“I’m so over!” Jennifer said. “Overwhelmed. Overworked. Overscheduled.” As school leaders, the demands on our time, as well as our own tendencies toward perfection or procrastination, can create a situation where we are over our heads. How can we go from overwhelmed to overdrive, to feeling like we are cruising in the driver’s seat? Make […]
Questions About Multilingual Children
Today in my Understanding How Children Learn To Read webinar, I received this question about teaching young multilingual children how to write and read. I seem to be getting these types of questions frequently, so I thought I’d do a blog post about it. Maren, Wondering why age 4.5 is recommended for introducing a foreign […]
Overcoming Obstacles To Success
As we work with adults we often wonder why our expectations or standards aren’t being met. We believe in assuring success for children. How can we assure success for adults? Success usually requires more of the following: Skills and training Experience Time to get the job done Support from others Materials Confidence Desire or motivation to […]
BOOK REVIEW | Hatching The Cosmic Egg
“Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions.” Dr. Maria Montessori To Educate The Human Potential, page 5 Everything is perfect. As we flew cross-country in […]
BOOK | Understanding Montessori
Ten years ago I wrote and published Understanding Montessori: A Guide For Parents. Over the years I wanted to do an update, but there was always another project that called. But this summer I went to work on the second edition and am now pleased to let you know about it. The paperback and ebook have […]
Make Room For Success, Delegate
One of the traps I tend to fall into, time and time again, is this one: I’d rather do it myself that delegate a task and have someone not do it correctly. As school leaders working with staff and volunteers we can be put in uncomfortable situations by others’ mistakes and tardiness. How can we use […]
Leading Towards Civility
In our series on teaching civility, we’ve considered that there are key questions we need to keep in the air every day. : Who do I want to be? As a community, there are key questions to address: We’ve looked at personal strategies to deal with incivility: There are high costs to incivility: You’ve learned how to calculate your […]
Herding Cats?
As a school leader we deal with lots of different personalities from youngsters to adults. Trying to meet a variety of needs…no wonder we might feel like we are herding cats. There are some similarities in guiding adults and children. Perhaps when we can focus on those similarities we can play to our strengths. […]
The High Costs Of Incivility
One of the dangers of dealing with incivility is like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water. If a frog jumps into boiling water, he’ll jump right out. Light the fire after the frog is in the pot, and he stays until it is too late. With incivility we run the risk of […]
Dealing With Incivility
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. This nursery rhyme from the 1830’s, created to help children develop self-control in the face of taunting, sets us up to think we have to accept incivility. From an early age, we are told to “toughen up” and ignore others’ insults and […]