What Ardiendo Teaches that Isn’t on the ACT or SAT
I was recently sitting with a student working through an ACT math practice section. She was scoring in the high teens on math. She knew she was capable of more than that, but she didn't believe it… and she hadn't believed it for a long time.
Watching her work, I noticed something. She actually knew more than her score was reflecting. Something else was in the way. So I paused the session.
"Why do you think you're bad at math?"
"I don't know."
"That's okay,” I said, “but this is really important, so it's going to be your homework to figure it out."
Before I could finish that sentence, she interjected. "Okay, I actually do know… When I was little, math was hard for me. And so I just believed that I was bad at math since I was in elementary school."
I paused with her. "That's really hard."
"It is." A beat. "Wow, it actually really is."
Her homework that week wasn't a set of practice problems. It was to reshape a story she had been telling herself since elementary school. Every time she caught herself saying she was stupid or dumb at math, she had to say something else, out loud: "It's okay to be confused. I'm learning, and I'm capable."
Then we did the math work — the actual math, the explicit instruction on the concepts she needed most. A few weeks later, she sent me her timed practice math section score. It had jumped nearly ten points.
I share that story because it's the clearest example of what we actually teach at Ardiendo. And none of it is on the test.
Confusion is What Students Don’t Know How to Navigate
When students meet with me for their first ACT or SAT prep session, most of them cannot tell me what they don't know. They know they are struggling. They know their score is lower than they want it to be. But if I ask them where the confusion is, the answer is almost always "I don't know." Not because they're avoiding the question, but because no one has ever asked them to name it before.
Navigating confusion can bring feelings of apprehension, avoidance, unease, and even fear. That is where our work starts. Amidst preparing test content, working on learning strategy, or memorizing formulas, we work on being able to recognize and say out loud what you don't know. It sounds small, but it is one of the most important things a student can learn.
Because if you can name your confusion, you can study it. You can ask for help with it. You can tell a teacher or professor about it. You can work through it. Without that language, all you have is a feeling of being stuck, and a story about yourself that says you're just not good at this thing.
What Our Students Can Do by the Time They Leave Us
We keep this list at the front of our minds when we plan a Test Prep Coaching session. By the time a student finishes with us, we want them to be able to:
Articulate what they're confused about. This is first for a reason. If a student doesn’t know what they are confused about, they will find it nearly impossible to study effectively. After they leave us, their studying is focused and targeted because they are able to identify what they understand and where to ask for help.
Keep going when they don't know something. There will always be a question you haven't seen before or content you haven't been taught yet. Having the confidence to keep going despite your lack of "knowledge" is the goal—not the absence of confusion, but the courage to work through it.
Approach content logically. In a reading passage, students identify the main argument and find what supports the answer in the text. On a math problem, they determine what the question is actually asking before starting to solve. This transfers to every subject: chemistry, history, a college essay, and even an interview question a few years down the road.
Figure out how to study for different classes. Learning how to learn—how to build a study approach that actually fits the material in front of you—is a skill our students take with them into college and beyond.
The Whole Student
Ardiendo Learning deeply cares about the whole student. Our goals do not exclusively revolve around improving a grade in class or increasing a test score. We believe in helping students learn how to learn so they can navigate any learning challenge that comes their way.
And here's what surprises families most: Every time we invest in students this way, we see grades improve and scores climb. Because when learning is the goal, students get to show what they actually know. Once they understand why the math works, or how to break down an argument, or how to navigate a new subject, their scores can reflect this growth.
The score is the byproduct of the learning, not the point of it.
Another Test Prep student of ours took a post-test measuring what she learned about how to approach the SAT. On that same pre-test, she answered less than half of the questions correctly. On her post-test, she answered nearly all of them correctly. Across the same stretch of work, her SAT score had climbed well over 150 points. After she got that score back, I asked her what it felt like. Her answer was, "It completely makes sense." She could see how things worked now, including how to break down an argument and how everything she was learning was connected.
That's truly one of the reasons why I do what I do. A student who can say, "It completely makes sense," has stopped memorizing and started understanding. Those are lessons they will take with them into their first job interview, their first college course, and hopefully, throughout the rest of their life.
Why We Do This
Every time we sit down with an ACT or SAT student, we are teaching two things at once: the content in front of us and the thinking underneath it. The test prep — the content, the strategy, the pacing — is real work, and we take it seriously. But it is not the only work. And in many cases, it is not even the most important work.
The most important work is helping a student find their voice around what they don't know, and giving them the courage to keep going once they've named it with clear strategies to back it up. And now, that student has something they will carry with them into every classroom, every workplace, and every hard thing they don't yet know how to do.
If you'd like to talk about your student, we'd love to hear from you. Our initial consultation is free!
