Great Archived Time Magazine Cover Article on How to Be A Better Student (This one is for parents & students!)

It's every parent's hope. One that is nourished by that first toothless grin of recognition, by the infant gaze of almost uncanny alertness and then by the stunning acquisition of words, of ABCs and 1-2-3s. "My child is bright. My child will excel in school. My child will make me proud." Industries are built on such aspirations. There are black-and-white mobiles to stimulate the senses and tapes of Mozart for Your Mind. Later come investments in Reader Rabbit software, encyclopedias and lessons to train every facet of body, brain and soul. But a child's success cannot be purchased, nor, to the frustration of parents everywhere, can it be wished into being.
What does it take to make an excellent student? The student who not only sits at the head of the class (and the horn section, the swim team, the debate society and yearbook) but also enjoys the respect and friendship of teachers and peers? The encouragement of a parent or two certainly provides a foundation. But to find out more, TIME interviewed dozens of superb students from across the country, along with their parents, teachers, mentors and friends. What emerged is some clear patterns and some lessons well worth studying.

THE SWEAT FACTOR
The brick house on a treelined street in Newark, N.J., is impeccable: the iron fence gleams with fresh black paint; the emerald grass looks newly mowed. Inside, the carefully arranged furnishings glow as if purchased yesterday. Everything in the Paliz family home is a reflection of hard work and pride in accomplishment, especially the Palizes themselves.
Bismarck Jonathan Paliz, 17, has watched his immigrant parents struggle and sacrifice to make a life for the family. His father, born in Ecuador, slowly built up a real estate business. His Puerto Rican-born mother Wadette, an administrative assistant, began working at 18 as an office clerk, taking courses to improve her skills and minimal time off for the birth of each of her three children. The family suffered major setbacks when their home was badly damaged twice by fire. Watching his parents rebuild, Bismarck, the eldest child, learned the value of persistence. "My parents have always been fighters," he says. "They are my mentors. They've led by example. They've kept me on track."
The honors track, that is. Bismarck, aptly called Bizzy by friends, was valedictorian at his middle school, and is contending for that honor next June at Science High School, one of Newark's "magnet" schools. He is a star player on the school's math and chemistry teams, and is so computer-savvy that the union pension and benefit fund where his mother works pays him $15 an hour after school to solve technical problems. He may not need the money for college, though. Even before he had thought about applying, he won a $40,000 scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Teachers call Bismarck one of the best students they have ever seen. "He's in the top 1%, not just in terms of ability but in terms of positive attitude, initiative and motivation," says Susan Rocco, who has been teaching math for 24 years. More surprising is that Bismarck is not regarded by schoolmates as a hopeless nerd who hangs only with fellow brainiacs. "He's not a teacher's pet," attests his buddy Ruben Ramirez, a self-described jock. "You'd think with all that work, he'd be boring and uptight, but he's loose and he's real funny." Bismarck, for his part, says he just likes to work hard: "I'm happier knowing I'm doing the most I can and achieving the highest I can."
What Bismarck has in abundance is a quality found in all top students: he takes pleasure not merely in the achievement but in the effort. "Students like Bismarck are not expecting things just to happen for them," notes his chemistry teacher, Bruce Karpe. "They're not expecting to be geniuses. They know they have to do it on their own."
A willingness to work flat-out is a trait found almost universally in the best students, says Karen Arnold, a Boston College associate professor of higher education. Arnold has spent 17 years following the lives of 81 Illinois students who graduated at the top of their class. These valedictorians, she found, relied less on native intelligence than on effort. "They were hardworking. They were persistent. School was at the center of their lives."
How do kids learn this? Usually, it's the same way Bismarck learned: having parents who show through their own behavior that persistence pays. A new book by Judith Rich Harris, The Nurture Assumption, has caused a sensation by claiming that parents matter less than peers in shaping a child. Educators tend to disagree. Parents of good students play an essential part as role models, says Janet Won, acting principal at P.S. 124, an elementary school in New York City's Chinatown that runs a "gifted and talented" program. They've taught their kids to "persevere and ask questions, and shown them that hard work will pay off. When the kids make mistakes, it's looked upon as a chance to learn to do something better, rather than as something punitive." The best students, adds Won, "have parents who have responded to their curiosity, nourished and supported things they're interested in and opened up their world."

THE JOY OF LEARNING
Enjolique Aytch of Atlanta was not fated to be a good student. When she was 10 months old, she suffered a seizure and fell into a coma for 24 hours. Doctors warned her mother Cheryl that Enjolique would probably be mentally disabled. Cheryl didn't buy that prognosis. She was convinced that both Enjolique and her older brother Richard were "naturally intelligent" and that all she had to do was offer the right stimulation. "Babies have such a thirst for knowledge! If you can capture their imagination right then, it seems to last forever, but if you let that window close, it's lost forever."

Enjolique, now 17, has emerged a luminous, perceptive teenager who excels at debate, ranks in the top 15% of her class and served last year as class vice president and co-captain of the majorettes. She radiates enthusiasm for school and is one of a small number of African-American students in the advanced-placement classes at Grady High School. "There are others that could do it," she says, "but they get caught up in the stereotypical, 'AP, that's nerdy.'" Physics teacher Delphia Bryant admires Enjolique's can-do spirit: "She's one of those people who will rule the world."
Her mother, a divorced truck driver, was herself a good student before dropping out of all-black Spelman College. She took to "opening the window" with gusto. When teaching her kids the difference between hot and cold, for instance, she made learning fun by steaming up the sink with hot water, rather than waiting to scold a child for venturing too near a hot stove. "It's all in the presentation," she says with a twinkle.
What Cheryl Aytch did for her daughter--what the best preschool teachers all do--was to incorporate learning into everyday life and make it lively. "This means that instead of telling a five-year-old about apples or reading about them in a book, you go pick apples, you peel apples and make apple sauce and apple pies," says Wendy Derrow, a family therapist in Orlando, Fla. "It's that pure, healthy, aren't-we-lucky-to-be-together environment that grows great learners."
Good students tend to have what teachers call a broad "fund of knowledge." They've been taken places; they've seen a bit of the world. If the family resources are slim, it might only be to the city park, a train yard or the kitchen of a restaurant. But the experience has been brought to life for them. "I find the students I love will often say to me, 'My mom took me here' or 'My dad and I did this.' You know these parents are in their lives," says Carol Klavins, who's been teaching middle-school science in central Florida for 31 years. "So many kids never mention their parents!"

THE BEST SAT PREP
Teachers lucky enough to be part of the pre-International Baccalaureate program at Robinson Middle School in Wichita, Kans., are used to classes full of bright, motivated kids. But even in this heady environment, Tyler Emerson stands out. Tyler's 12-year-old mind runs deep, notes one of his sixth-grade teachers, Lura Atherly. "He questions things, but not with surface questions. He asks extending questions: Why? What if...?" When the class studied the Russian Revolution, Tyler wanted to discuss what would have happened if the Romanovs had escaped: What if they had come back after the fall of communism? His writing also reflects an uncommon mix of the imaginative and the methodical. He prefers to write on deadline: "It feels like a deadline unlocks a chest where all my creativity is locked," he explains.

Tyler's thirsty, questing mind was forged in a house full of books. His parents, both lawyers, and his grandmother, who lives with them in Wichita's affluent College Hill, are passionate readers. They began reading to him nightly when he was a baby. By 15 months, he was turning the pages of his Dr. Seuss books, already aware that something wonderful was going on. Tyler's parents still read to his brother John, 8. With Ty, they discuss the Tolkien and Asimov books that are his current favorites. "This house could collapse from the weight of books," says his dad Jeff.
As director of admissions at highly selective Williams College in Massachusetts, Tom Parker is often asked by parents, "What should I do to increase my child's scores on the Scholastic Assessment Tests or make him a better college candidate?" Start early, Parker tells them. "The best SAT-preparation course in the world is to read to your children in bed when they're little. Eventually, if that's a wonderful experience for them, they'll start to read for themselves." Parker says he has never met a kid with high scores on the verbal section of the sat who wasn't a passionate reader. "At the breakfast table, these kids read the cereal boxes. That's what readers do!"
The benefits of reading to kids may seem obvious, but parents tend to stop just when the child's own ability to get through a book is taking flight. Don't quit then! says Regie Routman, a nationally recognized expert on literacy and author of several books for teachers. "Some of the best readers and writers--even in middle school and high school--have parents who are still reading to them. They'll be reading Beowulf and Macbeth and just enjoying the love of language with them."

GRADES AREN'T EVERYTHING
Stephen George Jr. moves through the hallways at Brookline High, near Boston, with the loping grace of a fine athlete. Girls smile at him and are rewarded with his big, Denzel Washington dazzler. Boys reach out to slap his palm. Stephen, 17, is irresistible. Kids are impressed that he's snagged one of the world's coolest after-school jobs: ball boy for the Boston Celtics. Teachers adore his diligence and willingness to stretch beyond what is required. And everyone is amazed that despite his achievements as a student (3.4 average), an athlete (baseball, track and golf), a musician (honors choir) and volunteer (Big Brother, among others), he remains, as headmaster Robert Weintraub puts it, "the nicest guy on the planet, the most decent guy in the school."
Academic competition can get pretty ugly, especially in the home stretch of high school, when valedictory honors and college applications loom. "We have students who would cut off somebody's feet to get ahead," says chemistry teacher Bob Cunningham. "Stephen's not like that. He's actually helpful to others in the lab, which would be anticompetitive." English teacher Denise Bacote agrees, "Some kids say, 'Give me an A.' Stephen asks what he can do to earn an A." Bacote recalls when Stephen insisted on revising an article he wrote for a journalism class, even though it was already graded. "He did another version just to see how to do it better. I think that's the key to student success--working not just for a grade but to improve skills."

Read more: How To Make A Better Student: Their Eight Secrets of Success - TIME http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989334,00.html#ixzz2jsox69fI

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