Charting—Navigating Life Changes and Learning Part 1 We know when we get in a car and step on the accelerator that we are moving—we can see the instruments and feel the acceleration. But when we send our child to school we don’t have that same experience. We don’t always know what is happening, and there are no immediate updates. But there could be! What if there was a way to see whether a person is learning—learning to a high level—while the process is going on. What if this instrument for navigating education were simple, accessible and transparent? What if this instrument made it possible to gauge human performance at every…
-
-
Building a Learning Momentum
I have been strongly influenced by several behavioral scientists over the years; Murray Sidman, Ogden Lindsley and Tony Nevin, along with my personal guru, Eric Haughton. These researchers helped me better understand the critical nature of positive reinforcement immediately linked to a behavior. Because reinforcement is so critical, and because the absence of it in early school experiences is so damaging, I am writing this column. My daughter Caitlin was one of the youngsters who had an early bad experience at school. By the beginning of October in first grade Caitlin had stomachaches five days a week, but woke up without pain on Saturday and Sunday. Her face showed the…
-
The Residue of Failure
One of our students, lets call her Rose, has flourished all summer. Every week she has grown stronger, more able in everything she works on. Her successes have brought her the most charming, lovely smiles, and she practically glows as she works on her reading. As we work with her we each find ourselves raising the bar, expecting more, and constantly getting it. Sometimes she seemed like Icarus, spiraling continuously upward, flying higher and higher. Her work had been so amazing, her progress so rapid, that we never saw the residue of failure, lurking in the shadows of her mind. Until one day, in raising the bar, Amy, asking for more…
-
The Master of Learning
In 2000 the National Reading Panel (NRP) published their findings—a thorough piece of research on the issues of reading instruction in the USA. The findings are interesting reading, and of course, twenty years later, the changes that the panel recommended have been never been fully implemented. The Panel recommended Phonics, Fluency, Phonemic Awareness, and Comprehension as essential elements. Most reading programs now say they offer fluency in their systems and that they offer all of the critical elements. Now, as the reading wars heat up again, whole language systems are making the dubious claim that they offer everything that the NRP recommended. Of course, long before the NRP recommended fluency,…
