Tips for getting your school-year off to a relaxed and productive start. Gearing up for back-to-school can be a bit overwhelming; there is a lot to do, a lot of transitions to navigate, and often a sense of blues as the realization that summer has, once again, gone by too fast. However, you can easily
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Study Skills for College
Whether you teach students who are heading off to college in a few months or in five years, there are a few study skills that can dramatically improve their odds of success. How do I know? I’ve lived this story. If you have not heard it before, the short version of my story is that
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Pulling It All Together: An Ideal School System
Ideal School System Matrix We’ve covered a lot of ground in this series on education reform; it can seem overwhelming! However, the chart below pulls all of the recommendations from the previous articles together into a coherent plan for building a human-friendly school system… Thanks for joining me on this journey through Education Reform: A Simple
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SOAR: The Four Principles of Optimal Instruction
Conclusion to Our Series – Education Reform: A Simple Blueprint for Human-Friendly Education The purpose of this series has been to highlight and fix the core problem with education in the United States… our utter disregard of human development. We heavily examined the brain biology of learning. We also examined the work of Dr. Montessori, which
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Looking Forward: Advice from a Futurist
Discussions about the future can be somewhat scary. What will the world be like with autonomous vehicles and artificially-intelligent robots running everything? However, Futurist Brian David Johnson shows us the undeniable role humans play in creating and designing their own future, and discusses how we can prepare future generations to be ready to create their
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The Simplest Leverage Points in Reading, Math, & Skills Instruction
In every core domain of learning (reading/math/skills), there is another core element of effective instruction that is so simple, it is often overlooked. However, we ignore these core elements at great expense to our budgets and the eternal frustration of our greatest asset… our students! To be clear, the Success Pyramid still applies. We must
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Common Core: Why It’s the Worst and BEST Thing to Happen to Education!
Very few things stir more controversy than the mention of Common Core. There are numerous complains, but most seem to center on a few common themes: “Common Core doesn’t make sense.” “The math is killing our kids.” “Common Core doesn’t teach American History, Civics, or Government; our children will not have an understanding or appreciation Finland: Worldwide Leader in Education More than 30 years ago, Finland made dramatic changes to the political infrastructure of their school system. A generation later, they emerged at the top of the world in international assessments for managing “real-world” situations. They are one of the leading political models to investigate. Finland has created a system Education Reform – Part II: Practical Implementations of Complete Human Education In previous articles, we focused on: the core problems of education in the United States, a simple model for effective learning, and how that model helps us resolve our top problems. We also explored how this model relates to special education. From this point Today is the beginning of the largest policy conference in the country, the Mackinac Policy Conference (MPC). Right now, Brian and I are on our way up to Michigan’s magnificent Mackinac Island to participate. The MPC gets it’s name from the conference location, but the focus is primarily on the city of Detroit. The #1 topicFinland: A Political Model of Education Reform
Read MoreIdeal Instructional Models: Successful Examples of Complete Human Education
Read MoreDetroit: A Vision for the Worst-Performing School System in the World
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