ability to teach oneself new things then becomes one of the most valuable skills for an engineer/scientist/technologist/mathematician. The same may be said of entrepreneurs.

Because of this, learning how to learn mathematics and science becomes just as valuable for the medical student or the liberal arts student as it does for the engineering student. Focusing on learning the process of how you learn is the best way to maximize the benefits of studying any subject.

So, when will you use this stuff? You’ll use the same thought processes that you used to learn the foreign concepts of arcsine, arccosine, and arctangent to figure out how to build your own website for your new business venture. You’ll use the same step-by-step method that you used to learn how to solve quadratic equations to figure out the rules for how to market your company’s products in that new country. You’ll use the same logic that you followed in creating that geometric proof to learn how to model using that new software platform.

Every person has two educations: the one which he is given, and the one that he gives to himself.

Besepa ne konini ahahan, yɛtease no banyansafoɔ.
The difference between the leaves of the white kola tree and the red kola tree is discerned by the wise child.

Akan Proverb

In 7th grade we were given an assessment to determine which mathematics track we would be assigned to. In the advanced track we would take Algebra I in the 8th grade, followed by Geometry in the 9th, Algebra II in the 10th, Pre-Calculus in the 11th, and finally AP Calculus our senior year. In the not-so-advanced track we would take Pre-Algebra in the 8th grade, followed by Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, and then so-called “senior math” (Algebra III) during our senior year.

Up to that point I was an average student. I gave minimal effort in school to the point that every year I often wondered how I had made it past the previous grade. At that time I was much more concerned with playing basketball, riding my bike, and playing Sega Genesis. So you can imagine my surprise when the results of the assessment came in and I discovered that I had scored higher than many of my friends and classmates! Here I was, this mediocre student who had just scored higher than some of the smartest students in my class. I was excited. Although I had never cared before, now the possibility of taking advanced courses was giving me a sense of pride and confidence in my own abilities.

So you can imagine how shocked I was when my teacher informed me that I was being placed in the not-so-advanced track. Wait, what??? My teacher decided to hold me back in spite of my high score on the assessment. Ah yes, you can always depend on a white woman to destroy the spirit of a young Black boy. I was so confused. I had spent the past week bragging to my friends about how smart I was, and now I’m having to eat my words. Refusing to accept the outcome, I confronted the teacher and demanded an explanation of why I was not being promoted but some of my lower-scoring classmates were.

I just feel like you are not ready for the advanced track.

– Ms. 7th Grade Dream Killer

And like that I was held back from the advanced track in mathematics. I took Pre-Algebra in the 8th grade. But due to being genetically gifted with a hard head I still refused to accept the outcome. After bad-mouthing my 7th grade teacher to some of the other teachers, I found out that there was a way that I could end up on the advanced track…I could double-up. That is, I could take both Algebra I and Geometry during my 9th grade year. Doing so would allow me to catch up with the advanced track in taking Algebra II during my 10th grade year, Pre-Calculus during my junior year, and AP Calculus during my senior year.

So, double-up is what I did. I took Algebra I and Geometry in my freshman year and made A’s in both. That following year, my sophomore year, I was doing so well in mathematics that I began tutoring my peers in Algebra II. With newfound confidence and a growing reputation as a “smart” person I also began to excel in my other classes. Soon my peers were approaching for me for help in not only math and science classes, but also in our humanities and language arts classes as well. I had become a knowledge gangster.

In my senior year I doubled-up again and took both AP Calculus and AP Statistics, making A’s in both. I also took the AP exams in Calculus and Statistics and scored a 5 on both, gaining college credit for Calculus. I went on to graduate in the top 3 in my high school class, earn a degree in engineering, and to become registered as a Professional Engineer in the United States.

But my story isn’t unique. How many of us, our children, or our students have used society’s expectations of our failure as motivation to become great at the things that we do? But does that have to be the case? If we are such masters at turning lemons into lemonade then just imagine what we can do with oranges, mangoes, watermelons, or other sweet fruits of positive motivation. Let your mental juices flow to that thought.

A true educator knows the difference between a student who is unmotivated or unchallenged and a student without the potential to succeed. Let us show you what that difference feels like.