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What Great Teachers Do

As I walked around my children’s classrooms, the walls were papered with new projects. The collective imagination of each class was surpassed only by the ingenious assignment that inspired it. Poems written by pairs of students describing what they had in common and what made them different, a quilt that showed the individual tastes and interests of each child woven together to make one fabric, an interview series between students discovering the likes and dislikes of a new friend in class.…


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“You’re Older, Not Old.”

This is what my five-year-old daughter cheerfully said to me as we biked together on a quiet road on Cape Cod last week.

My initial reaction was to laugh at this comical “out of the mouths of babes” moment. Then I looked ahead of us both and watched my own mother, now well into her 70’s, also on a bike and thought the exact same thing.

Up until that day, I can’t say I had ever seen my mom on a bike. But…


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Who Shapes Your Story?

Growing up, I was told two different versions of who I was and who I could become.  My stepfather instilled in me that I would never amount to anything.  I was a lazy momma’s boy and she wouldn’t be around to protect me forever. He told me that going to college was a waste of money and time. 
 
Fortunately, my mom offered a powerful counter narrative.
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The Hidden Joy Of Sport

Pure joy. 

That is the only way to describe the feeling that washed over a dozen nine year-old girls and their families last Sunday. After losing every soccer game during the fall season, a 3-1 victory in their first spring match sent them running off the field jumping into each other’s arms with grins so wide they seemed to leap right off their face.

The feeling was contagious.…


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How To Save Art

During a classroom visit last week, my nine-year-old daughter showed me a project, featuring side-by-side drawings of the same subject – in her case spring. One was a realistic depiction and the second an abstract version. Accompanying the pictures was a biography on the Russian artist Kandinsky whose work they learned had a similar transition from the realistic to abstract.

The most remarkable thing about this lesson in perspective was that it was not part of their art class, but instead central to a social studies unit on Russia.…


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Are You Feeling More Restless?

Last week, my five-year old daughter suffered a small fracture in her tibia just below the knee. Ultimately, she will be fine. As they say, we grow stronger in all the broken places. For now, she is laid up with a removable knee brace, unable to walk, go to school, or move freely about on her own.
 
She has warmed to this new situation. Reminiscent of Hodor and Bram from Game of Thrones, she must be carried everywhere and has an innate power over all of us as we cater to her every desire. The
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One Woman’s March

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to be in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards, where white clouds of bloom drifted above the green land. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines.”…


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I’m Not Throwing Away My Shot

For the last few years, I’ve resisted the hype over the Broadway show, Hamilton.  After all how can one play be that good, that transformational?

While I still haven’t seen it, Santa Claus did place, the cast recording in my daughter’s stocking.  And from the music alone, I can say definitively that I was wrong.

It is a masterpiece on many levels – a historical primer on our nation’s founding and a paragon for using music and art to entertain and educate.
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What I Learned From A Day At The Park

I am lucky to live in a village where the word public means something good. The public schools are excellent.  The public parks are beautiful.  The public library thrives year round. 

For most the 19th and 20th century, the public was preferred over the private. We held our public institutions in high esteem and were skeptical of the motives of private enterprises.  

In the last several decades the tables have turned.…


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What My Daughter Taught Me About Giving Thanks

Each Thanksgiving is an annual rite of passage to think about those things for which we are thankful.

In our home, like I suspect in many others, it’s usually a cursory reflection lasting just a few minutes before we dig into the turkey and stuffing.

But shouldn’t real gratitude be a little more expansive than this?

Do me a favor – take this two-minute quiz to see how grateful you really are?…


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I Hope You Don’t Ace This Test

Clinicians use a common tool to assess the extent of toxic stress a child experiences during his or her childhood. It’s called the Adverse Childhood Experience test, or ACE for short. It’s a simple tool made up of just 10 yes/no questions.

Please take two minutes and take the test.

In his New York Times column, David Brooks succinctly summarized the adult outcomes associated with higher ACE scores.…


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Would You Prefer to Be Healthy or Smart?

What would you say is more important for your success? Your health or your education? We asked Americans which five-year-old is more likely to be successful — one with access to a good education but no health care, or one who has access to a great doctor but poor schools?

People overwhelmingly chose education by a margin of four to one. But consider this:

  • If a child is sick with untreated asthma, he or she will miss school and opportunities to learn.
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Name Calling

When I was six, my mother called me “Little Professor” even though she had never met anyone who went to college, yet alone taught at one. She called me this simply because I wore glasses and liked to read.

At LIFT Communities, people who come looking for assistance are called “members” as a sign of being equal to everyone who works there.

And at the public charter school, KIPP NYC, incoming students are called by the year of their expected graduation…from college!…


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What Will You Make Today?

As a father of three little girls, I see them making stuff every day. On our cluttered counter are: a beautiful castle, a makeshift paper house, a Lego swimming pool, and an overflowing pile of drawings and paintings. Beyond these physical works, they walk around the house singing made-up songs, dancing to newly made dance moves.

Just two days ago they were making believe that they were all going on a work trip to China so they could save endangered pandas.…


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They Say The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

A little harsh, I’d say, but there is a point to be made about the unintended consequences that well-meaning ideas and words can have on our success.

Consider these three examples:

  • The IQ test was originally created to identify a child’s learning deficits, so they could receive extra attention and instruction. Later these scores were applied as a horribly misused tool of eugenics. Today, while less nefarious, we still use IQ scores to label and limit a kid’s potential and segregate them from their fellow students.
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