My wife and I joined an experiment on secular-religious family ecumenical Order in Manila September 21, 1972, coincidentally and serendipitously the same day Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines.  In the Order was a fellow Methodist clergy family from New England.  Bob wore his clerical collar with me in Church gatherings, a feat in tropical heat.  Judy was assistant Principal at the International School in Makati where my newly landed wife from Illinois worked at the library.

Bob Fishel returned to New England the following year (I heard, to watch his flock - congregational and wild), while I stayed with the ecumenical group (in order to travel, my brother says).  Judy and Bob's two young 'uns we called "Thudom and Thamora" (Anthony and Thamora) but since '74, save for occasional news here and there, we did not maintain contact.  Thamora had since gotten her PhD from Cornell, while Anthony with dyslexia took his condition and rode it into magnificent manageability, earning himself an MA in education and physics.

Then Bob retired and moved with Judy to Florida, ostensibly, to watch more birds.  Judy is one smart teacher and I had wondered when she was going to capture the wisdom of work and experience into paper.  She finally did. 

Written with a catchy title that many teachers would recognize, Straight A's are not Enough is written without the pretentious academic erudition that many tomés acquire (my bias since I cannot write that well!), readily understandable and jealously well-organized.

It is a mother lode of practical wisdom, with lots of experience behind it.  Essentially, she wrote a treatise on how-to guide to learning to learn.  Judy begins with her 8 Great Steps, of immediate appeal to my Chinese friends at Waterbear Language Studio in Shenyang as 8, ba, is the homonym for "prosperity and wellbeing".  The first three are earthshaking for common sense simplicity: get enough sleep, exercise the body, and focus the mind. 

The next five are meaty: identifies four learning approaches, names five characteristics of meaningful goals, discusses flexible ways to manage time, plumbs mindset - its rich neuroscience and the threat of stereotypes, and develops resilient willpower.  She is just getting started on a four-Part book.

Part 2 is learning skills.  Part 3 brings contemporary wisdom on mental process, verbal and visual organization, ways of thinking, and mapping the pathway to memory.  Part 4 captures the requirements of the future, particularly employment and the marketplace, and gets us into the discourse on critical thinking on reading-writing-listening, utilizing numbers and words, while prancing on the challenge of problem solving.

I've been promising my colleagues at the Waterbear Language Studio that I will come around to putting down on paper a lifetime of pedagogy, three-years worth of it in language learning at Shenyang Aerospace University, but so far, have not produced anything worth the ink it is printed on.  Now we've got Judy Fishel's book and we won't even plagiarize her work.  Why, we will just copy the book, reprint it since our group offers all its materials free to anyone anyway.  (We do not intend to profit from it, but I am sure Judy would welcome taking Bob elsewhere to watch other exotic birds!)

We note Judy's 8 great steps.  Perhaps, drinking out of a similar well, I previously wrote that the window to our knowing begins at the sense experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, leading to the expressions of feelings, the articulations of thoughts (with words and numbers), and the willful projection and mapping of intentions. 

Knowledge, skills, and attitude are the three categories often used in HR evaluations and Judy gets the field further by describing the process of learning, and providing practical strategies on how to attain results without the anxieties of being properly certificated.

Though the book was written to assist College students with learning breakthroughs, the endorsement of the book goes to the starting level at the learning gate.  Though passing tests is universally practiced these days, and American students are often criticized for not doing well at all, Straight A's are not Enough makes it clear that there is more to learning than the grade on the report card.

Getting familiar with networking in the job market is a plus; getting clarity on content, spotting biases, gestalting data, and evaluating conclusions, are great tools to have, leading to analytical reasoning practiced today across boardrooms and business seminars replete with graphs and tables, qualitative and quantitative data bases, the mainstay of our contemporary civilization.

Before leaving Saipan, I asked Judy to email me the digitized version of her book, having seen it advertized elsewhere.  After Part 1, it became clear that I had a valuable tool on my hands to be shared with colleagues I associate with so I lined up toner cartridges to print the document.   The effort was not a waste.  My colleagues concur: Yup, Judy, Straight A's are not Enough!