Frequently Asked Questions

What is Focused Life Coaching?

Focused Life Coaching is a powerful human relationship between the client and the OPENMIND coach. The coach partners with the client to assist in helping design their future, not get over their past. Through aiding the client, the coach helps develop a rich portfolio of personal experiences, successes and failures that teach important life lessons and ignites deeper self-awareness.

Research in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology and education is helping us to better understand how each of us varies in our life long learning. We now know that these and other areas of concern can be strengthened through strategies improving attention, memory, production skill acquisition and executive functioning in a person's, personal, educational and professional lives. OPENMIND focuses on these specific areas and helps you strategically design and implement your life vision.

What is the difference between Life-Awareness Counseling and Psychotherapy?

Life-Awareness Counseling is for the client who is content overall, but still might have some concerns about how to improve different areas of his or her life, relationships, business, and coursework. Personal growth sessions are rooted in Developmental Behavioral Psychology incorporating motivational techniques. The goal is to move forward and to a healthier level of functioning. The focus is on what is currently taking place in a person’s life and direct actions are implemented to improve the client’s current and future status. Sessions focus on solving problems to become more self-aware of the choices and actions being made and how each affects the current situation. The Coach guides, motivates, and orchestrates action.

Psychotherapy is focused on emotional healing through psychology and medicine and is conducted by professional psychotherapists. OPENMIND can work in conjunction with the therapist’s recommendations. The OPENMIND Coach can help the patient monitor their actions outside of their therapy sessions.

Good coaches and therapists generally communicate the same positive objective in different ways. Individuals are encouraged to work towards what is best for them to succeed and deal with stress.

Does Life-Awareness Counseling give advice?

It’s the Coach’s role to facilitate the client’s ability to interpret their own inner wisdom and make the choices and steps necessary to achieve their goals. The coach provides structure and accountability.

Why OPENMIND Academic Coaching?

OPENMIND Academic Coaching is highly customized. The Coach tailors sessions almost entirely dependent on the student’s needs and information processing abilities. It involves a collaborative approach. It helps students learn material in individual courses and how to be successful in school. Coaching is tailored and pertinent to each student’s learning level. Some highly motivated, high achieving students seek training to improve their learning efficiency. Academic Coaching can also help students prepare for exams to gain entry to schools and universities. It can benefit students at any level because the Coach meets students where they are emotionally and academically.

OPENMIND Focused Coaching is different from other programs because of its unique methodology, specifically designed for individual instruction. OPENMIND incorporates strategies and techniques with reading, writing, and reasoning skills that all Learners need to be successful in school and life. We incorporate brain-based learning research and translate it from lab science to Learners in the classroom and real life.

What does the OPENMIND Academic Coach do?

The OPENMIND Academic Coach is a personal trainer for your learning. The training Coach assesses each Learner to help address and improve their general skills, subject specific skills, and pinpoints any learning needs. The Coach tailors the lessons to each individual, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and ways to grow stronger academically. The Coach helps Learners gain the necessary skills to understand, retain, and expand upon material taught in the classroom. In this way, the Coach equips the Learner with a strong, versatile set of skills and prepares them for entry in today’s competitive world.

What is the difference between “Tutoring” and OPENMIND Educational Training?

OPENMIND offers mental or cognitive skills training and is different than tutoring at a very basic level. Tutoring is simply re-teaching material that a student missed initially when it was introduced. If the student quickly comprehends the material when taught a second time and no more instruction is necessary, then tutoring is the solution. However, if a simple explanation did not solve the problem or the material is soon forgotten, there is likely an underlying skill weakness that tutoring can’t resolve.

Tutoring only produces temporary progress. The weak underlying skills must be addressed to advance and function smoothly at the next learning level. If weak cognitive skills are at the root, the problem will not be resolved by tutoring alone and the student will continue to struggle. When a Learner continues to face challenges with each new academic year, OPENMIND Personal Training (not tutoring) is the best choice. When learning difficulties stem from an underlying inability to process information, then training, not tutoring is the solution.

What is the best age to start OPENMIND Educational Training?

As soon as a student begins to struggle in an academic area, it’s recommended that an assessment be completed. Depending on the findings, recommendations and a plan are designed and executed.

If a student is doing well and grades are good, there are areas that may still need strengthening before they turn into more serious struggles in middle and high school. A perfect time to strengthen underlying weaker skills is when the student is not falling behind. As material becomes more challenging and coursework moves more rapidly, these students may begin to struggle to maintain a healthy balance.

When youth begin to struggle academically because they lack a strong foundational skill set, school and life become more stressful and challenging. OPENMIND views low grades as symptoms of deeper processing and understanding issues.

The best time to start and make sure a student is functioning at their optimum learning level is now.

Is it the school or teacher that needs improving?

Many parents feel that the student would be more successful if he or she had a better teacher, attended a different school, or if the support services were doing a better job, but the best teachers and schools can have students who struggle personally and academically. Recent research has identified weak underlying cognitive skills as the root cause of over 80% of reading and learning struggles. It is imperative that these weak areas be identified and retrained to process information more effectively and address learning difficulties.

Is OPENMIND Academic Coaching Competition?

OPENMIND is not competition for any school, instructor, student support service or learning center. It is a community resource available to students who want a personal trainer to help them acquire the most effective set of learning skills tailored specifically for them.

OPENMIND believes that it takes a community working together supporting one another to produce highly skilled and successful Learners and graduates. When schools, instructors, parents, counselors, principals, students, and other support resources each do their specific responsibilities and work in unison, there will be a highly effective outcome for all involved.

Is OPENMIND right for me if my grades are all A’s and B’s?

Some students have the capability to be passive and still do well in middle school, high school, preparatory academies and in undergraduate course work. The pace or speed of course content covered at universities can be much more challenging than in high schools and some undergraduate programs. Reading and learning outside of class is expected for what is then covered in the classroom. Test material covers both what students learn independently and what is covered in classes. In colleges and universities, information cannot simply be memorized because tests require students to apply what they have learned to solve unfamiliar and unique problems. They are expected to accomplish these tasks with a fair amount of ease and under pressure of a time constraint. Competition for grades can be steep at this level of learning.

OPENMIND looks below the surface of the grade to identify weak or dormant skills that may become exposed as courses and workloads become more rigorous.

What is the advantage of attending OPENMIND after school sessions?

There are advantages to receiving all the necessary support services during the school day. However, due to the number of hours in the school day, this isn’t always manageable. Some students may require more than the supplemental academic support services offered through school or may desire enrichment skills to become more proficient in their learning. Students do not need to be pulled from regular classroom instruction to receive these services. Upper school students can take electives that interest them and do not have to trade these academics to receive this support service. If a student requires academic support during the school day, the school support team is an excellent resource. If a student requires or would benefit from individualized time and support beyond the school day and does not want to miss classroom instruction time, private training is an important consideration.