Teaching Our Children How to Make and Lose Friends in a Virtual World The first month of middle school reminds me of those Wacky Races cartoons where characters like Captain Caveman, Dick Dastardley and his dog Muttley compete in a no-rules battle to be the first across the finish line. (I’ll risk dating myself for the uncanny […]
The Bar Should Be High Read More »
I love my job. Some of the Montessori math materials take up a lot of space. So we let students work with them outside of their classrooms in the hallway. Today, I listened through the window in my office as three elementary boys collaborated to build a number called vigintillion (60 decimal places). One of
What if There Was a Number Called Pooptillion? Read More »
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” —Seneca Stoics know that a fulfilling life rests along the distance between our wants and needs. Much of Stoic writing considers man’s endless struggle to narrow the gap. One could argue that the closest we ever get
When Wants Exceed Needs Read More »
Sand or Water? There is a well-known motivational presentation where the speaker displays a large glass jar and three bowls of stones in decreasing size from golf ball to sand. They pour the sand in first, then the mid-sized pebbles, but hardly any of the golf ball-sized stones fit into the jar. Then the presenter
How Do We Fill the Space Between? Read More »
The easiest question in the world for any teacher or daycare provider to answer is “What do you do with the students?” In fact, ask this during any school tour and in response, most programs will slide you a glossy card stock sheet of paper containing a bullet point list and cute pictures of happy
25 years ago, the six-acre, forested floodplain behind my school held some 40-50 Eastern White Pines. Each tree measured three to four feet in diameter, rising arrow- straight, nearly 75 feet in the air, towering high above the canopy set by Aspen, Hickory and other hardwoods. Within a few years, another section of forest 500
The Tallest Trees Don’t Always Have The Deepest Roots Read More »
Picture it: Sicily, 1912, a young Sophia skips in sepia tones along a narrow street toward her Nona. Suddenly, she snags her toe on a loose cobblestone, sending her tumbling. Sophia looks up from the dusty ground, momentarily stunned and searching for some kind of feedback upon which to anchor her reaction. Nona, her face
Our bodies tell us what we need and what we do not. Sometimes the message is not loud enough and other times we simply are not listening. We knowingly do unhealthy things, but we anticipate the negative effects and rationalize the results to concoct our own message. Then there are things, which we had no
The Call is Coming From Inside the House Read More »
Somewhere in the 1970’s the phrase “information age” was uttered for the first time. Someone looked at a Commodore 64 and thought “The future is now!” We can all look back now on those simple-minded, simple living, happy people and laugh at how naive they were. Philistines. Back then, information was exchanged through relatively balanced,
Welcome to the Attention Economy Read More »
It’s How You Think Parenting has a bit of a PR problem. For starters, everyone calls it a “job” but since most adults prefer to avoid work, this is a stumble right out of the gate. Then there is the compounding glut of conflicting advice, which has become a running joke on social media. Even
Good Parenting is Not What You Think Read More »
