A Brief History of Memorial Day and the Poppy Lady, Too
We’re just a day away from the unofficial start of summer--and that’s all many of us care about. A few have headed to the shore or mountains, but most of us, locked down as we are thanks to COVID-19, have stayed put, heading outside from time to time for a bit of...
Education Week Analyzes Remote Learning across America
Education Week never lets us down, keeping pace with the ever-changing face of COVID-19 and its impact on our lives and education in particular. This time around, the organization “scanned all 50 states' publicly continuous learning directives and guidance documents,...
Distance Learning & Communicating: USC & the EdWeek Research Center Take the Pulse of Parents and Teachers
Both the University of Southern California and the EdWeek Research Center asked parents and teachers how satisfied they are with their schools’ distance learning offerings and communications—their concerns, too. They asked; Gabrielle Wanneh reported; I’m sharing…...
Teachers on the COVID Front Lines
Sight unseen, COVID-19 shuttered our nation’s schools, emptying classrooms and making homeschooling of sorts a matter of fact for all, harnessing teachers and students alike to screens. And, depending on a district’s choice of e-learning platform, often sight unseen....
Going Digital: Attendance Takes a Major Hit
Like an episode from Twilight Zone, along with distressing news briefs, masks and rubber gloves are now the order of the day, along with skyrocketing deliveries and plummeting gas prices. COVID-19 has shuttered much of our world, and that includes our nation’s...
Joel Westheimer to Parents: “Forget the Worksheets”
And just who is Joel Westheimer and to tell us to scrap all those worksheets coming into homes everywhere during these hunkered down, shuttered schools, Twilight Zone-like days? A man in the know, that’s who. Professor Westheimer is University Research Chair in...
A Timely Social Media Alert
Before COVID-19 became the grim story of the day, every day, Common Sense Media surveyed young people about social media and found that: 56% said tech and social media “are tearing us apart more than they are bringing people together." About 25% agreed that...
Education Week & the Quality Counts Education-Wise State Ratings: How’d Yours Do?
From the time before we closed our schools and hunkered down against COVID-19, fearful and cautious, this Quality Counts report card was published on how the states fare when it comes to schooling, rating them on three categories: Chance for Success School Finance...
Schooling’s Piece of the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package: A Glimpse
The good news is that yesterday, in a bi-partisan move, senators passed the largest stimulus package in American history to the tune of $2.2 trillion, offering much-needed financial aid to health care systems, workers, and businesses—and that includes our nation’s...
USA Today Lends Us A Flu and COVID-19 Pandemic Perspective
With thanks to USA Today and Kurt Snibbe of the Southern California News Group, some facts and figures to remind us that, we can, indeed, weather this... After all, we're in this together, so should stick together, follow all guidelines and stop pointing figures,...
Kids and Video Games: Moms and Dads Have Their Say
Kids are hooked on screens, no doubt about it, with some spending hours on end playing video games--some 41% of boys and 21% of girls, and that prompted Oxford University to study the effects. Among the findings: Spending up to three hours a day has no effect, good...
The Problem with Literacy Programs, by Make Schmoker
Recently, author, speaker, and consultant Mike Schmoker's took on current literacy programs. He writes: A cautionary tale: Not long ago, I was assisting a school district that had adopted a prominently endorsed literacy program. Our work began with a review of the...
The Cornonavirus: What It Is, Where It is, and What Educators Should Know
Talk about scary news: As of March 2: The coronavirus had spread to more than 60 countries. More than 85,000 have been infected worldwide. It is responsible for some 3,000 deaths, more than 2,800 in Mainland China So, what exactly is a coronavirus and how did it get...
Our Dazzling, Complex Brains: Facts to Keep in Mind!
A reminder of the magic that is in all of us—and the potential to be more than we ever thought… Your brain weighs about three pounds—about 2% of your total body weight. A computer with the capacity of your brain would be 100 stories tall and cover the entire state of...
A+ World Academy Announces Private Meeting Dates to Learn More About Unique Gap Year Program for High School Students
With thanks to Dr. Kevin E. Kessler, am sharing this press release about A+ Academy's one-of-a-kind, year-long learning opportunity for high schoolers aboard the world's oldest, fully rigged tall ship, the Norwegian Sorlandet. It sails to 20 cities in 14 countries......
Artificial Intelligence Takes Over Routine Teacher Tasks, But Buyer Beware?
New York Times journalist Craig S. Smith’s recent “The Machines Are Learning and So Are the Students,” explains that artificial intelligence has found its way into the teaching life by taking over such mundane tasks as grading. It is, indeed, a brave new world, and,...
Killer Suicide
Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death among 10- to 19-year-olds, and yet… While the National Institutes of Health spent $68 million last year on suicide, that was less than was spent on many other public health issues. For instance, kidney disease kills about...
Making School-Wise News: Play Time, Cursive Writing, a Teacher Lawsuit, and More
Some call it progress… Thanks to President Bush’s No Child Left Behind, compounded by Obama’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top and Common Core State Standards, preschoolers are being taught to read, so they’re all ready for kindergarten, aka the “new first grade.” Nancy...
Education Week’s Madeline Will on Public School Education Since 2010
Back in 1903, in Man and Superman, Irish playwright and political activist George Bernard Shaw wrote, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” And it stuck. Fast forward to 1977 when Haywood Allen, better known as director, writer, and actor Woody Allen, wrote, in...
What Futurists Back in 2000 Envisioned for Us in 2020
Back in the early days of the 21st century, futurists made predictions about how the world would look come 2020. Among them was Ray Kurzweil, and recently USA Today’s Grace Hauck shared the hits and misses of twenty of his forecasts: Life expectancy would top 100… It...
