Awoken at 6:46 am on the Saturday after the 4th of July, through groggy consciousness, I registered the staccato sounds of a teenage texter. I recalled that The College Board released the 2019 AP (Advanced Placement) Exam scores (at least in California) on that fine morning. His texts were the first of many I received…
Skip to 10:15 in the video. Reinvention also means the death of something and the resurrection of something from the past but then a creation of something that never existed before, a whole mindset that never existed before. Dr. Deepak Chopra As we all continue putting one foot in front of the other, walking our…
As an educational consultant, when I ask the question in the title, students and their parents are often stunned and momentarily speechless. Parents usually look at their kids, shrugging their shoulders, as if to communicate, “She’s asking you, you answer.” Then, kids often confess that although they expect to attend college, they’ve never really considered…
“When” is stumping even the best scientists and medical researchers. And, while historical virus outbreaks may offer precedent, uncertainty is still pervasive, creating complexity for families seeking to make educational decisions, like choosing a college. Recently, Warren Buffet’s long time Berkshire Hathaway collaborator, Charlie Munger, who also earned his wisdom being alive for the last…
As the Class of 2020 finishes one chapter and commences on the next one, remember, the difficulties of Spring of 2020 and their unorthodox “graduation” doesn’t define the total value of their experience, but only punctuates their resiliency.
What I’m calling, “The Great Distance Learning Experiment of 2020” has commenced for nearly all of the 57 million K-12 students in the United States. In such an experimental phase, the continuity of instruction is muddled, and students, teachers and educators find themselves in uncharted waters. The old rules, like attendance policies, don’t apply, at…
Seemed apropos for these extraordinary times, as parents worry their children are falling behind in their learning, high school students worry they will be less competitive for college admissions with Pass/No Pass marks this spring, continuing college students worry they aren’t experiencing the quality of education through distance learning, isolated in their homes, not gaining…
The above chart depicts that the wealthiest and upper middle class have not only regained their wealth previous to the 2008 recession, but gained greater wealth, at the expense of the middle class and poorest classes. And, now, middle class and poorer families are facing an even greater economic downturn that has yet to be…
Since K-12 and college students are “distance learning” for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year, and the majority of extracurricular activities have also been cancelled, students are sharing that they’re “bored, but don’t know what to do.” Additionally, some parents worry that their kids’ aren’t “productive with their time.” So, to take advantage of…
Amidst the COVID-19 health crisis disrupting educational and instructional continuity, students, parents, and educators are asking and being asked questions about the current educational process, which is also spurring discussions about the value of education. The following is a selection of education-related news stories from the past few weeks, offering insights about the shifts…
A student who attends a public flagship university in California characterizes distance learning as: Chaos is an apt description. Zoom is challenging to manage and pre-recorded lectures lack humor. It’s difficult to focus on lectures… Third year undergraduate The student, like many others, struggles to continue learning, conflicted about missing friends and her life in…
The continued COVID-19 health crisis, and its impacts both economically and socially may have wide-ranging consequences for colleges throughout the United States. Families confronted by an array of changing circumstances are recalibrating their educational decision making processes, especially for high school seniors choosing between multiple colleges or deferring enrollment, as well as continuing college students…
The million dollar question: How’s the distance learning going? It’s a mixed meme bag, according to college students’ own words. First, new protocols have developed for virtual learning: “When someone new joins a Zoom Chat” But, some things don’t change; no one wants to be the “try hard” no matter if in a virtual sense…
Educators and students, participants in the Modern American Educational Industrial Complex, are mere glimmers of the Jeffersonian ideals of “essential merit”, which historian Joseph F. Kett defines as: …merit that rests on specific and visible achievements by an individual that were thought, in turn, to reflect that individual’s estimable character…’Merit’ was that quality in the…
Graph courtesy of The Wall Street Journal Current college students, many who find themselves at home though would rather be finishing their school year on college campuses around the country, will be confronting along with their older colleagues who graduated college in 2019, 2018, a possibly more complicated problem that of protracted unemployment. In addition,…
