Years from now, when we look back at 2011, many will probably remember it for the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring. As we look forward to 2012, many are probably curious to see if the protests of 2011 were a beginning or an end. As we observe another MLK Day, I wonder: If Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, what causes would he be behind?    No doubt, he would take up the mantle of health, poverty and education all around the world, beginning with leadership in the U.S.  As we launch this election year, we can think of how to both fuel our economy at home and consider global issues which impact all of us. If we have a vision for ending poverty, educating all people and promoting the best talents and abilities within each and every person we’ll have a world which is ready to embrace the frontiers of space, the limitless opportunity of science, the life-sustaining force of new energy sources and the capacity to understand and appreciate our hearts and those of others we necessarily like or understand.

Martin Luther King left us with passionate, timeless, and lingering words that we can still have force in 2012:

Many observe Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by doing something charitable. Many also look forward to the three-day weekend it allows. No matter how you’ve spent  MLK Day in the past, consider making this one different. Take a few moments to look back at this influential man and ask, what can we still learn from him today? Can remembering MLK’s words help you make a decision in the presidential elections and/or the choices before you in your personal and professional life?

If you or someone you know is in debt, has a foreclosed home, or is struggling to pay the bills due to unemployment, you may have wondered how life would be different had lessons in financial literacy been handed out instead of endless lines of credit.

In an attempt to prepare a new generation of consumers with healthy financial habits, many organizations, and now the financial powers that be at the White House, are developing financial literacy programs to teach youth the financial skills they need to avoid spending pitfalls. According to a recent article in Time magazine, President Obama and his financial advisers recently released the 20 simple “money milestones,” showing what students in different age groups will be expected to know about finances. The following is a summary of Obama’s milestones for financial literacy standards:

• Ages 3-5. Children should understand it takes money to buy things, money is earned by working, they might need to delay gratification, and the difference between wants and needs.
• Ages 6-10. Children learn they must make choices on how to spend their money, they should shop around for deals, the dangers of sharing too much information online, and the functionality of a bank account.
• Ages 11-13. Children will understand it is smart to save 10% of what they earn, sharing credit card or Social Security numbers online puts them at-risk for identity theft, the earlier they start saving the more they’ll have, and credit cards must be paid back in full each month to avoid interest rates.
• Ages 14-18. Teens will understand college is expensive and their choices should be limited to what they can realistically pay back with loans, scholarships, grants, and projected income, credit card use should be avoided if they cannot afford it in cash, take home pay is different than gross pay, and a safe investment is putting money in a Roth IRA.
• Ages 18 and up. Young adults will understand they should use credit cards only if they can pay the balance at the end of the month, they should never be without health insurance, they should diversify investments and pay attention to hidden costs.

“Kids who are raised with even cursory knowledge of things like interest expense and fees on financial products will, as adult consumers, know enough to investigate further when necessary. That’s a minimum goal of financial education — and it is the right approach,” writes Dan Kadlec in the article.

LifeBound’s financial literacy book for teens “Dollars & Sense: How to Be Smart About Money” aligns to standards set by the JumpStart Coalition and teaches young adults the basics they need to know about money. It also introduces readers to financial stories from real professionals, common financial foul-ups, worksheets, and end-of-chapter exercises. To find our more about Dollars & Sense and read a FREE sample chapter, please visit the LifeBound website.

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Source:

“Money Milestones: What Kids Should Know About Money and When,” by Dan Kadlec. 9 January 2012. Time magazine. Accessed on 12 January 2012. http://moneyland.time.com/2012/01/09/money-milestones-what-kids-should-know-about-money-and-when/

Emotionally intelligent people are aware of what they do and who they are. Many issues young people have can be alleviated with the knowledge of the people around them and the feelings of others. This awareness makes for successful students, professionals, and members of society and it can thwart or redirect bullying or other inappropriate behaviors. In the recent article “10 Ways to Enhance Your Emotional Intelligence,” Dr. Norman Rosenthal explains there are two schools of thought surrounding emotional intelligence: your EI is an inborn characteristic or you can improve your EI with guidance and practice. Dr. Rosenthal is a believer of the latter, and offered the following tips to “enhance your emotional intelligence” in his article:

As you solidify or adjust your resolutions for 2012, how do you see becoming more emotionally intelligent helping you achieve your goals? This year is also an election year. How can you use emotional intelligence to make a well-thought out decision on the ballot? How can you use emotional intelligence to look outward and make an educated judgment or decision of a candidate?   How can you work with a young person to promote emotional intelligence? How can you model emotional intelligence for a young person?

LifeBound’s book, PEOPLE SMARTS FOR TEENAGERS, builds on these principles so that young people can manage themselves and their relationships with others respectfully, effectively, and purposefully. Incorporating these skills early can promote attention and intention as well as academic, emotional, and social success. Academic coaching of students on emotional intelligence can make the difference in school and out in both the short and the long term.

Myers shares LifeBound’s mission to have readers who can learn about themselves through others so that they can persevere, make connections, follow through and develop personal persistence. His books provide the literary path to achieve this, while LifeBound’s books are like practical, academic coaches for students, helping them to learn about themselves, understand their interests, develop their abilities and embrace ways to improve on their weaknesses in school, college, career and life. Both perspectives are valuable for students to become increasingly comfortable with rigor, their own interests and their ability to develop their own true grit for follow through and life success.

“I would argue that play — especially in the digital sense — is emerging as a pedagogical keystone for education in the 21st century,” says Levasseur in the article. Play isn’t only beneficial to youth. Adults who play games regularly are more open-minded and more likely to see the importance in lifelong learning and play. If teachers can start planting the seed for lifelong play at an early age, students will enter adulthood with the desire to innovate, create, and be challenged. Contrast this with some of the rigid requirements in AP and IB programs right now where students are so stressed by their course requirements they can’t think an original thought or alleviate their own stress levels. Why can’t we achieve a balance that incorporates mystery, curiosity, wonder and awe in learning while covering the “rubricks”?

In a classroom setting, gaming allows for the educator to take the role of coach as the game teaches the player how to navigate through a series of errors and rewards. The fact that students can safely make mistakes and must learn from them in order to advance is another reason why gaming has become appealing in the classroom setting.

It’s time that all of us in the ‘get ready for college’ space realize that getting ready for life is the most important thing we can strive for and that getting ready for college and career is a piece of that process—not the other way around. Let’s start focusing on the kinds of things that fuel people’s purpose, their interest and their passions through play, ambiguity, consternation, questions and wonder.

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Source:

“The Power of Play,” by Aran Levasseur. 4 January 2012. Mind/Shift. Accessed on 4 January 2012. http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/01/the-power-of-play-in-learning/

After indulging in all the goods of the holiday season, it might not be a surprise that on January 1 getting fit and losing weight will be the number one resolution, according to a survey by Goals Guy. Getting healthy is great, but how many people made that same resolution last year and the year before?

In a Huffington Post interview, clinical therapists and coauthors of the book The Diet Survivor’s Handbook, say the only weight-loss resolution people should make is not to diet in the new year. They believe practicing good self-care every day of the year is what brings happiness and health.

Whether motivated by the approaching new year or a simple desire to embrace a healthier life, there is an easy and time friendly way to bring health into your life.

In the visual lecture 23 1/2 Hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health, Dr. Mike Evans shares he has an interest in preventive medicine, which means advocating for people to do things like weighing less, drinking less, smoking less, and controlling cholesterol and blood pressure for a healthier life, versus taking medications to alleviate pains and ailments. So he wanted to know what it is the most efficient way people can take these preventative measures. What has the biggest return on investment?

He found people with arthritis, diabetes, depression, fatigue, dementia, and heart disease had symptoms greatly decrease by making one simple change in their lifestyle: walking 30 minutes every day.

The dosage is small, however, there are many busy people who feel they don’t even have that much time to dedicate to their health. For those people, consider looking at the 30 minutes a day in a different light by asking this question: “Can you limit your sitting and sleeping to just 23 1/2 hours a day?”

If you have the desire to increase your quality of life, consider taking the challenge to get out and walk for 30 minutes every day. This simple step has the power to change the rest of your life, and won’t just pass with the beginning of the year.

Giving, whether of time or money, has the power to be therapeutic and impact another life. This holiday season, instead of being worried about money, family, employment, or gifts, take a minute to stop and give back.

Every year we usually throw a holiday party at LifeBound. However, this year we decided to celebrate with a day of service instead. If you’re still looking for a way to make a difference, consider using our service day as inspiration for ideas on how you can take a breather from the hectic pace of the holidays and put a smile on someone’s face.

The first half of the day we spent making sack lunches for the homeless. We sat around the conference table stuffing and decorating bags while each of us shared the things we accomplished this year and our goals for next year.

We also took a minute to put on some holiday hats before starting the sack lunch distribution.

We split up in two teams: one group went down Colfax and the other group went to an area across from the Denver Rescue Mission. We brought 50 bags and were out in a matter of minutes. We weren’t prepared for the demand we encountered at our chosen locations and, on our drive back to the office, started noticing even more people along the streets we wished we could reach out to. The lunches were so well received, next year, we will go prepared with 500 lunches to pass out all over town.

We regrouped at the office and drove to the Park Hill Assisted Living Residence to sing Christmas carols. Our amateur a capella group had a blast singing (even if we didn’t always know the tune or the words!) and we had a great audience.

Take a moment this week and reach out to someone in need. If your schedule is too crazy this week, remember there are needy people 365 days a year. Plan a charitable outing and tell us about it!

What can professional development mean for your school? Successful teachers, successful students, and a successful learning environment.

At Cochrane Collegiate Academy, students were among the lowest-performing middle schools in North Carolina, then they decided to try something new. The school implemented a consistent professional development program that dramatically increased learning and engagement, according to Edutopia.

The educators at Cochrane came up with a list of their ten best practices. These ”non-negotiables” are used by every teacher, every day in every lesson. This top ten list was developed by the educators at the school and used to implement the instructional method they named Interactive Learning (IL).

Cochrane shared their Top Ten Interactive Learning Non-Negotiables with Edutopia recently in the article “Ten Tips for Engaging Underperforming Students.”

1. Essential Questions: What is the intended goal of the lesson?
2. Activating Strategy: Get students actively thinking or making a connection with the material.
3. Relevant Vocabulary: Actively use, and have the student actively use, new relevant words throughout the lesson.
4. Limited Lecture: After 12-15 minutes of lecturing, teachers must engage students in some type of activity.
5. Graphic Organizer: The graphic organizer helps students conceptualize information given to them.
6. Student Movement: Students must be mobile at some time during instruction to ensure they’re actively engaged.
7. Higher Order Thinking Questions: Present at least three higher-order-thinking (HOT) questions during the lesson.
8. Summarize: Close the lesson with a summary and assess the students’ abilities to answer the essential question.
9. Rigorous: Activities must be challenging and move at a brisk pace.
10. Student Centered: Students are the focus and the lesson is centered around their success.

You can read a more in-depth write-up on this top ten list by visiting Edutopia. Do you regularly use any of the above non-negotiables? Do you have any additions to make? Will you try any in your next lesson?

If you or your school is looking for a professional development program to implement in order to boost student success, LifeBound offers professional development sessions and can also customize sessions to fit your school’s specific needs. Please visit our website to learn more.

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Source:

“Ten Tips for Engaging Underperforming Students,” by Mariko Nobori. 18 October 2011. Eduptopia. Accessed on 2 December 2011. http://www.edutopia.org/stw-school-turnaround-student-engagement-tips?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=stw&utm_campaign=tentipsengagingstudents

In recent years, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning has received a lot of attention as more 21st century jobs require employees to have strong STEM skill knowledge. This increasing need to provide students with more skills in STEM subjects to be ready for the changing world of work has many parents, educators, and policy makers questioning how to add more STEM programs in schools where time and budgets are short.

A new study shows, children can start refining their STEM skills as early as preschool:

Preschool children who hear parents describe the size and shape of objects and then use those words themselves perform better on tests of their spatial skills.

(Science Daily)

This is the first study to show the knowledge of spatial words predict children’s spatial thinking later in life. These findings are significant to the advancement of STEM learning and to further support the need to expose children to words related to STEM concepts early in life.

Researchers found for every 45 additional spatial words children used in “spontaneous talk with their parents, they saw, on average, a 23 percent increase in their scores on the spatial analogies task and a 15 percent increase in their performance on the mental rotation task.” This increase in spatial words also proved to improve children’s overall vocabulary.

“In view of findings that show spatial thinking is an important predictor of STEM achievment and careers, it is importnat to explore the kinds of early inputs that are related to spatial thinking,” said psychologist Susan Levine.

You can read more about how this study was conducted at Science Daily. Will this study’s findings change how you approach teaching shapes and their features to young children?

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Source:

Big, Little, Tall and Tiny: Learning Spatial Terms Improves Children’s Spatial Skills.” 9 November 2011. Science Daily. Accessed on 23 November 2011. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111109125737.htm

We want higher scores on standardized tests, higher high school graduation rates, and higher numbers of high school grads ready for college. If students are falling short of these demands, it must be the teacher who’s supposed to be teaching them something, right? According to some new studies: wrong.

In Thomas Friedman’s most recent op-ed, “How About Better Parents,” he summarizes the finding of the following studies and their implications for parents.

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests 15-year-olds in the world’s leading industrialized nations on reading comprehension and problem solving abilities in math and science, which have proved to be the skills most needed to succeed in college courses and the world of work. American students are behind students in Singapore, Finland, and Shanghai.

Researcher Andreas Schleicher, along with the PISA team, wanted to figure out the “why” behind the gaps in global student achievement, so they interviewed the parents of 5,000 students and interviewed them on how they raised their children, followed by comparing their answers with the test results.

The study found:

• 15-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show higher scores in PISA than those whose parents read to them infrequently or not at all.
• Showing “genuine interest” in what a child learned during the day and by simply asking questions like “how was your day?” proved to have the same impact as hours of tutoring.
• Students with parents who read a book with their child “every day or almost every day” and those with parents who “read once or  twice a week” during primary school years had significantly higher PISA scores than students who rarely or never read to their children. The difference was equivalent to half a school year.
• The type of parent involvement matters. The most effective are when parents read with a child, talk about things during the day, and tell their kids stories. The least effective is playing with their children.

Friedman closes by saying: “Better parents can make every teacher more effective.”

At LifeBound, we offer parent engagement programs for parents of students in elementary, middle school, and high school. We also have a weekly blog for parents written by LifeBound’s lead trainer, co-author, and parent Maureen Breeze. I invite you to become part of our online community via the blog and to visit www.lifebound.com to learn more about the parent sessions we offer.

Sources:

“How About Better Parents” by Thomas Friedman. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/friedman-how-about-better-parents.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-HAB-112011-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click