Here’s the results most parents expect from a good English curriculum: being a competent speller being well read being familiar with the five-paragraph paper being conversant in the rules of grammar But just forget all that. That English curriculum is cancelled.
When I can’t cope I clean. And if everything is clean, I organize. Once I overheard my younger son giving a tour of the house and he said, “This is our bedroom. My mom makes us put our stuff in her boxes so everything is her colors.” I thought I was teaching my kids to […]
In a lawsuit fluke, a judge ruled that 800,000 students should have their student debt canceled. Researchers took the opportunity to compare outcomes of students with canceled debt to students who did not have their debt canceled. Canceled debt improved student outcomes in all sorts of unexpected ways. More of them got married and had kids, […]
The word doomscrolling appeared for the first time in The New York Times, in an Opinion column about coronavirus. The Twitter feed about the first appearance of words in the New York Times is fun because it’s about when a word goes mainstream. It’s the hockey stick growth equivalent for a word. (Hockey stick growth is the word for startup success […]
Homeschooling, parents are always looking out for minefields. There is no blueprint we can follow and there aren’t many established best practices. But the thing that makes it a minefield is we can’t see the danger before we step on it.
Colleges just announced that while most classes will occur online, schools will not reduce tuition. Students have tried to sue to get their tuition decreased and the schools have prevailed. College administrators are telling us online college is MORE expensive for schools than in-person college. But wait. Does this mean there is MORE VALUE in […]
Right now schools have no idea how to teach online and kids will go to school irregularly this fall. It will take 20 years for school districts to dig themselves out of the Covid crisis and start thinking about what is actually important to teach. Meanwhile, the US history curriculum is already so outdated that […]
Parents are not doing Zoom school. They think it’s stupid. Yet teachers have been doing school day after day like it’s essential. A survey by Fishbowl reveals that the majority of professionals prefer to continue working from home. Except K-12 teachers. They prefer going back to working at school.
My son wanted to read The Communist Manifesto, and I told him, “Just read a summary.” He scowled. “I majored in political history and I read very few books. You don’t have to read books.”
One of the most difficult parts of divorce is that kids have to manage conflict between parents. Parents who don’t communicate well often don’t realize that they end up putting the burden of adult communication on their kids. Kids are not equipped to deal with the stress of adult problems, but they end up feeling […]