The Kyle Phoenix Blog: Kyle Phoenix Answers: When can you tell when a student is very smart but will fail later in life?

When they don't "bounce the ball back" at or well.

Over the past decade I've had about 200 adult students from 18-55 years old, with a minimum of 1 year of intensive, continuous contact with. There are thousands of others but I am talking about the ones where I was prepping the requisite 3-5 years of mediation with to facilitate long term growth and change. As a teacher for over 20 years, like Gladwell's book Blink, I can tell educational levels and potentiality within less than an hour, sometimes from just a short chat, visual inspection. (Every cashier, customer service representative, wait staff, manager I'm running through evaluations and analysis, it's a by product of the developmental work I do.)

No, not everyone will make it, some people self sabotage, others are sabotaged by the environment of people and agencies around them.

Bouncing the Ball Back

I'm listening to and visualizing the synapses, the neurons, the tensile strength of the myelin, which hemisphere is operating dominantly, MBTI parameters, how your speech reflects which of VARK you primarily are, your social class, I'm hearing and seeing your parents educational history and your grandparents, I'm seeing the quantifiable quality of your language in syntax, grammar, complexity, the preponderance of reliance on concrete or abstract reasoning and psychological ticks.
When I ask a question its rarely innocuous, I'm lobbing a telepathic depth meter at you, casting a probe into your mental nebula.

I met one child at Wal-Mart in Charlotte, he was 5 and he literally set off every sensor in my head. It was like I was customer service and I lobbed a ball at his mother about her return and I heard a machine start to power up and I looked down and saw he understood my adult level question and I could hear his mind sounding like my own and dozens of balls flew out of his nebula at me and I caught them all and specifically cast in probes, from different directions, shot a phaser randomly in and sent a hailing message in Latin and binary code to him. I'm hearing his Input, Output and Elaborative Cognitive Functions (detailed below.)

He replied back on all fronts. I stopped the line because I had dragged out our interaction as much as I could and took them aside and started giving her advice on how to raise and educate him. Unfortunately I got slow bounce back from her mental field, she had maybe a soft high school education. I explained to her what I did in my career in NYC, that I was only visiting my dying parents, how to basically support his prodigiousness and most importantly not to be frightened, obstructionistic towards it and how to basically nurture it by always coaching him with materials a year or two older than him. Luckily there was a teacher behind them who "heard" what I did and was able to support my diagnosis and prescription. If he can survive his family being limited and get attached to school, school and teachers should be able to help and compensate his family's intellectual lack. He's got an 80% shot because he was verbal, polite, attentive, extroverted, special but not arrogant nor oppressed by it.

His Cognitive Functions "buckets", at least at an Input level were pretty full, unusual for someone so young but probably due to intervening education from others around him---siblings, his father, grandparents, though not his mother. Her role will be more of emotional ballast and guide to ensure he's accepted socially into the family structure and not ostracized for how advanced he can become.

How I Listen

When I was about 15 I became annoyed at the amount of talking to me people were doing, the constant sharing, the oversharing. I was like Guinan from Star Trek, people strangers even would just walk up to me and start sharing. In my reading, I came across the Road Less Traveled and Peck talks about imagining one’s self as a giant ear when listening to others. That’s how I am listening to you. I tend to dislike the telephone but if we are on it people often stop talking and ask if I’m there and I’m there—-I’m just listening to you. I’m seeing your thoughts, connect, disconnect, build, disintegrate, fly around.

I am listening to you.

Most people are rarely listened to in much the way a therapist listens to you. By putting themselves aside and being present. The only difference is that from casual listening to a friend or family or stranger, I’m paying attention to, putting little tags onto, what I “hear”, I’m seeing if a theory from someone/somewhere else fits this neural pathway of information you’re sharing. I am in very deep, a much deeper way than sound, listening to you. The Aboriginal people call it Dadirri.

Dadirri means inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It is a 'tuning in' experience with the specific aim to come to a deeper understanding of the beauty of nature (and another person). Dadirri recognizes the inner spirit that calls us to reflection and contemplation of the wonders of all God's creation.

The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

What I’m Listening For

Ok, there are 28 Cognitive Functions. (inserted below in detail!)

I teach it as buckets to interrupted students. so that they are aware of the intellectual/psychic surgery I am doing on them. Students can feel it. It’s better, if like the dentist, I explain to you what I’m doing, why and how the work in front of you improves—-fills a Cognitive bucket.

12 are Input based,
12 Elaboration based,
4 Output based.

It almost aligns perfectly to grades pre-k-5, 6-8th, 9-12th.

There's some overlap. But it continues into adulthood so when I’m talking/listening I can hear how many of your “buckets” are filled and cooperatively working together. They have to cooperatively work together in order for not intelligence (which is basic consciousness) but smarts, thinking, potentiality to be evident, even if the person is under-educated.

28 Cognitive Strategies
adapted from Reuven Fueurstein
(his work is below in the Bibliography)

Cognitive Strategies

Input
(Quantity and quality of data gathered.)

Use planning behaviors.
Focus perception on specific stimulus.
Control impulsivity.
Explore data systematically.
Use appropriate and accurate labels.
Organize space using stable systems of reference.
Orient data in time.
Identify constancies across variations.
Gather precise and accurate data.
Consider two sources of information at once.
Organize data (parts of a whole.)
Visually transport data.

Elaboration
(Efficient Use of Data)

Identify and define the problem.
Select relevant cues.
Compare data.
Select appropriate categories of time.
Summarize data.
Project relationship of data.
Use logical data.
Test hypothesis.
Build inferences.
Make a plan using the data.
Use appropriate labels.
Use data systematically.

Output
(Communication of elaboration and input)

Communicate clearly the labels and processes.
Visually transport data correctly.
Use precise and accurate language.
Control impulsive behavior

To my adult students, I listen for if and how long it takes the ball to come back, if at all out of the nebula, for the probe to ping me back.

Potentiality, Yes
One young man asked me at a job, aside from my teaching work, about how to get into college, the different application systems. He listened, took a few notes. (Probe launched as in an hour I compressed the info, packed and launched it at him.) That was say February. Silence for months but he had taken notes, so I didn't push or bring it up. July he mentions he's submitted his application to start that September undergraduate, he's going into his second year, easing towards Engineering and I have sent a few more data filled probes into him, some light suggestions, a gifted book or two. He'll make it. Because he took notes and questioned me for an hour. Resilience, attentiveness, curiosity.

Potentiality, No
Another young man regularly passes by and asks me about my writing but he's not talking to me, he's talking to me to talk about himself. He is college educated but he lacks people skills and he holds himself physically with what looks like fear or trepidation. Initially I can be intimidating because I don't suffer fools, I don't change my tone or Incisiveness for anyone but children, the retarded , and animals but he's known me for awhile now. His anxiety is originating within him. He wants to write, described an idea but I don't celebrate peeing in the toilet.

I Celebrate effort, product, work, even if its messy. A raggedy ball can come out of the nebula but something must come out. He hasn't produced anything to my eye yet so I'm neutral on his writing. The statistic I can offer is that of 100 people who want to write a full book, only 3 do and only 1 of the 3 publishes. The 99 I've noted over the years, 25 or so of writing, talk about it. A lot. Often. Too much. The published STFU and get the work done then we talk about it. I think he's 3 of 100 but not 1 who will publish, mainly from that trepidation, anxiety, it undermines grit. There's a simpering victomology to his personal presentation. I personally find such anxiety, cloying, disgusting so I'm biased in my own assessment but rarely am I then blind to outcome. Though college educated he is not taking seriously the value of his existence, the work his ancestors did to get him to this point.

What Doesn’t Work
Adults, students, who within the first five minutes must compete, beat or try to intellectually match me within our engagement, within the first three years of interaction, are not going to advance. A mentees job is to absorb not try to dominate. I know those aren't going anywhere not due to my own ego but I know that I am engaging with soft gloves on, intending not to harm, but that's not true for the rest of the world. Now I have met some amazing prodigious people, high neuron activity, strong myelin in place who are operating at a peak level.

I can handle that.

I enjoy that in fact.

I’ve had two friends/co-workers who over the years, one is dead, were like playing Masters level tennis with. It was like when Serena and Venus comes onto the court. We’re equals, it’s simply technique that shows difference. One is an autodidact who has a high level job with a law firm in their IT department, highly unusual for a woman and the other completed two science based Masters degrees and then suddenly died of pneumonia. Hands down two of the smartest people I have met in my lifetime. And I’ve met maybe a dozen. Talking to them was like I could finally open up the engine on my own mind and we would just zoom through ideas, thoughts, ideologies. It was magical.

However, If I feel irritation or insult at you as a student, if I need a break, if you press me to psychically knock you on your ass, you regularly are revolting to others. They will get rid of you, not hire you, avoid you, cut you off. The umbrage to challenge the Master, the Mentor is not simply disrespectful but also foolhardy. Smart people don't try to hurt each other intellectually, usually.

Teachers even the crusty, bitchy ones are the patient people in the universe. No one else voluntarily cares besides your momma and she's not too fond of you either after all of these years.

Under Resourced/Poor Students
A couple of students I put a lot of contact/time into, trying to work the mediation process of 3-5 years (Ruby Payne’s estimate) as a target. I suspended my blink assessment of. One panned out, has moved on to college, still sort of stuck but shifting. Slowly.

A few others have gotten stuck due to poverty and fear. The biggest fear I would say there is to shifting out of poverty at their space is to leave their family of origin. That would feel like psychic suicide and success would be the actual leaving. They are therefore stuck in a cognitive dissonance that manifests as poverty.

That stuck time manifests into STDs, having out of wedlock children, drugs, bad habits, no GED, no college---which passively robs them of being in a social group that would help them move along--- their peer group then by default becomes the folk of low abilities, expectations, outcomes. Lack of metastases to further and deeper lack of. People often sabotage their own lives with things that look normal to the rest of us—-like having children, when they can’t afford to have children. Having children, in poverty confers manhood and womanhood. Manhood not able to be conferred in any other way and womanhood—-becoming a mother—-the highest rank for women, in poverty.

When Can I Tell Potentiality
First five minutes, flat. Within an hour if I have time to fully assess so that I have a mental Map of balls to throw in. Then more specifically why, within a semester to a year, I can see your future as I calculate in all of your issues. I often play a game with students on the NYC subway., I ask them to point someone out as we’re traveling. I then tell them the person’s family history, their social class, their educational level. People don’t realize that a Teacher is like a Surgeon or a Doctor. We can spot cancer. We can spot injuries. We can spot tumors and wounds. All without sophisticated machinery. Much is demanded of Teachers but our skills are often diminished.

Treat Teachers like a Heart Surgeon. After 7 to 10 years on the job, we know much more about the whole process of Education than students who sat in a classroom. Imagine it this way—-a 10 year old comes up to you and tells you how they know what it’s like to be a parent, a 40 year old adult, to manage life and bills and drama and relationships and you’re doing it all wrong. How would you feel? Your immediate thought would be 10 years isn’t enough from a 10 year old perspective to understand you. And then you would think there’s a host of complex reasons and issues that flood into a 40 year old choices and issues.

I often tell the students of lesser future outcomes:
"You can't hear me now but you will in ten years. Your problem will then be twofold: I will no longer be available to you and you'll have a decades products of questionable thinking and choices to fix before you can progress . Your obstinacy doesn't insult me because I see each thought of resistance as a shovel of dirt on your own grave. Knock yourself out."

Addendum June 29th 2018:
Thank you for the Views and Upvotes. I honestly never expect it but do try and go back and clarify, clean up the posts and add in depth bibliography. Here goes a list of teh common questions I’ve gotten in dozens of emails in the past few days.

How My Teaching Career Progressed
I was put into teaching environments where I wanted my students, young and older adults alike, to succeed but there were either low resources or low expectations or low self esteem. Or all three in abundance. I then looked at my own teaching ability as part of the problem, was I aware of all of the sophisticated methodlogies available?

I TA’ed undergrad for 4 years, then went corporate, still corporate training for a handful of years I then went into school administration for 2 and then non profit teaching for 5–7 (in-between going back to school) and finally consulting for 3–5. In there, I decided to go back to school, to Columbia to learn how to teach better. I have about 40,000 teaching hours over 20 years.

Furthering My Education
I liken it to The Empire Strikes Back where Luke knows he knows and can use the Force but knows that he needs further guidance and training from a true Master.

That synergy, of my previous multiple years of ability in the midst of my non-profit work and then consulting on educational projects, I got to practice immediately with what I knew and was learning the advanced skills of, which is unusual. Generally a teacher learns the methodologies then goes into the field and often doesn’t return for an upgrade as they either burn out and leave or they don’t feel the need to formally improve by again subjecting themselves to the instruction and submission to a Master. In classes as a student I can bring up now my experience and questions based upon real live situations and I can then immediately take something I’ve learned and go put it into action in my classes.

My Methodology of Learning How To Teach Better
One, I videotape about 80% of my classes at Columbia and consulting when I’m teaching—-so I can review my ability.

Two I use Master Teacher’s suggestions and tools immediately, like Dr. Stephen Brookfield designed an excellent student/class evaluator called a CIQ—Critical Incident Questionnaire—-a 5 question anonymous questionnaire that is filled out by students at the conclusion of every class session and left to the side for the Instructor to review and respond to the following class.

He taught it to me on a Monday, I put it into play in all of my classes on a Tuesday and it was like I’d been teaching in the dark for 10+ years. It literally is one of the Top 3 tools that I’ve learned to use and now will not do any form of teaching without because it is so elucidating and illuminating. It is a passive form of “Bouncing the Ball Back” into the heads of students/the class and getting direct feedback. Discussion as a Way of Teaching holds a lot of these techniques for evaluation and CIQs in classroom settings.

Secondly, yes, in many ways I am stripping down a person. Not that I think people are not complex nor do I judge people as simplistic but I instead see people, psyches, as within patterns. My work then is to have enough reflective patterns in my head to apply patches to your head so that I get a more accurate picture.

Ruby Payne, learning in minute detail about Social Class and Poverty, something I was seeing in my students for a decade before Columbia, has been another of my Top 3 tools. While I know that there’s intellectual issues with her work, the global pattern of it is sound. What most people do with patterns is they want a red pattern to fit an exactly red mind. Instead I apply the red pattern piece to Quadrant 5,8, and 12 of a students mind/experience and other patterns to other areas. I’m never applying a one stop pattern to everyone.

I’ve mentioned Payne’s Frame for Understanding Poverty previously but I would also like to point out Boys in Poverty: A Framework for Understanding Dropout.

Removing the Mask:How to Identifying and Develop Giftedness in Students from Poverty

Thirdly, I’m also applying the work of about three or four prominent psychologists, sociologists, teachers in a synthesis:

Reuven Feuerstein’s Beyond Smarter: Mediated Learning and the Brain's Capacity for Change

Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi

Annette Lareau’s Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2nd Edition with an Update a Decade Later

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (Masterminds Series)

Paul Ekman’s What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) (Series in Affective Science)

Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu’s response, An African Centered Response to Ruby Payne's Poverty Theory to Ruby Payne’s work is thorough though I would say that he uses her more as a springboard target than pointed blame at her theories. In truth he expands upon her research so much more than refuting it. I would say though that naming your book Expanding on Poverty Theory isn’t as catchy as throwing in a famous person’s name and work to springboard your expansive work from.

Lastly, my goal is the edification and advancement of as many students as possible. Between my teaching, writing, articles/blogs, books and TV show my estimate is that I can permanently infect, perform intellectual shift inception on 2 million people over the next 50 years of my lifetime and then another 10 million through the 75+ years that my work will exist in copyrighted form.

However, a personal caveat that I had to learn as discernment within myself as I teach teachers not get burned out, so that I don’t burn out myself. I am not your friendly folksy house call doctor. I am not your hand holding, patting, put a band aid on your boo boo physician.

I’m a skilled Educational Surgeon.

(I like Ben Casey, loved the show. I was never offended by him. lol)

I’m on the short list to call when you’re in trauma. I walk into spaces, whether children, adults or whole schools, and I expect your immediate attention, respect and undivided attention. If you don’t have time for that, can’t give that me, can’t pull it together. I move on. There are too many people, just like a trauma surgeon has to decide in war, who need my work, my skills, I don’t have time for dissent, issues, drama, psychodrama, etc..

I had to learn that in my first couple of years at Columbia, the value of my work, my time, the capacity to cut students loose. I also had to learn that I am not the personality type where I’m going to hugsy wugsy you into success. Get up. Get to work. Then tomorrow? Get up and get to work again.

Some of the emails to me are looking for that person. There are too many people who not only need education but desperately want it for me to spend my time sorting through the recalcitrant and unsure.

I have fired many a mentee for attempting to waste my time. I will get you to the Promise Land, like Harriet Tubman, but don’t hem and haw and have all kinds of thumb up your ass hesitancy. I don’t have time for that and frankly, my high success rate means that I can’t take on too many losers.