Public spending on high school athletics has grown extreme, exemplified by a public school in Allen, Texas that built a $60 million football stadium in 2011. Equipped with a three-dimensional scoreboard and an 18,000 seating capacity, this is not the most expensive in Texas, according to The Center for Education Policy and Development. Read more
You know what really helped me to see my world with a different lens? Reading about female genital mutilation.
It’s a big problem in some communities. girls have their clitoris removed each year. It’s extremely painful, of course, but also dangerous—hundreds of girls die each year from infections. And those who survive endure intense pain during sex for the rest of their lives. Read more
School separates exercise into something different from our main job. When we started homeschooling, one of the biggest shifts I had to make in my own thinking is that exercise is not school. I had to teach myself, every time my kids were playing, that learning is not divided between academics and gym, learning is both parts. Read more
I told my family about how my son is passionate about clothes and he runs around Chicago buying socks, and shoes and changing his outfits between cello and piano lessons.
I told them about how he uses the Internet to track style trends and then find stores that will sell the stuff he wants. Read more
I confess that I saved all my books from when I was a young girl. One of the common traits of girls with autism is that they read fiction at an insane rate. The only person I know who has read as many young adult novels as I have, in fact, is my friend Melissa, who also has autism. Read more
It’s scary to think that if you don’t send your kids to a classroom, there won’t be thirty other kids telling your kid all about what’s available in the world. It’s scary to think it’s your responsibility now. But the truth is, it’s not that big of a responsibility. Read more
The most useful product of test scores is that they give us a way to compare students. So while few people want to learn exactly the same thing as the person sitting next to them, we force students to learn the same thing as the person sitting next to them anyway, so we can test them on the same material and compare the results. If you want to rank children or if you want to rank schools or teachers, test scores are very useful. The question is, “Why do we need to rank students?” Read more
I’ve climbed the corporate ladder and I’ve supported my family for years as a professional writer. So I’m going to tell you—with total certainty—that however you’re teaching your kid to write, it’s the wrong way. Read more
I spent a lot of time reading about curriculum options before I decided to toss out all curriculum and just teach my kids what they want to learn. At this point, my kids have learned reading and typing via their video games. And I’m pretty sure they’ve learned a lot more, they just don’t need to check in with a teacher about what they learn, so I can’t exactly tell you what they learned. Read more
When it comes to how happy you are, most of it you cannot control: 70% is what you’re born with. It’s a setpoint, sort of like your weight. You can diet, but you tend to go back to your usual weight sooner or later. It’s the same outcome even with trauma. If you lose an arm, you’ll be sad for a while but you’ll go back to your usual happiness setpoint sooner or later. Read more