Tiny Habits & Academic Success with Jennifer Lee

Judy Oskam: 0:04

Do you want to know how to help your child succeed in the classroom and academically? Then this episode is for you. You'll learn some actionable strategies you can use immediately. Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oskam and I'm a university professor, Tiny Habits certified coach and Gallup Strengths coach. I'm excited to share my interview with Jennifer Lee. Jennifer is the assistant director of the Tiny Habits Academy. With a master's of education in teaching and learning and 20 plus years experience in the classroom, Jennifer has the heart of a teacher. She's fascinated with how learning shapes behavior and how behavior impacts our learning. You might want to take some notes during our conversation.

Jennifer Lee: 0:55

Judy, it's so good to be here. I've been in the educational world literally my entire life. One of my earliest childhood memories is we have this little red barn and my dad gifted it to me and I turned it into a little red schoolhouse for all the neighborhood kids. I love that. From the time I was young, I was teaching my cousins to read and I was, you know, tutoring my brother, and so it's just always been part of who I am. In fact, one of my projects in fifth grade was coming up with a curriculum to teach the kindergartners about dinosaurs, and it was very boring for them. It was very exciting for me, but I've always just kind of had a teacher heart in that I love information and I love sharing it.

Judy Oskam: 1:33

Well, what drew you to that? Do you think it's such a young age? I mean, what? What do you think it is? You know, we talk a lot about on the show, about change and creativity, and you talk about teaching, and that's a combination of both. But what, what did you find interesting about that?

Jennifer Lee: 1:47

Yeah, I think one thing is just you know, anytime you go to a restaurant, you see a movie, you read a book, and it's fantastic, and we all have that innate desire to share that with other people. And I loved information, I loved learning, and so a natural outgrowth of that is I found learning so exciting and I wanted to share that with other people too. But I also saw so I was one of those Hermione Granger, Gold Star, strait A students. School was really easy for me and it was a very positive experience. My little brother was the opposite. He is diagnosed with ADHD, possibly an auditory processing disorder, and from the beginning school was a struggle for him. You know, he was butting up against teachers. He was feeling like he wasn't succeeding, he was feeling like everything was hard and that just broke my heart and when I saw the way that some teachers handled that, it made me angry. Yeah, you know, and I thought they're, these kids deserve better. Not everybody is a natural, you know, love reading, whatever, but I think everybody has a has a love of learning and sometimes that gets squashed and not right.

Judy Oskam: 2:48

So I totally agree with you. And you know, as an educator I never thought I would be an educator. I was a TV news reporter years and years ago and then I just kind of fell into doing educational videos and then ended up working in higher ed for the last 25 plus years. So but I always really got upset when I saw that faculty didn't really take the time to understand the students learning styles and how people learned. And you said your brother had an auditory processing issue so that just meant another way to reach him right. Yeah.

Jennifer Lee: 3:28

I mean it should have been, but instead it was kind of a lot more of the stick than you know any method. We're going to punish you for not doing it right, and that's pretty much the only strategy in our book. When you know there are so many ways of helping people to learn, and when you see that libel, come on that aha moment when suddenly they go oh, I get it. Yes, that's another reason for me. I just love seeing people come to that realization and the confidence that comes with that. You know that shift in identity that they get where they go, oh, wow, you know, I thought I was done, but I'm not. I thought I couldn't do this, but I can.

Judy Oskam: 3:57

Well, how much do you do you then sprinkle in then your behavior design background? How did you get from teaching into behavior design and tiny habits?

Jennifer Lee: 4:09

Yeah, it's such a natural fit. So from being the neighborhood you know little red barn teacher, I went on. I got a degree in secondary education, teaching English and Spanish. I worked at a treatment center. So it was a residential treatment center for an all-boys school, kids with behavior disorders, psychological problems, drug addictions, and for a 21-year-old brand new teacher. That was eye-opening. It was really a fantastic experience. I went on, I taught some college literature classes, so I kind of have teaching experience all over the board. But I had been homeschooling my own kids and we've been moving a lot and we finally moved back to Las Vegas and they were going to be going back to public school and I reached out to Linda Fogg Phillips, who had been a friend for quite a while but she's the director of the Tiny Habits Academy and I reached out to her as a friend because she's a mom of eight kids and I actually, growing up in a small farm town, I hadn't known a lot of working women, but I knew I wanted to go back to work and I knew I didn't want to teach full-time because it didn't fit well with where we were at in that moment. But I was just curious, I wanted to pick her brain and say how do you do this as a working mom? Tell me how this works, what does this look like? And the Tiny Habits Academy was at a point where they were experiencing some growth and she was needing to take on a right hand. And she said are you interested? And she explained a little bit about the method and immediately I just thought, oh, this is so impactful, I want to be a part of this. So that's why I came to be part of the Tiny Habits Academy. I'm the assistant director there now and I've done BJ. So BJ Fogg is the creator of the Tiny Habits Method. He's the head of Stanford's Behavior Design Lab. I've done his Behavior Design Bootcamp and every step along the way I just always think, oh, this is so applicable for students, for teachers, for parents, and so, yeah, I think it really fits really well hand in hand and things that had worked for me previously and I wasn't quite sure why. And then when I learned Behavior Design Principles, it just made so much sense.

Judy Oskam: 6:00

And so now to be able to kind of do a more intentional version of that, well, exactly and throughout, as your homeschooling and as your kids did, you homeschool throughout their whole education.

Jennifer Lee: 6:13

Only through third grade. Third grade OK. My oldest was in third grade when they went back.

Judy Oskam: 6:17

OK, so when you were homeschooling and then when they went to traditional school, if you will, how did you then build that Habiteer culture? Talk about that a little bit and how you built that in your home life and how you model that, because I think modeling is a really important part that we as parents are our kids' first teachers.

Jennifer Lee: 6:40

Oh, absolutely. If you're telling your kids to do something and you're not doing it yourself, they can see the hypocrisy there. So, one thing that we did when we were homeschooling. There are a lot of different kinds of homeschoolers and a lot of different ways to do it right, but to me it was important to make sure that we still had systems and processes in place, because I knew they'd be going back to traditional school before too long and I didn't want that adjustment to be too hard. But I also thought, hey, they're home with me. This is a great time to really instill some good habits, and so one of the things that we did at this point they were preschool and first grade, and so first thing in the morning, we set our routine. As soon as you wake up, after I go to the bathroom, they would grab a Clorox wipe and wipe their toilet down, and it was not a very good job, but if you do that every day, your toilet doesn't get too messy. Exactly so they had just a couple of chores, so we had some routines in place, but then we would talk about what do we want our routines to be, what works as a school day for us? So, yeah, from early on we were thinking about what are the routines that make this successful? And I have to tell you I was really impressed when they went back to school. In fact, it's the only district I've seen do this, but we were in Las Vegas Clark County School District, which is notorious for being probably one of the worst districts in the country, but we had fantastic teachers there and every grade level, every school. Their first assignment was the teacher would send home some age-appropriate version of think about where are you going to do your homework every day. Think about what do you need in that place, what do you need to be successful there? Think about the place itself it probably needs to be quiet and free from distractions and you need to have pencils handy and maybe scissors and glue. And so they do this in depth. The kindergartners and first graders are drawing pictures of it and the third graders are writing a paragraph about it. But that was the first thing is where are you going to do your homework each day. And then the second question was when are you going to do your homework each day? And so, ok, think about the routine of your day when you come home. Do you need a snack, do you need a break, do you need to go to baseball practice? But find that time in your day and the students and the parents would work together to identify, and they'd call it, your homework haven. Where's your homework haven, and when are you going to have the time to do that, so that you didn't wind up at the end of the day going, oh no, I have all this homework and I didn't make a plan for how I was going to get done, and I was so impressed that they set them up for success that way. And when I started learning about tiny habits, I thought, ok, they don't know about tiny habits, but they are using behavior design in such an effective way here.

Judy Oskam: 9:08

Exactly. And then how did you carry that forward? To build and stage your own house for parents who might be listening, trying to think well, how do I do that? Do I need a fancy desk? What do I need for that? What did you do?

Jennifer Lee: 9:22

Yeah, I think you work with what you've got. You work with the house that you have, the schedule that you have. If your kids are younger, it's probably a good idea to have them somewhere where they're a little bit supervised, right? We want to be realistic about our first graders' ability to stay on task if they're in their room surrounded by distracting temptations. So it varies by kid. But you do want to think about where do I have in my home that's nice and quiet. We didn't buy fancy desks or anything. When we first started off it was kitchen table and while we were homeschooling, my kitchen table. We never ate at the kitchen table because it was all covered in homeschooling. But you know, at first it was the kitchen table and we made sure you know. But if you're going to do your work at the kitchen table, you don't want to have your pencils and your scissors and everything in the office across the house. Find a place right there where everything is handy. Think about whether you need a snack and a drink of water handy, all of those things. So we would call that staging and behavior design, thinking about that environment. When the kids got a little bit older, they didn't really have room for a full desk in their bedrooms, and so we actually just put a shelf in their closet and they could roll a little office chair up to it, and then they could close the closet door on it when they were done.

Judy Oskam: 10:27

Great idea.

Jennifer Lee: 10:28

You can. You know you don't have to get fancy, you don't have to get expensive. Just thinking about you know where is the best place for this? What do we have available?

Judy Oskam: 10:36

And then how did you involve your own kids in that decision of creating those tiny habit recipes? Talk about what is a tiny habit recipe, First of all.

Jennifer Lee: 10:47

Yeah. So a tiny habit recipe, you can think of it. Bj has said this is not intentional. As a former teacher, I love it. But you can think of it as A, b, c, right? So a tiny habit recipe is made up of an anchor, a behavior and a celebration. So an anchor, that's when is this new behavior going to happen? Now the behavior part's easy. Everybody thinks of the behavior when they think of the habit. Oh, I'm going to do my homework, I'm going to practice my instrument, but you need to think about when is that going to happen, just like my kid's school was saying. So that's your anchor and you want to get really, really specific about it. Not just when I get home from baseball practice, but you know, you think about what happens there and actually usually I take off my cleats and my gear and I, you know, use the tiny habit mom helped me create to put that away where it belongs and not just dump it on the floor in the middle of the hallway, and you know. And then I usually get a drink, and that's a good moment. So after I get a drink of water after a baseball game, I will walk to my homework spot and pull out my planner or my math book or whatever that might be. So that would be the anchor after I get a drink, after my baseball game my behavior. We want to make this really tiny and doable. It's not the entire homework session, right, this is a starter step. It's something to get you going. It's something you can do in like 30 seconds or less. So I'll pull out my math book and then a really key thing, that see, celebration. We know people change best by feeling good. We're going to reward ourselves, not with a treat or you know anything like that, but it's just taking a moment to feel a positive feeling. And especially when it comes to homework, that's important because homework doesn't usually include a whole lot of positive vibes. So, anchor behavior celebration after I fill up, after I get my drink, I'll sit down with my math book and I will celebrate by high fiving myself in the mirror, something like that.

Judy Oskam: 12:32

And did you find that your kids were receptive to that when? When parents are excited, the kids always get excited too. But how did you kind of communicate with them? Because I'm about to launch a course and it's tiny habits for your child's academic success and I'm talking about a lot of these things and I'm really kind of making the point that it's age appropriate behaviors to. So it has to be age appropriate, depending on what age they are, but also that that the parents do a lot of the teaching and how they can involve their own student, their child. How did you kind of introduce the concept to?

Jennifer Lee: 13:10

them? Yeah, definitely so. Especially when I started working for the Academy, it was a good opportunity to have some explicit conversations with them. But here is a key that. So, within the tiny habits method, there are two really important mantras. One is to help people to do what they want to do and to help people feel successful. So when we go to that first one help people do what they want to do this is where we often get hung up with kids, because what do I want my kids to do? I want them to clean their room, I want to put their laundry away, I want them to do their homework and I want them to stop picking at each other. That's what I want them to do. But if you ask them what they want to do, they're going to come up with a completely different list. It's actually where I started. We sat down and I said you guys, I learned this really cool thing. It's the tiny habits method. It helps you to bring the things that you want into your life. And I taught them the method and then I said what do you want to do? Do you have something that you want to be doing every day, and this might even be something silly like well, I want to play with my little ponies every day. Cool, let's make a tiny habit recipe for that so that you make sure you get that important thing to you in your day every day, and that doesn't really, at this moment, help me with getting your room clean, but it's getting them excited about the method and especially, to bring in things. Are there things that you think you would like us to do as a family? Because now I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and say we're going to create a tiny habit recipe for something you want to our whole family to be a part of, and I'm going to show up for you and do that. So, oh, yeah, actually I think we should play a card game after dinner. That would be fun. Great, let's create a tiny habit recipe to make sure that happens. My older kid wanted to get better at the guitar, and so they came up with this one exercise that, yeah, this is what I'm going to do. Let's see, every day, after I'm done with my math, I'm going to pick up my guitar and play this riff. So when you help them to see how this method is in service of the things they want, then they get really excited about learning it, and then, later on, you can use some ninja moves to start applying this to the things that they actually need to do.

Judy Oskam: 15:10

Exactly, exactly. Well, I think that's just great advice. And what are some of the top two, two tiny habits that you've seen that really work with your kids? What would you share with?

Jennifer Lee: 15:23

So I have my younger daughter really struggles with test anxiety, and so we've done a lot of. You know she'll study and study. She'll work with the teachers. They'll say, yeah, she gets it. She sits down in the test and in that moment, you know, the anxiety is up, the nerves goes blank, all of that. And so we've talked about a lot of strategies for what do you do in that moment, and one of them that's really been helpful to her is if she sees a question and has that thought I don't know. After I think to myself I don't know, I will say, but one thing I do know about this is and that pulls her away from that fear of I don't know anything you know you get a question about the civil war and what was the battle of such and such, and I don't know. But one thing I do know, and then she'll kind of start doing some little notes to herself about that, and especially if it's an essay question, hey, you're better off writing something than writing nothing, even if it's not completely on task. So it's sort of a dual strategy of it. Pulls her into her knowing instead of her anxiety. And then by tapping into that, knowing okay, now I can work from that space and then I can give at least a partial answer. So it helps with the emotions, but it also helps with the answer. And a second recipe that was really effective. So my older kid really struggled with strong emotions. They get really frustrated, ball up their fists. And this is in kindergarten, and the kindergarten teacher was not very patient with these, you know, never hit anybody, never acted out, but just this quiet frustration. And so we talked about okay, what can you do when you're feeling that feeling? And I had read this great thing about tapping into your senses. And so I said you know, we need to do something to tap into your senses. And I had this ring that had these ridges on it that she liked to play with. So I said why don't I put that ring on a chain around your neck? And after you feel frustrated, you can grab that ring and just focus on the feeling of those ridges until you can feel. And we talked about what does it feel like to feel frustrated my heart's pounding, my face is hot, my fists want to ball up, I want to cry, you know. Okay, so when you feel that, I'm going to just focus on the feeling of those ridges until I can feel all those emotions going away and I can feel myself getting calm. And that was a really successful one for her to just tap into her emotions or to tap into her senses when she was kind of being overcome by emotion.

Judy Oskam: 17:38

I love that, and those are habits that any age person can do. I mean, we can do that, you know, with a ring or something that we have. So it's just a matter of building that and understanding what our, what our aspiration is and what we want to achieve. So I think that's great. Well, are there any other? Do you have any other guidance that for parents listening, whether they are homeschool parents or they are traditional school parents about how they can get this started in their own home?

Jennifer Lee: 18:09

Yeah. So start with the things your kids want and then you can add on the things that you want. Now, when you add on the things that you want, talk to your kids about how this serves them as well. So, if you're talking about the need to make your bed, clean your room, talk about how nice it is to come home and have a room where you're not tripping over things and you can find the things that you need. If your kids are a little bit older, talking to them about how you know you're coming up on adulthood, you're going to be off to college, you're going to have roommates, so helping people to see how does this actually fit with what you want? When we're talking about schooling, you know why is it important to you to do well in school. What is this going to do for you Long term? Short term, little kids it's better to go short term, but they can all see that this is something that I'm going to need. I want to be able to read because all my friends can read. I want to be able to read because I enjoy stories and because I want to feel like this is something I can do. So, if you can tap into why, is this actually something that's going to help you get where you want to be, and then you can really start forming some recipes, some tiny habit recipes, some new habits around those things, once you've kind of got there by in and they can see oh, you know that first fog maxim helped me do things that I want to do. You're right, I do actually want to do well in school. Now we can use this method and show you how.

Judy Oskam: 19:20

And I think, too, this is where the power of celebration comes in, and I think we're all a big believer in the power of celebration. What celebrations have worked with your kids and do you think really are impactful?

Jennifer Lee: 19:32

So when they were little, high, fiving all over the place, little kids love to celebrate with you. It's not hard to get a little kid to celebrate victory dance, you know, do the, the, the, the, glossing, that silly dance, all those things. When they get older it gets a little trickier because teenagers don't want to be traded like little kids, right? And so if you're, you know we're going to, my daughter will still go for that. My younger daughter, my older daughter, will roll her eyes and will probably never do that thing again. For us we have found being able to tap into the joy of the dog, so we have two dogs and so if we're doing something, yeah, high five the dog, they'll, high five the dog, they won't, high five me. But also having a celebration that reminds them why this is important to them. So for my older one, we had a few conversations about how being helpful around the house sets you up to be a good roommate in college, how you know getting this assignment done is going to help you to get to the university that you want to. And for that kid, when she succeeds at something, just a quiet nod is actually a lot more powerful than a really exuberant victorious celebration. So you have to kind of know your kid. But if your celebration can acknowledge why this is important to them, so a quiet nod, sometimes I'll be like, oh, you nailed it, you are ready for college, you know. And having that acknowledgement that I'm not treating you like a child but I'm acknowledging your success as an adult. Yeah, you're going to be great in college. Hey, your future boss is going to love that. Yes, you know things like that. That's a really great celebration for an older kid who doesn't want to be treated like a child.

Judy Oskam: 21:01

I love that. I love that. Well, jennifer, I really appreciate you sharing some of your tips and tricks with us, and I know you have a class on the Tiny Habits Library. Talk for a minute about your class, you and Shabnam's class.

Jennifer Lee: 21:14

Yeah, I do Tiny Habits for Brain Health, so this is something I got really interested in in my teaching years as I'm learning about how do our brains work when you're young, and that led to interest in how do our brains stay good when we're old. So Dr Shabnam Das Kar, she is a functional medicine doctor she and I partnered together and kind of combined our interests and created this course gearing Tiny Habits towards keeping your brain health as you get older, and we're really excited to see your course Tiny Habits Tell me the exact title of it. It's.

Judy Oskam: 21:44

Tiny Habits for your Child's Academic Success. Awesome, I'll circle back and I will have you and Shobknopf on for another episode when I really want to drill down into your course. Does that sound like a plan?

Jennifer Lee: 21:57

That'd be great. And, judy, I've got one more story about Tiny Habits.

Judy Oskam: 22:00

Success. Oh please, if you've got time for it, of course, do it.

Jennifer Lee: 22:03

Yeah, so often people go. Oh, but it's tiny getting out your math book, whatever. How is that going to help me be successful? Now, this isn't quite school related, but my older daughter, when she was in the sixth grade she signed up for orchestra, came home with a violin, all of that right. I have never enforced my kids practicing an instrument. I did ask you know why? She was doing her homework each day. Hey, are you supposed to be practicing that violin? And she'd say, no, we're just pizzing. Apparently, pizzing means you're plucking the strings, you're messing around. Oh, you know, if you're sixth grader it's your new favorite word we're just pissing. Until November when suddenly, rookie mom mistake if your kid tells you they're not supposed to practice their instrument, they are lying to you. She came home completely panicked because guess what? We've got a concert coming up and I don't know how to play this violin.

Judy Oskam: 22:50

And.

Jennifer Lee: 22:50

I said, oh. So I had to talk her down from some big emotions and think, no, let's not focus on you're never going to be ready. You said, no, no, let's not focus on that. Sounds like you should be practicing every day. Maybe that's something we have control over, maybe you don't have control over whether you're ready, but let's focus on practicing every day. And so I said, hey, when does this fitting your day? First thing in the morning, I'm like, oh great, this kid is an early riser, so this was actually a good time for her. But I said, well, when we want to get super specific? So when are you ready for school? Oh, I put my shoes on. That's when I'm ready. Okay, so after I put my shoes on, then what? I'm going to practice my violin for a hundred times every song. Oh, this bar is way too high. So I said smaller, 10 times smaller one time to make it even smaller, as small as you possibly can. Because what happens on that day when you're running late, you don't have time, you don't have time to practice at all, you skip it, and now it's something you think about every day. So instead we said, after I put on my shoes, I will pick up my violin case that's the step and celebrate. Yes, I did it, I remembered, I'm supposed to practice right now, and if that leads to a practice session, awesome, the longer the better. Celebrate as long as it gets. But the cool thing is you picked up your violin case you met the bar. You are a success already, yeah everything that happens beyond. That is extra credit, right.

Judy Oskam: 24:08

So a month later.

Jennifer Lee: 24:10

So she did. The first day I kind of gave her a little nudge and I reminded her to celebrate the nice thing about sixth grade music it's super easy. So once that fear big concert, I can't play a violin. I'm afraid to even pick it up because I'm going to fail. Well, all you have to do is pick it up and you know then you've already succeeded. Yes, so she tried it a little bit. It was kind of fun. She tried it a little more. If she was getting better. She started waking up earlier so she'd have more time to practice. She'd started playing it after school because she realized it was fun and it was great stress relief. And this is not the case for every kid. But this kid went on to not only be great in her concert but she now plays six instruments, almost entirely self taught. She learned the bagpipes over COVID and in the spring she performed with her regional youth orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Oh my heaven, now playing the upright bass.

Judy Oskam: 25:00

What a story. What a story.

Jennifer Lee: 25:02

And it's not every so small, and it started so small and that's how those habits can grow. So, and there were some days that she would pick up her violin case say sorry, buddy, no time to practice today. I'll see you tomorrow. But it was a small win it was a small win and it kept the habit firmly in place. And even still, some days, when she's ready for school early, I can hear her and they're picking up an instrument. Because now that's the connection in her mind is, when I'm ready and I've got time, I pick up my instrument.

Judy Oskam: 25:28

I love that. I love that. Oh, that's such such a successful story Fantastic. Yeah, thank you, Jennifer. I appreciate you sharing that. That's great. And again, start small, tiny as mighty, as we say, right, that's great. Thank you so much for joining us and we will circle back and we will get you back on for for your class next time.

Jennifer Lee: 25:51

All right, sounds great and I can't wait to see yours. Thank you, Thanks.

Judy Oskam: 25:55

Thanks for listening to our conversation. You can learn more about Jennifer Lee and the Tiny Habits Academy in the show notes. And be sure and check out my course Tiny Habits for Your Child's Academic Success, for more strategies, and remember if you've got a story to share or know someone who does. Contact me judyoskam. com Thanks for listening.