More About Habits of Mind
Habits of the Mind can be non-cognitive skills that young people need to develop if they are to grow up to be effective and successful as adults. Habits of the Mind provide a foundation for the Common Core and can be developed by all youth. Just like you need to exercise to strengthen your physical…
Read MoreSpring Forward
Each spring we adjust out clocks into Daylight Savings Time. In this practice, clocks are adjusted forward one hour (of course they are adjusted backward in the autumn), so that in the evening we have more daylight and in the mornings we have less. This notion was first proposed in 1895 by George Hudson and…
Read MoreInquiry-The Cornerstone fo Homework Support
Have you ever heard someone say, “Curiosity killed the cat.” While this may be true for cats, it is absolutely not the case for our students. Curious students are learners, young people who are interested in finding out how things work. The opposite of these curious students are passive and show little initiative—actually they usually…
Read MoreHow Does Afterschool Support the School Day?
It is incredibly important that your program supports the good work that the school day is doing. Teachers work each day to provide the “first, best teaching” for students and anything that we can do in after-school to support that work is a value-add to the student’s’ educational experience. So what can you do to…
Read MoreAdvocating For Expanded Learning
I think people get advocacy confused with lobbying. To my mind, there is a huge difference. Advocacy is about educating people so they can make an informed choice between options. Certainly you are passionate about what you are advocating for, certainly you will share the information in the best possible light, surely your will encourage…
Read MoreNostalgia
When I was a child I visited the boardwalk in Santa Cruz. There was a Fun House that had some amazing things for you to do. There was a wave machine—not like the ones you might see today, but a “walk” that you could go on that had pieces moving up and down while you…
Read MoreThinking and Communicating with Clarity and Precision
Lack of communication is one of the biggest complaints we have both personally and professionally. Individuals, small enterprises and large businesses all face challenges with communication. Part of this is because communication is hard work and is so much more than simply speaking or writing something for others to hear or read. When we want…
Read MoreApply Past Knowledge to New Situations
What would our lives be like if we, like Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates, had to begin all over every day? Can you imagine how many blisters you would have if you had to learn about the concept of “hot” every 24 hours? And how would we know how to read, speak, write, cook…
Read MoreGather Data Through All Your Senses
We use our senses—sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell—to experience the world. These senses are what grounds us and allows us to observe and understand the world around us. In our world today we rely heavily on sight and sound, yet the other three senses can add depth to our understanding. Think about someone like…
Read MoreCreating, Imagining, Innovating
Creating, imagining, and innovating are supported when we foster divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to think “outside the box”. It means that we value it when youth think for themselves instead of operating on the “lemming principle.” There is a movie that came out in the 1989, Dead Poet’s Society. In this movie…
Read More