What is Improving Your Child’s Learning Power?
This Learning Power course is a 5-lesson interactive video-based training program that teaches you how to use more powerful learning strategies to transform your children’s learning capabilities. It’s on-demand - you take the lessons when you want, we give you the tools and ideas, then you coach and lead your kids to better learning.
The methods can be taught to kids of almost any age who have independent study and projects. Your outcome is this - more effective and efficient learners who have confidence in their abilities to learn. Kids at every skill level will get better at learning once they know how to use science-based learning methods and strategies.
Whether you're just starting, or are an already established homeschooler, Improving Your Child’s Learning Power will challenge you to let go of wrong assumptions about learning, show you how to embrace better learning strategies and mindsets, and prepare you to support your child’s transformation to an expert learner. Expert learners know how to use science-based learning strategies, methods, and habits to learn faster and better. They can retain and recall better.
The course is flexible and gives you many choices. You have many materials you can adapt and use for kids of almost any age.
How does Improving Your Child’s Learning Power work?
Improving Your Child’s Learning Power is released in 5 weekly lessons with easy to follow videos, with downloadable resources, and workbooks. You have access to a vast library of materials you can use to coach your kids to better learning.
This Learning Power course includes interactive materials you can reuse multiple times with each child including mini-lessons you lead, exercises, checklists, readings, discussion guides, and links to videos you watch together and discuss. Once you sign up, you're a buyer for life. You can retake the program for free as long as the program exists
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Are your child’s study habits and strategies today strong enough to support college-level work in the future?
Let’s face it, homeschooling is extremely rewarding – but at times it can be very challenging. It’s hard to find the time to do all the things you need to do to teach your kids properly. It’s difficult to keep coming up with educational ideas you know will work. Since you weren’t trained as a teacher, it’s hard to know when you are doing the right things educationally. When you know better learning methods and strategies, you can find better and more efficient ways to help your kids learn.
Research has found that most students aren’t using the best learning strategies. They waste time on inefficient methods that don’t result in the retention and retrieval of information you expect. Cal Newport, noted learning expert, tells us, “Most of the strategies your child is using for learning are inefficient, and just plain wrong.” When you allow poor methods to persist, you must spend a great deal of unnecessary time on review.
Many once enthusiastic young learners start to lose their passion for learning by high school age. This happens because they don’t have the learning mindset and skills to tackle increasingly more difficult subjects, frustrated by difficulties they haven’t experienced before.
Preparing to get into the right college is competitive and expensive, and the pressures on the child to perform academically and in extracurricular activities begin to grow. The inefficient learner will find it hard to balance their time between these demands. The child who knows how to learn will not.
I know you’re here because you want to help your child succeed academically, which is why I created this unique course specific to helping homeschooling parents. All the methodologies presented here are scientifically-based and proven to work in the real world. You’ll learn how to help your child become an expert learner using better learning strategies and methods!
This five-lesson online course will show you how to jump-start your child on the path to college-readiness. In as little as 45 minutes per weekday, your child can become an expert learner, which means that he has the confidence, skills, and command of better strategies to learn at least 2X faster. This is the resolution to the above challenges meaning your homeschool instruction will be supported and magnified by smarter and much more productive independent study.
As I said before, this course is the only one designed for homeschooling parents and is based on scientific learning principles. We make the science of learning easy to understand and apply.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- Learn how to use over 20 evidence-based learning strategies and how to develop more than 20 routines that promote more rapid learning. Discover the secrets “A” students use that “B” students don’t
- How to assess and monitor study practices so you can encourage their improvement - start on the right foot with an understanding of where you are today.
- You can confidently coach your child to higher levels of learning maturity with the 4D coaching model. We provide step-by-step guidance for you to succeed.
- Greatly enhance your understanding of how effective learning occurs - you can improve and leverage your teaching skills and maximize your time.
- Save instructional time by moving learning to your child’s more powerful independent study skills. Expert learning skills mean fewer unnecessary reviews.
- Learn to lead deeper conversations with your children to improve study planning, time and energy management, note-taking, use better study routines, and much more.
- Help your child learn the skills needed to move forward on the path to college readiness.
- Help your child discover the secrets of deliberate practice and how it improves learning power. Tap into the great capacity your child has within!
- Improve your child’s capacity to learn more through better strategies like retrieval practice, interleaving, spaced practice, the Feynman technique, the Pomodoro technique, the Leitner flashcard system, Cornell notes, and much more.
- Learn how to have deeper conversations on improving study habits, better routines, better mindset, reducing procrastination and multi-tasking, and how to be a more efficient and effective learner.
- Unleash learning power using new techniques from the science of learning to gain exciting learning breakthroughs for your children.
There is no other course like this available to homeschooling parents!
The course is thoughtfully designed so that each lesson builds on the prior ones. Each lesson begins with a short video explaining what will be covered, then takes you into a full array of useful resources. You have so many learning aids - conversation guides, readings, case studies, checklists, and links to supporting short videos you can watch together.
Use these tools to help you have deeper conversations with your child about smarter study techniques and how they can learn more in less time.
Fun activities, such as Idea Generators, Family Exercises, and quick quizzes help you apply your new knowledge. You’ll choose from a variety of independent learning assignments to help your teens discover new ways to learn more effectively.
This course delivers - it has many powerful resources for you. There are over 50 mini-lessons you can select from to teach these skills to your kids. All are interactive and help children discover their learning power.
Of the many takeaways you will get from this course, the custom Learning Strategies Assessment will help you identify effective and ineffective current study practices and offer ideas on how to improve them. Learn how to conduct deeper conversations with your child on better learning.
To help improve your child’s learning power, enroll now!
“I’ve benefited greatly from Jim’s patience and incredible insights into lifelong learning, deep work, and working smarter. In these lessons, Jim has distilled various important topics about the science of learning and delivered it in a way for you to coach your child. Not only will your child apply this information today in an academic setting but also tomorrow when they’ve graduated to a professional environment. As Jim likes to say, ‘This is really great stuff’.”
Mother of 2 Teens and Corporate Executive
Hi! I’m James, and I founded the Center for Homeschooling because of my love and commitment to lifelong learning. My life and my career has centered around my passion for helping people and watching them learn and grow. I come from a family of many educators, and this calling was passed to me. After a long and successful career in business, I founded the Center as a logical extension and the next step in my work pursuing better ideas to help others experience the joy of learning.
My passion for learning and teaching began early – first as a young high school teacher where I taught Chinese and Russian History and eventually teaching graduate courses in Engineering at Santa Clara University.
My curiosity took me to various fields, and I’ve seen my role helping bright and curious people expand their capabilities grow and transform. I’ve run human resource development departments in Silicon Valley and I’ve successfully taught skills and new ideas to over 20,000 employees, managers, and professionals. My work has ranged from helping presidents of major international corporations to training truck drivers delivering a famous San Francisco sourdough bread. My broad portfolio of work has kept me on my toes and well-grounded. I wouldn’t change this experience for anything.
For over 25 years I worked as a coach for senior managers and executives, most of them in Silicon Valley, where I learned to hone my skills in thinking critically and the art of helping others to change. I’ve learned how to work with bright and successful (yet often headstrong) people who by nature are often resistant to change. I have learned how to present ideas in a way that people - from differing backgrounds - can understand and relate to. This has been an important insight to bring to the design of this course.
Learning is a two-way street - I have learned much from some of the brightest scientists, leaders, and experts – those who know how to build great things and aspire to change the world with cutting edge innovation. Their thinking has transformed me and is deeply ingrained in what I do.
I’ve also learned the importance of making things practical - great ideas are only useful when they are distilled and translated into actionable steps that work in the real world. This comes from teaching front -line workers like truck drivers, customer service reps, health care workers, and also scientists. I believe I bring the ability to empathize and respect the pain points and perspectives of others. You will see this reflected in the course design and how I teach it.
Four years ago, I felt impassioned to take my professional consulting and coaching experience and bring it to where I see a greater need – to homeschooling parents and kids who passionately want to learn. This has become my new assignment; this is my “why” and the reason I am here to help.
From many interesting conversations over the years with parents, I slowly came to a discovery moment. This realization struck me - the abundance of great ideas on learning, remembering, and critical thinking that I took for granted (because they are accepted and utilized in scientific and business circles) has not been shared more broadly with families and their kids!
That light bulb moment led me to question – Why aren’t these principles and techniques my clients are using being taught more broadly to families and children? This seemed an oddly backward situation, and an important but deep gap to fill. So, I set out to curate and share the best practices and ideas from the science of learning, and other related disciplines, into creating courses for the homeschooling community. What first was illusive became obvious - homeschoolers are most committed to helping your kids learn, why not promote a greater good helping you?
Once I began, it took a while - I’ve spent over three years developing this course distilling the wealth of great ideas and designing materials in a way you can explain and encourage them with your children. I’ve drawn from various scientific disciplines, such as education, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, human behavior, project management, process improvement, metacognition, and even organizational behavior. Then I adapted this knowledge into easy-to-use materials, such as learning guides and lessons, as ideas easily taught to transform your children’s learning skills.
Because of neuroscience, we now know that everyone, at any age, and any degree of success, can become better learners. I also know the same coaching principles that work with PhDs can work with 10-year old’s – the same principles of human behavior apply when adapted to the audience and the situation. The potential for the brain to grow, and the mind to improve, is almost infinite. Let’s tap into this.
We’ve reached an inflection point, the recently evolved online course technologies, combined with this vast new knowledge of the science of learning, takes us to a new opening. It provides us with breakthrough opportunities to teach and coach kids how to become expert learners, committed to lifelong learning. This is an important goal to be achieved. Through this, we can provide the foundation for our kids to become complete, confident, fulfilled, and well-rounded adults.
I’m glad you’re here – please join me on this journey!
StartWelcome to Lesson 1!
PreviewFun Lesson 1 Pre-Quiz: How Much Do You Know?
StartLesson One Parent Workbook
StartWatch Lesson One Video (16:56)
StartReading: Do You have College Readiness?
PreviewCase Reading: Ben Franklin - How He Learned to Study Smarter
StartFamily Exercise: How to Upgrade Your Family Values on Learning
StartReading: Helicopter Parenting and Learning
StartReading:: The Journey to Student as "Self-Teacher"
StartMini-Library of Learning Terms
StartPost-Quiz: How Much Did You Learn?
StartSummary and Getting Ready for Lesson Two
StartWelcome to Lesson Two!
PreviewPre-Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Learning?
StartLesson Two Parent Workbook
StartWatch Lesson Two Video (16:35)
PreviewFamily Exercise: The Amazing Human Brain Conversation
StartFamily Exercise: Congratulations on Your Failure!
StartReading: 12 Amazing Strategies that Will Change the Way You Learn
StartReading: Desirable Difficulties - 4 Takeaways
StartReading: Retrieval Practice - The Secret to Power Learning
StartBonus Reading: The Power of Tiny Gains
PreviewBonus Video: The Dunning Kruger Effect (1:21)
StartBonus Video: Bjork's Deliberate Practice (2:03)
PreviewLesson 2 Post Quiz: How Much Did I Learn?
Frequently Asked Questions
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How to Attend
Take it at Your Convenience: This is an independent, self-paced course - you begin and complete each lesson when if it fits your schedule.
Access: Watch it anywhere you have access to the internet.
To Enroll: Press the “Join Now” button. That’s it, you’ll receive instant access to the course
Ready to Join? Sign up now and begin the path to better learning power!