Teaching Students to Work Harder and Enjoy It

In this three-book series, John Jensen provides educators with strategies for helping students to “master learning with great pleasure.” This goal is a truly worthy one since students’ experiencing mastery and pleasure is the exception in America’s schools and school systems. Jensen’s philosophy for transforming children’s educational experiences is powerful and his aim to help teachers help their students to achieve remarkable learning outcomes provides readers with a compelling view of what teaching and learning can be. -- Francis M. Duffy
John Jensen has penned a volume that offers a practical path to serving students better. With an admirable focus on the value of practice and the virtue of disciplined effort, he offers advice that educators and parents would do well to heed. -- Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute
In my opinion, the importance of practice in all aspects of education has been unfairly vilified by many so-called experts in education over the last decade or so. To deny the importance of what these "experts" call "drill & kill" in learning any new concept or skill just proves that they are truly NOT experts at how children or anyone learns. John Jensen captures this important and gives helpful practical ways to use practice in learning. -- Marilyn Reed, Educational consultant and 12-year veteran of a public school board
Dr. Jensen has an anticipatory view of what education should look like. He sees the weakness of our current education system, and has analyzed it to develop a system that will produce results. He has an ability to asses a variety of students and professionals, and implement his ideas to create a system of best practices. I saw this ability first hand when we worked together at Starshine Academy in Phoenix, Arizona. The ideas are simple, and the implementation is not difficult. It will simply take believing in it. And by reading Jensen's series, or simply by speaking with Dr. Jensen or seeing him interact with students, one will easily be convinced that his methods will be successful if implemented correctly.   -- Trevor R. Waagner, educational consultant for Education, Agriculture and Technology (EAT), a think tank in Chicago, Illinois
Dr. Jensen is a life-long friend. Beginning with our high school days, I've been greatly impressed with John's perception of the learning processes which work best with various types of learners. His clear, logical and practical approaches to learning have resulted in remarkable successes. -- Lyle Riley, Retired Middle-School Teacher, Phoenix, Arizona
In a day and age where ideas and jobs move across the globe effortlessly, Teaching So Students Work Harder and Enjoy It: Practice Makes Permanent provides thoughtful ideas and strategies for students to thrive and not simply survive in this hyper-competitive, transformational world. -- Tom Watkins, Michigan's State Superintendent of Schools, 2001-05
One of the great struggles in teaching is finding practical ways to solve problems. A great many books have wonderful theoretical ideas, but they do not always translate well to daily practice. Teachers have to then spend a lot of time and energy adopting the suggestions.    Mr. Jensen's book, however, has very practical ideas for everything from supporting student talk in the classroom, to motivating students using a scoring system. The powerful suggestions from Teaching Students to Work Harder and Enjoy It: Practice Makes Permanent will help teachers in all areas of teaching and learning.   In particular, I liked the section entitled, Score Results Objectively, where Mr. Jensen makes suggestions for helping students work toward long-range mastery of material, not just "for the test Friday." For example, he writes, "Re-administer all previous tests on randomly-selected, unannounced days. As individual students demonstrate sustained mastery, exempt them from further testing on a particular section.  For all others, continue re-testing all old material, and make their last score of the series their course grade." I also enjoyed the next chapter, More Ways to Use Scoring because I use a similar method of tracking and scoring for Socratic Seminar and I know for a fact that it works well. -- Charles Fischer, Teacher and Consultant, Aspen Academy
With the firm foundation of sound cognitive principles along with classroom-practical exercises, John Jensen presents what is sorely needed to get students where they need to be. The chapter on the "Mental Field" dealing with getting the students into the subject of the day would alone be worth the price of the book. In my business law classes I use this principle and it works! As you read the book, you will find yourself saying: "Yes, that's what I need to do." -- Jim Sangiorgio, Assistant College Professor, Coram, New York
Jensen has done it with Practice Makes Permanent—he has given teachers the tools they need to get their students really learning. That means retaining information in long-term memory so it can be recalled weeks, months, even years later. Moreover, he's done it, not in spite of, but capitalizing upon the thing most important to youth—their social relationships. -- Deanna Nelson
John Jensen has produced an eminently readable book on what it takes to build deep and profound mastery and how to avoid the traps leading to superficiality that pervades so many American institutions, starting with our public schools. His methods to integrate socio-emotional intelligence with cognitive learning will result in a generation of self starters with the  competence, tenacity, and compassion to create the peaceful prosperity toward which we aspire.   -- Barry E. Stern
John Jensen understands that we’ll never retrieve education from its current doldrums until we think about it from the point of view of the student. Jensen’s description of our “Learn and Lose” system captures the ridiculous expectations that a 50-yard dash through a huge landscape of material will somehow teach a subject. Instead, Jensen offers a boatload of practical ideas to help adults help students to build the skills they need to start learning under their own steam. -- Julia Steiny, director of Youth Restoration Project and columnist for EducationNews.org and GoLocalProv.org
In a pedagogical world gone silly by expecting students to discover complex bodies of knowledge by themselves, psychologist and educator John Jensen throws a refreshing dash of reality-based cold water on such so-called “constructivist” teaching methodologies. This book is back-to-the-basics on steroids. In a common sense, tightly written argument, Jensen demonstrates that students’ responses to teacher-led explicit instruction are the key to optimal learning for mastery of a body of academic knowledge and content. And the foundation for such mastery is practice, practice, practice. However, such practice is currently denigrated in many areas of modern American education as being mere “drill and kill.” Instead, the author shows in detail how such practice is actually drill for skill, a concept known for millennia whenever a student is trying to master a skill set, whether the domain of that set be physical, athletic, musical or cognitive. As Jensen says, he wants to “transform your classroom, blow the top off your students’scores and accomplishments, make their parents ecstatic over their progress, get you a nomination for district teacher of the year, [and] have news media show up to document what your students do… .” This volume, the first in a trilogy devoted to practice as a main academic foundation in our educational system, is a worthy read and a fresh look at modern American schooling.   -- Richard Ham, third grade public school teacher, Seattle, Washington
What US education has not faced is that it has designed a system that hour by hour undermines its own goals. John Jensen has called out the core elements that he terms "the Learn and Lose System," and explains a simple and direct route to turning it around rapidly. Teachers need first to intend long-term instead of temporary learning, and the Practice Makes Permanent series explains how. You'll find here ideas you've always known but never quite figured out how to apply. -- Joanne L. Blum, director of Development, Project SEED, Inc.
This is what every teacher dreams to see: students who learn more, learn confidently, learn permanently, and enjoy the journey. Simply stated, it can be done. Dr. Jensen gives the rationale and insights for ways to do this through meaningful repetitions in the classroom. We have seen at our school how our student population, which is quite diverse, can achieve very high levels that are comparable with some of the top schools around, through the daily practice of meaningful repetition of skills and knowledge. Dr. Jensen gives new life and modern relevance to the classic idea that “repetitio est mater studiorum” (repetition is the mother of learning). -- Elizabeth Berg, principal, James Irwin Charter Elementary School, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Dr. Jensen has a unique understanding of what drives those in the classroom—students, teachers, and administrators—to work together and achieve. But what's most valuable in Teaching Students to Work Harder and Enjoy It is the way this book blends research, classroom management techniques and centuries of education wisdom into a new offering that will improve outcomes for students, teachers, parents and school boards. Teaching Students to Work Harder and Enjoy It advances education reform one student, one teacher, one classroom and one school at a time. -- Matthew K. Tabor, editor, EducationNews.org