When I was a special education teacher back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, I used to compose songs for my students and sing them accompanied by guitar.  One child’s parents were going through a divorce, so I wrote a song called ”Mommy and Daddy Are Separating,” I noticed how much my 3rd to 5th grade...Read More

In this video — part of my series of short videos on Dr. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences – I focus on interpersonal intelligence, or what I call People Smart.  It’s one of the most important of the eight intelligences, and yet it is not part of the standard curriculum in our schools.  With...Read More

During the past three months, millions of parents have had to become ”experts” in teaching and learning, familiarizing themselves with school subjects, study skills, instructional objectives, distance learning, and a lot more.  However, there’s one teaching component that is central to learning that often gets left out of the mix:  helping a child or teen’s...Read More

After this pandemic is over with (or at least sufficiently in the background of American life to warrant little comment), plan to go into a classroom and ask yourself, does this classroom have life?” That’s the key test of whether there’s any real learning going on. There could be fake learning going on, to be...Read More

Many parents are doubling down on their kids’ homeschooling and/or distance learning schedules, trying to make sure that they’re getting the same academic ”rigor” as they got when they were in school.  This may be a laudable objective, but it can easily run into problems.  Homes are not set up like schools, consequently it’s inevitable...Read More