The Brain and Scoping

Scoping Made Affordable (SMA)

For those of you who don’t know me, my background is in education. Because I spent many years learning and applying how our
brains work, I bring to scoping the understanding of how our brains can be trained to learn to scope.
Most people who are entering the field of scoping (both men and women) are in a middle-aged bracket or even approaching their
senior years of living. Scoping fits many different people at different stages in their life. And regardless of when one begins
scoping, each of us brings a unique repertoire of experience which can only help us in our scoping work.
Because many who are entering the scoping field are at least in the middle or later stages in life, they may not have been using the
basic skills of the English language and punctuation for many years and their last experience in working with those skills was in
high school or college.

Well, anyone who has knowledge of how the brain works and how it does not work will have full awareness that those skills will
need to be revisited, studied and put into practice before that person can become a qualified scopist. I feel this lack of awareness
is a detriment to prospective students who may be misled in thinking that it’s just like riding a bicycle. Even though you haven’t
done it for years, once you hop on it, it all comes back easily. If only that were the case.

There is a common phrase used in the field of brain development that says “use it or lose it.” If one does not use the skills, the
brain, in its processes in efficiency or "cleaning house" so to speak, will slowly eliminate those synapses which were established
when we were being taught that information in high school and college.

In this case, most adults entering the scoping field will need to relearn some of the basic English language and punctuation skills in
order to recall how they function but also need to learn them as they apply to the court reporting world, as Ms. Lillian Morson has
done so well in her Lillian Morson’s English Guide for Court Reporters. She profoundly recognized the need for this kind of
guidance in working with the spoken word, which as most scopists and court reporters know, often needs to be punctuated a bit
differently based on the tone and pace in which those words were spoken in comparison to a standard written paper for history
class.

So studying those rules of guidance and applying them are necessary steps to becoming a successful scopist. But there is
another step that is of equal importance that is oftentimes overlooked in the training process. This is a process that becomes two-
fold.

First, is the ability to listen carefully to the audio-recorded information that often accompanies the work scopists do. Unless one
has been a transcriptionist for years, most of us do not have that ability to listen for the little things such as trail offs, the little "okays"
and other things. It has to be taught and captured.
Some may argue that court reporters that require scopists to listen to the audio recording word for word simply use the recording
as a crutch. Personally, in my experience with many official court reporters, I have found that the court reporter wants to provide the
best work possible and willingly accepts his/her limitations. Those reporters desire the best possible transcript imaginable and
are likely an overachiever in life. They become very good at what they do and are recognized for their level of professionalism
presented through their work. I feel that that is to be commended and appreciated.

The second critical part in this learning process is the ability to read contextually, reading for content, in other words. In our hurried
pace of life, we think we have mastered this skill but too often have to relearn this skill as most of us have not performed this skill of
looking for the tiny details. This particular skill is unique for the middle-age or senior adult because by this time our brains have
become so patterned to “think” what is supposed to be there which in reality is not what the written text was recorded as.
For instance, when you take the common phrase in transcript dialogue of “for the record,” more times than not, the new scopist will
not be able to detect the word “the” missing in this text: for record. The word “the” is missing but our brain tries to tell us it is there.
So, in essence, we have to create those synapses or connections and put them into practice to increase that skill. It is not
necessarily a skill that comes overnight.
These two skills, listening for detail and reading contextually, have to be taught and mastered in order to become a successful
scopist.

So if you happen to be a recently trained scopist and feel that you are struggling in your new profession, you may need to practice
up on those two particular skills. Once you have mastered them, know how the English language functions and how to apply
punctuation based upon that knowledge, you will be successful for the rest of your scoping career.

Animal studies show that the structure of the brain changes with experience. Based on imaging experiments in people, we also
know that the ability to use parts of our brain changes over time. People who learn how to play the violin, for instance, have different
brain connections than people who don't play that instrument. And as people become expert at playing music (or another such
skill), the theory is that their brains become more efficient and use less "bandwidth," so to speak, for that task.

How SMA prepares You and Your Brain for Your New Career

This is the brain
creating new synapses
or paths to recall a skill
it has recently learned.

If those paths are not
used regularly,
the brain will slowly
eliminate them.

This explains the
phrase, "Use it or lose
it."

The ways SMA will continue to excel in this industry

My background is in the field of teaching. I've taught all ages over many years and different settings.
Most of my teaching has been with young children, youth and day care providers, librarians, and many church educational programs.

In one of my previous positions, I was consulting with 15 libraries to create programs to foster literacy skills in 0 - 5 year-old children to promote their school
readiness skills.
My training programs are designed to give you the skills you need, not waste your time, and make you feel confident in your abilities.

I have a great enthusiasm for learning and want to show others how easy it is to: Market yourself, learn how to upload and download files, how to build resources
for yourself, how to network in the scoping world, and love the career you have chosen.

Over the past three years of training scopists and now nearly five years of scoping myself, I have become so comfortable with the various punctuation rules and
how they are used within this field.
And because of my background in education, it is necessary for students to review the punctuation rules, apply them and to have them checked to be assured
that the rules are being applied appropriately.

Just giving a student the "edited" version of a file upon completion does not show them the rules behind mistakes. SMA provides that to each student
especially throughout the transcript evaluation process. I strive to always increase the curriculum to enable all students to be as informed as
possible.

If you still wonder about my "teaching" abilities in this field, feel free to contact any of the graduates of SMA on that page of this website. The number of students
who enroll in SMA continues to increase while the number of quality-trained scopists in the field also continues to increase.

SMA's goal in teaching scopists is to improve both the quality and quantity of scopists court reporters are working with. My goal is not to see how many students I
can push through this program. SMA's success is dependent upon their success.

Antiquated versus Refreshed and Modern

When one enters the field of scoping in the 21st century, they bring in a completely different perspective of one who has been
in the field since the 1980s. And when that is the case, oftentimes the curriculum that was developed during that time frame
cannot help but become antiquated. The same holds true for websites that are not updated on a regular basis. If you don't
update the material, regardless of what it is used for, you'll lose customers. This is basic common sense, along with good
business sense.

The perspective that SMA brings to scoping in the 21st century is considerably different that its predecessors. Because the
previous experience of the SMA instructor has been in the field of education, she has an understanding of how our brains are
able to absorb this overload of information in order for us to be successful. As with many other skills, scoping cannot be
learned or mastered overnight. Points of frustration will occur during the learning process.
Because SMA anticipates these points of frustration, it has developed several ways to make the learning process much easier
and less taxing on the brain.
In the classroom portion of the training, we have the opportunity to experience a fun class that is called "Contextual Reading."
Even though most students think they have an "eye" for detail, invariably there is some portion of the exercise we work through
in class that trips the student up. This is where a great awareness of what our brains are doing will cause us to make mistakes
if we do not watch what we are doing.
There is nothing more exciting than when a student says "I get it" or "I see it now" that brings a teacher so much satisfaction.