For Mr. Chris Long, Director of Academic Resources, the recently developed “Learning How to Learn” class is more than just a new course. It’s the culmination of years of hard work that began during his doctoral research on meta-learning at Georgetown University, where he helped teach a course meant to guide first-generation students through the intricacies of a higher level of schooling.
Here at La Salle, the class is geared more towards teaching students the process of learning. The class’s three periods are taught by Mr. Long, science teacher Mr. Ryan Kain, and Math Department Chair Ms. Kristin Boyle. Next semester, Science Department Chair Mr. Matt Owen will join the team as another teacher.
According to Vice Principal for Academics Ms. Kathleen Coughran, this one-semester class was made mandatory for all freshmen in the interest of improving their success across all levels of their academics, teaching them “how to be in the driver’s seat of their own education.”
When Mr. Long approached her with the idea, Principal Ms. Alanna O’Brien said that she was “intrigued and excited,” though she had some hesitations regarding fitting a new required class into the ninth-grade schedule, which is already busy as-is.
Eventually, though, she — as well as the rest of the academic administration team — decided in favor of incorporating “Learning How to Learn” into the freshman experience.
“I felt like the course had enough value and need that we needed to think outside the box,” she said.
Mr. Kain echoed these sentiments, commenting on the skills this course can foster in every student.
“It’s going to benefit whether you’re somebody who struggles with a lot of the school-based things or if you’re a straight-A student,” he said. “There’s something that every single human is going to pull from it, regardless of where you are and where you’re coming from, because it’s that individual journey.”
Mr. Kain explained that the course asks students to pursue a line of thinking which is rather paradoxical. Students have to learn about how to effectively learn, think about how to think, and study to become a good student. It aims to equip students with the tools they need to be successful in all areas of their life both during their time at La Salle and beyond.
“Some students experience challenges, and they can get dejected, so we’re really trying to help them manage those difficult experiences and reframe them as opportunities to grow and learn and become better,” Mr. Long said. “Because really, anybody who’s ever been anything has failed multiple times.”
The course is about helping students overcome these difficulties that are an inherent part of the learning process, a skill that many students don’t master until much later, if at all.
“I was in my late 30s, and I was like, ‘I’m just now learning about my own learning,’” Mr. Long said. “I thought that was wild. And I was like, ‘if I’m only learning about this in my 30s, and I’ve already had like, 10 years of college education, then I know a lot of high school students aren’t getting this. I know college students aren’t really getting this, especially at the undergrad level.’”
The course content itself is “the easy part” for Mr. Long, who studied the majority of it in college while earning his master’s and doctorate degrees.
The Learning How to Learn classroom is one centered around activities, projects, and group work. Students remain within their table groups — known as learning communities — until the end of the semester to develop a sense of consistency and create bonds among themselves.
Much of the class consists of “individual reflection and then production” according to Ms. Boyle. It aims to equip students with the necessary “toolkits” to be successful in the rest of their education, featuring lots of self-reflective assignments and journal entries so that the students can effectively build on their past experiences.
“It’s different in that it asks you not to learn specific content in a given area,” Mr. Long said. “This is kind of asking you to self-reflect and develop a system for yourself that is going to work for you.”
While the idea for this class has been floating around Mr. Long’s head since he first started researching the subject, it began to fully develop at the end of the 2023 fall semester when he wrote a 25-page scaffolding for the class, he said.
“This whole class is sort of Dr. Long’s baby,” Mr. Kain said. “Ms. Boyle and I are along for the ride.”
While as the developer, Mr. Long knows the course’s content better than anyone, this is Mr. Long’s first experience teaching at a high school level. Mr. Kain explained that as Ms. Boyle and he are both experienced educators, their biggest contribution to the success of this class is in translating it from Mr. Long’s “mega brain” to a classroom setting.
All three teachers shared that it’s a class they are revising and improving on as they go, making corrections and improvements so that the course operates smoother with every semester. The strategies utilized and approaches taken by students and teachers as well as the class and its materials will be constantly evolving over the course of the year.
This first semester is like a test run for everyone involved, because the class has been modified from its university inspiration. Mr. Long changed the course to suit ninth-graders, which meant simplifying the material and broadening it at the same time. As the high schoolers will have more class time than the college students did, Mr. Long said he added more activities and structure, aiming to make the course “more robust.”
According to Mr. Kain, this classroom is different from others in the sense that rather than just giving assignments, students learn how to take breaks in addition to their work. These rests often take the form of meditation or watching videos of jellyfish, with the goal of giving students’ brains a second to breathe.
“You get to be a little funny and whimsical and then very, very scientific right afterwards,” Mr. Kain said. “And I love that. That little back-and-forth is fun to me.”
These scheduled rests are practiced due to the benefits of “diffuse mode,” a sort of resting state engaged when students allow themselves a pause from work. It gives the brain a chance at recuperation, allowing for a more efficient level of cognition during the periods of focus, known as “focus mode.”
“The more you can actually think about the parts of your brain and the way that they need to focus, the better you are at — quite literally — focusing on the thing in front of you,” Mr. Kain said. “However, your brain needs time after those direct connections and that really hard grind to actually make the neural connections in the background, and so much of that has to happen when your brain is in a more relaxed state.”
According to freshman Caroline Light, the focus and diffuse modes have been the most interesting things she’s learned about so far. She’s also enjoyed creating “mind maps,” which are a helpful visual tool students can use to plan out their thinking on a certain topic.
“It’s just kind of a relaxing class for me, because I really like learning about my brain,” Light said. “I think that’s really cool, so it’s a lot easier for me than other classes.”
This isn’t the first class centered on learning that Light has had to take. At her previous school, Sellwood Middle School, she said that all students took a class called Advancement Via Individual Development, which discussed how students’ brains worked. However, it was more focused on study strategies, organization, and career paths rather than the actual process of learning.
When beginning this class, freshman Luke Henzel took that advice to heart.
“I’ve been trying because at the beginning [Ms. Boyle] told us ‘the more you put into the classroom, the more you get out of it,’” Henzel said. “So I’ve been trying to stay more engaged and talk to my classmates more, as much as I can.”
Since receiving her schedule, Light’s perspective on the class has changed for the better. According to Ms. Boyle, that sort of open mindset is exactly what will help students find success in this class.
Ms. Boyle expressed that if a student decides not to learn and to just chase a grade, then they won’t receive nearly as much benefit. Students get out what they put in, and the goal of this class is to show students just how much they can get out of it.
“That’s kind of what I want to help students do,” Mr. Long said. “I want to help them see that they can be good at learning, they can be good at thinking, and to get them energized and excited about engaging and learning more.”
The general consensus among all three staff members is that regardless of skill or aptitude, any student can succeed in Learning How to Learn because the class is focused on each student and their growth.
According to Ms. Coughran and Ms. O’Brien, this class is part of a larger school-wide initiative around student agency. In the future, an expanded version of the class could potentially be offered to 10th, 11th, and 12th-graders so that the systems students develop during their freshman year can continue to be reinforced and solidified to the end of their high school career.
“I think what we’re learning about the world we live in today is that it’s less about what you know, and it’s more about how you learn,” Ms. O’Brien said. “Students are going to leave us and need to be able to shift and be flexible, both in the workforce and in life, and so learning how to learn and not just focusing on content will be a critical skill moving forward.”
