I’m in a lot of schools on a pretty frequent basis, and I’m noticing a disturbing trend: a focus on what is called “leadership” in a way that is hurting, not helping. I saw it most closely when a friend of mine taught at a school last year that even had the word “leadership” in […]
Why School Awards Ceremonies are a Bad Idea, and What We Should Do Instead
School award ceremonies are a bad idea, but you’d never know it by how many of them there are. Of all the things people warned me about when I became a parent, no one mentioned the interminable end-of-year awards ceremonies. As I’ve learned more and more about the way our brains really work, the more […]
11 Tips to Get Kids to Read Good Books
How do you get kids to read good books? I’ve come up with eleven tips to get kids to read good books, but first, a little bit about how we end up here. I wrote about the relevance of reading in our modern world and the benefits of reading classics. An important facet of […]
5 Things I Learned from Writing My Book
That wonderful moment when your book is published and you hold it in your hands and you hope that other people read it and find it useful and are glad you wrote it because it helped them… That very long sentence fragment should clue everyone in on how excited I am about my new book! […]
Dot-to-Dot Free Samples and Resources
I’m sharing where to find dot-to-dot free samples (and other ideas) today because I love dot-to-dot. Why I love dot-to-dot It’s fun. I like fun stuff. It is great fine motor skill practice. This is more critical for academic success than I think we give it credit for. It allows practice in proper pencil holding […]
Ten Things About Me
I love meeting people in real life who I know from this site at speaking events or conferences, yet I know that I will never have the opportunity to meet most of you in “real life.” I also have people I follow online who I feel are my “friends,” even though we’ve never actually met. […]