Most people travel during the summer. Some will head to foreign lands like Nepal, Peru or Tanzania while others will stay close to home for financial or other reasons. If you are staying in America this summer, there are many ways you can bring the world to you. Here are some suggestions:
Effective Leadership: How to Motivate and Inspire Others
Managers and parents, educators and CEOs, all have one thing in common: They influence others. What do really good leaders do that ineffective leaders don’t do? Why do some people inspire others to greatness while others promote little if any positive influence? Or worse, why and how do some people negatively influence others, bringing down entire organizations, companies, and profits? While books and lectures on this topic abound, the most effective leadership comes down to a few basic tenets:
1. Do you have integrity? As a leader, if you are not a person of your word you can’t motivate others. Or you may inspire them initially, but they won’t be with you for the long haul. If you’re a parent of teenagers, you’ve probably experienced how quickly they can let you know when you’re being a hypocrite.
2. Do you bring out the best in others and yourself? The best leaders understand the strengths and weaknesses of others, as well as their own strengths and weaknesses. They leverage the best qualities of those around them in ways that promote the personal growth of that person while meeting the goals of the organization.
3. Do you have people on your team who offer different perspectives? Research shows that successful companies, as well as strong families, allow for differing points of view. Do you have people around you who think differently than you do? Do they challenge your point of view to help you make more thorough decisions?
4. Are you a visionary? Do you have an idea of where your company can go and what your team can do to bring about wild successes? What tolerance do you have for teachable failures? What culture and climate does your vision promote? A true vision will reflect your most basic values and beliefs.
5. Do you lead by example? Are you someone who doesn’t ask more from others than you are willing to give yourself? The most effective leaders have the ability to maintain their authority while providing an example of leadership built on trust and respect.
A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America
Carol’s Summary:
Teach for America, an organization that hires recent college graduates to teach in low-income public schools, has become more selective in choosing graduates to teach. Even many Ivy-league graduates have had difficulty getting accepted into the non-profit program. This year, about 4,500 candidates were accepted out of over 46,000 people who applied.
Teach for America not only benefits students in low-income schools, but also offers
Résumé credentials, job security for two years, and a beginning teacher’s salary. Teach for America applicants must complete an online application, a lesson plan, a written test, a phone interview, an in-person interview and a monitored discussion.
While many agree that Teach for America is a great program to recruit and train new teachers, others have mixed feelings due to the turnover rate of the program. According to a study from Harvard, about 61 percent of teachers stay after their two-year contract ends. Others go on to graduate school or to pursue other careers. Also, some education experts and critics say that students’ academic performance is often better when they have experienced teachers.
Schools in low-income neighborhoods are in the most need of good teachers, books and other materials; Teach for America provides new teachers with hand-on experience in the professional world. LifeBound provides frequent coaching and training sessions for teachers who are looking to find new ways to connect with students and work with them to ensure maximum success. We offer curriculum ideas along with our coaching and books. To learn more about LifeBound, visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com.
Article:
A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: July 11, 2010
HOUSTON — Alneada Biggers, Harvard class of 2010, was amazed this past year when she discovered that getting into the nation’s top law schools and grad programs could be easier than being accepted for a starting teaching job with Teach for America.
To read the full article: www.nytimes.com
The Creativity Crisis
Carol’s Summary:
For the first time, is has been reported that Americans’ creativity is on the decline. Even though Americans grow increasingly intelligent, creativity scores have been falling since 1990. The College of William and Mary collected data in the form of creativity test scores from 300,000 children and adults nationwide, and found the scores from children in kindergarten to sixth grade were most troubling.
The creativity test was created by Professor E. Paul Torrance in the 1950s, and has been administered to people by psychologists worldwide. No one knows exactly why creativity has declined in younger generations, but it is suspected that television, videogames and other forms of technology may have something to do with the problem. Children aren’t as often encouraged to exercise their creativity at school nor at home.
Some researchers believe that “creativity training†programs may be able to help adults and children who struggle with creativity. In creativity training, people would be asked to perform tasks such as creating music on a keyboard, and finding different ways to solve common problems, such as how to reduce noise vibrations in a library.
Creativity is just as much, if not more important than conventional intelligence. Many of the world’s greatest leaders, inventors and other historical figures were and are people who thought outside of the box of conventional thinking. Creativity fosters innovation, which brings about new ideas and products for the masses and enables nations to evolve and grow.
Despite the fact that people are becoming more intelligent, the fact that creativity is on the decline is quire worrisome, especially for children since they are our future. As educators and parents, it is our responsibility to foster children’s creative abilities; Critical and Creative Thinking for Teenagers is a book that presents students with the opportunity to use their imagination, be inquisitive, and create new ideas. To learn more about this book and Lifebound’s other books, visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com.
Article:
The Creativity Crisis
Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,†a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?†He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective†and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.â€
The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).
To read the full article: www.newsweek.com
For Those Facebook Left Behind
Although social networking sites are becoming increasingly popular, there are still an abundance of people who are unfamiliar with these tools. There has been a recent uproar about the use of the word “tweetâ€, and a new debate on whether the word is appropriate to use in other outlets besides on-line. This debate has in some ways separated tech-savvy people from others.
Lumina Foundation Suffers “Initiative Fatigue”
The Lumina Foundation, which plays a key role in education nationally, is concerned about “initiative fatigue,†and will concentrate its efforts on getting more students to graduate from college. As someone who has spent the last sixteen years writing books for college students and working with professors to be more effective with freshmen, here is my advice:
Gender Gap for the Gifted
Carol’s Summary:
In many schools around New York City, findings show that girls now outnumber boys in schools and programs for gifted children. At schools such as the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, TAG Young Scholars, and New Explorations of Science and Technology and Math, there is a noticeable ratio of male to female students. Although the entire school system is 51 percent male, girls comprise 56 percent of the district’s gifted students.
This disparity is also evident nationwide, as well in graduation and college enrollment rates, where the gap between girls and boys has grown steadily for decades. Experts’ theories state that many forms of gifted as well as standardized testing tend to favor girls, particularly in the area of verbal skills. Another theory is that traditional classroom management skills may favor girls over boys. Boys tend benefit from classes that are highly collaborative, bodily-kinesthetic and challenging.
Experts and researchers are finding that one of the main reasons for the gender gap amongst gifted students is that classrooms focus more on testing and linguistics than on spatial subjects and mathematics, in which boys tend to show stronger understanding. It is clear that there is a relationship between both content and methods of delivery in how both genders succeed.
LifeBound’s books and training emphasize the importance of academic preparation that can be applied to the needs and strengths of all students. One of LifeBound’s goals is to help close the achievement gaps amongst all types of students so that all students have an equal ability and opportunity to succeed. Visit www.lifebound.com or email contact@lifebound.com to learn more about LifeBound’s goals, books and programs.
Article:
Gender Gap for the Gifted in City Schools
By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: May 31, 2010
When the kindergartners at the Brooklyn School of Inquiry, one of New York City’s schools for gifted students, form neat boy-girl rows for the start of recess, the lines of girls reach well beyond the lines of boys.
To read the full article: www.nytimes.com
Putting the “Boy Crisis†in Context
Carol’s Summary:
It has also been found that girls not only have been scoring higher in reading than boys, but that girls also tend to fare better academically overall. The exception is mathematics, which has generated varied results amongst boys and girls. On average, girls also have higher grade-point averages than boys in their grade level, and are likelier to graduate high school and go to college.
Although gender gaps in education have existed for decades, it is now becoming a global problem. In 2006, a study was released with data from fourth grade reading tests in 40 countries; the results showed that girls scored higher than boys in every area where data was collected properly.
Education experts and schools around the nation are now coming up with ideas for “boy friendly†teaching, which would engage boys’ interests in a way so that they would be likelier to succeed, particularly in literacy. There are many kinds of achievement gaps that need to be reduced and eventually closed, from gender to economic background and ethnicity.
There are as many different teaching styles as there are learning styles, and every child is different.  LifeBound books and curriculum provide teachers with different strategies and learning activities that engage different kinds of students. It is important that all students are on a level playing field, so that all children have an equal opportunity to succeed in school and in the real world. To learn more about LifeBound’s books, curriculum and other materials, visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com.
Article:
Putting the “Boy Crisis†in Context
Finding solutions to boys’ reading problems may require looking beyond gender
By MICHAEL SADOWSKI
“The Boys Have Fallen Behind.†“Girls Lead the Nation in Reading Scores.†“Are Teachers Failing Our Sons?†Earlier this year, newspapers across the country ran these and other headlines in response to a March report by the independent Center on Education Policy (CEP) in Washington, D.C. The report, which outlined results on state accountability tests, raised alarm by noting that the percentage of boys scoring “proficient†or higher in reading was below that of girls at all grade levels tested and in every state for which sufficient data were available.
To read more: Harvard Education Letter
Summer school is a great tool, if only more students would use it
Carol’s Summary:
Summer school has long been though of as a last chance option for children who failed classes during the traditional school year. However, some groups now argue that summer school programs can be of great help to all children, even those who do well in school.
Much of what is learned during the school year is forgotten during summer vacation, which contributes to low achievement, particularly in low-income schools. Now, Washington D.C. public schools are aiming to change this as well as the long-lasting stigma that has been attached to attending summer school. These programs aim to provide a well-rounded learning experience for students, which would include hands-on learning and field trips.
It is important for students to have a well-rounded, year-round focus on education. Summer school should no longer be thought of as a punishment, but rather as an enrichment experience. Students who remain academically focused all year long are likelier to be higher achievers overall.
LifeBound’s books address situations that students deal with whether they are in school or out of school, because our books connect the academic experience with those in everyday life. Visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com for more information on how our books reach out to students with real life strategies and tools for success.
Article:
Summer school is a great tool, if only more students would use it
By Jay Mathews
Monday, June 28, 2010
This Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Brent Elementary School at 301 North Carolina Ave. SE, the D.C. public schools will hold a chancellor’s forum on how to add useful learning to your child’s summer. Several groups, such as the D.C. Public Library, the University of the District of Columbia Science and Engineering Center, and even Madame Tussaud’s, will have booths about their summer programs.
But the District, like other urban districts, will have a summer school that includes only about a fifth of its students. Many people laugh that off: Who in their right mind wants to go to summer school? Give the poor kids a break.
That old-fashioned attitude turns out to be educationally bankrupt. Summer learning loss has been shown to be a likely cause of low achievement in cities such as Washington. Karl L. Alexander of Johns Hopkins University found that by ninth grade, accumulated learning loss for low-income children accounted for two-thirds of the achievement gap between them and higher-income children who had summer learning opportunities, such as trips to the library and museums.
To read more visit www.washingtonpost.com
Ed. Dept. Opposes Cutting Race to Top to Fund Education Jobs
Carol’s Summary:
On Tuesday, a proposal was released that would take funding from Race to the Top in order to fund jobs in education; however, the U.S. Department of Education opposes the proposal, because it would cause budget cuts to other education reform programs, including an estimated $500 million would be cut from Race to the Top, and another $200 million would be cut from the Teacher Initiative Fund.
Race to the Top provides funding to states that are on track towards implementing more charter schools and improving low-income and low-performing schools. The Teacher Initiative Fund provides pay-for-performance programs. Pay-for-performance programs provide increased pay for schools and teachers that actively improve their students’ academic performance.
Although the U.S. Dept. of Education does not want other programs to be cut in order to provide money for keeping existing teachers’ jobs, the recent and widespread teacher layoffs nationwide have caused some representatives and organizations to feel that the proposed funding is important to education reform overall.
Education reform, including Race to the Top funding, is a fundamental part of our nation’s future. It will have a major impact on our economy and the overall quality of life for our nation’s citizens. While the debate persists about how education reform funding should be spent, it is vital that schools continue to provide the best education for children before, during, and after changes in our education system take place.
LifeBound provides schools nationwide with books and curriculum that focus on connecting academics to real-life situations, so that teachers can educate students in a way that is relevant to their lives both in and outside of the classroom. To learn more about LifeBound’s materials, visit www.lifebound.com or e-mail contact@lifebound.com.
Article:
Ed. Dept. Opposes Cutting Race to Top to Fund Edujobs
By Alyson Klein
The U.S. Department of Education is pushing back against a congressional plan to trim key priorities of the Obama administration—including the Race to the Top Fund and money for pay-for-performance programs and charter schools—to help cover the cost of a $10 billion effort to save education jobs.
The proposal, unveiled late Tuesday by Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, would skim $500 million from Race to the Top, the administration’s $4.35 billion signature education reform initiative, which was created last year under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
To read the full article: www.edweek.org