Thursday Tip: Summer Reading (for Pleasure) for Kids

July 7th, 2010

When most kids think of summer reading, they get annoyed by the prospect of being forced to read a book for school that they at best, don’t really enjoy, at worst, turns them off to reading altogether. When we work with junior high and high school aged students in our office over the summer on reading comprehension, we strive to use books they find enjoyable. In my mind, getting children to enjoy reading is a lost art, and whatever we can do to encourage reading for pleasure is crucial.

TIP: Take your children to your local library or independent bookstore and have them pick out one or two topics they enjoy and find a book or two to read for pleasure. Give them very little limitations and see what they choose…

Here are a list of great books that many boys we have worked with find to be classic but enjoyable reads:

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (a must read!)
Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (or anything else by Steinbeck, The Pearl would be good also)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Things Fall Apart by Chiuna Achebe
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Also, if your child loves sports, try selecting something from Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Sports Books. Its a rather old list (from 2002) but I have found many good books that got kids engaged on that list…

Monday Rec: 5 Ways to Engage Your Child this Summer

July 4th, 2010

Last Friday, I was on View From the Bay talking about 5 tips to engage your child this summer (watch the TV clip here). I am a big believer that wonderful learning can happen outside the classroom, and each of these five ways is a fun way to promote learning – and often encourages family communication and interaction in a fun way. Watch the TV clip or read the five tips below:

  1. Create a comic strip: To improve handwriting and penmanship, young students need to work on their fine motor skills. Creating comic strip works on humor, creativity, and also encourages use of those fine motor skills so important for handwriting – something that is being lost as many young students are spending more and more time on a computer. Fine motor skills are still crucially important, as is penmanship, and this is a fun way to encourage kids to develop those skills.
  2. Get into the kitchen: At the beginning of the summer, have your kids figure out their favorite breakfast, lunch and dinner meals – and then, over the course of the summer, have them master creating each meal from scratch. So, if their favorite dinner is spaghetti, perhaps having them learn how to make the sauce from scratch. Then, get them each a receipe box and index cards so they can write down (again, practicing handwriting) their own notes and adaptations of the recipes they followed – this helps kids with their math, science, critical thinking and writing skills.
  3. Plan a weekly local excursion: Give each child a budget to plan an itinerary for a weekly day trip. If you live near a city, perhaps have them figure out all the public transportation options if the trip involves a museum or something similar. The trip could also involve the outdoors – you as a family can come up with a theme, or rotate (city museum one week, country hiking the next) each week. The key is that the child use their research skills to budget and plan the itinerary – which works on developing math, critical thinking and problem solving skills.
  4. Bring back the Traditional Family Board Game Night: Traditional Family Board Games like Yahtzee, Monopoly and Scrabble can be fun ways of encouraging learning – scrabble can work with vocabulary, and Yahtzee and Monopoly are all about strategy and critical thinking as well as basic math skills. Make it fun with popcorn and snacks and sitting around a circular table even for an hour can encourage conversation and communication as well as skill building.
  5. Create-A-Story Contest: Similar to an old camp game where kids went around and each wrote a sentence of a story and went around in a circle and had the next kid write the next sentence, and so on and so forth, until a creatively hilarious story was developed, work on a short story as a family this summer. As a family, pick a genre (sci-fi, sports, etc), and then have each person write a few paragraphs on the computer and then pass it on to the next person in the family. Kids can get really excited about this activity, and the whole family can get involved to see what happens next to the characters that they are collectively creating. This works on creative writing, critical thinking development.

Tips for Keeping the Learning Alive this Summer

June 2nd, 2010

So, May is always a crazy month around the office, and I got behind on my blog posts, but June is a completely different story! So much to share, and hopefully this upcoming summer is going to offer your family a bit of much needed respite. Although, for many of my students, it seems as though summer is even busier than the school year.

This past week in the Chicago Tribune’s Sunday Magazine, click here for the link, I was quoted on a way to help your kids stay engaged this summer – one of my ideas is to give kids a budget (say $150 for a family of four) and plan a complete daily family outing -  including tickets, transportation, food, etc – and watch how creative your kids can get. If you have several children, maybe have them each do one on their own or work together. By researching and planning they are practicing their executive functioning and critical thinking skills, and buy getting a budget they are using their math skills to find the best (or most affordable route). Maybe their family outing includes going to the city for the day, or going on a hike and then eating lunch somewhere amazing (because the hike was a less expensive activity) or maybe its going to a ballgame as a family. Regardless, having your kids do all the planning can be a nice role reversal!

Article: Social Networking and the Changing Face(book) of Friendships

May 4th, 2010

This past weekend, I was driving back to my apartment in San Francisco and stopped as a cable car was going past, and I watched these two teenagers that seemed to be on a date riding the cable cars.  Except, they both had iPod earphones in their ears, and when one went to say something to the other, they both had to take off their earphones to converse. I found it kind of funny, because they both seemed to like each other except they couldn’t be without their music, so they were together in their own separate worlds.

This article in the NY Times explores this phenomenon – how social networking has changed student’s social skill set and their development in the midst of less face-to-face interaction. Non-verbal subtle clues are harder to pick up over gchat, Facebook or text, and sometimes with less interpersonal interaction, those skills become less developed in adolescents and teens.

What are some simple things to do in the face of new social technology?~ I encourage kids to get a summer job (if they are old enough) where they are dealing with the general public – either at a grocery store, retail outlet, or otherwise, so they can develop their interpersonal skills and learn how to deal with and react appropriately in a variety of situations. I also encourage parents to have a technology-free time, where everyone puts their Blackberries, iPods and other technological tools away for a few hours each week and do something outdoors and interactive.

Local Event: Cooks for A Cause, Benefiting the Sunbeam Foundation

May 3rd, 2010

When I was in high school, I volunteered at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford on Sunday nights. It was there where I met my friend Jen, who introduced me to her high school classmate and good friend Sara LaBoskey. Sara grew up in Los Altos and ended up being a year behind me at Duke, and found out in her junior year that she had Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of junior year. She passed away in the summer of 2002, and the Sunbeam Foundation was founded in her honor.

On Sunday, May 23, 2010, from 4:30 – 9 pm, downtown Los Altos will host the Cooks for A Cure Progressive Dinner, where diners can stroll to downtown Los Altos for dinner hosted and donated by Akane, Aldo Los Altos, Beausejour, Maltby’s, Peony, Pompeii, and Zitune.  There will also be dessert and demonstration by renowned Chef Charlie Ayers.

It’s a fun event for an amazing cause, and I hope you can join! For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

I’m Back from Vacation – Just in time for College Admissions!

April 18th, 2010

Over vacation, I read Piero Ferrucci’s The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits of Leading a Compassionate Life, a wonderfully written reminder for the mental, physical and emotional benefits of appreciating the simple gifts we have been given and not trying to control events or outcomes for which we have no direct control.

Much of this book reminded me of the college counseling process, and how nervous parents and students become about the whole college application process. I recently talked to parents who convinced themselves that it would be okay to behave unethically in their quest to get their child into the “best” college – because where their child went to college would be paramount in setting the course for the child’s entire future. Unfortunately, these parents, well-intentioned as they were, failed to realize the disastrous message their actions would send their child in the long-run.

At Green Ivy, our college counseling students have been very fortunate, and will be attending schools including Princeton, Brown, Stanford, Notre Dame, American U, Villanova, LMU, Santa Clara, Texas, Colorado and Cal Poly next year – to name a few.  More important than the name of the school, however, is how we work together to find the right school that matches the interests, personality and learning style of the individual student. To us, It is only a success if students come home from school and visit me to say that they are educationally engaged, socially stimulated and generally happy with their college choice.

Please, parents, don’t worry – it really does all work out in the end!

Numbers-wise, this was a tough year in admissions – and some schools saw record numbers of applicants and record low admissions rate – this chart from the NY Times is really revealing….I included this to be informative, not stressful. Ultimately, there is the right school out there for every student, and the most important thing is for parents to be supportive, realistic and informed about their child’s options given their academic, athletic and extracurricular abilities.

The Importance of Personalized Learning

March 22nd, 2010

Below is a copy of a post I wrote for the Perigee Books blog (www.perigeebooks.com). Perigee is a imprint of Penguin books and my wonderful publisher for That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week.

Recently, I was in the check-out line at my neighborhood grocery store when I noticed an ingenious sign: “For faster service, please empty your basket.” Over the years, I’ve seen signs that read “Please empty basket,” but this new version gives customers an incentive – after all, who wants to wait in line any longer than necessary? A classic win-win solution. The customer gets faster service, and the clerks and store managers have a more streamlined checkout process.

This type of win-win approach is central to my work as an academic counselor working with high school students who are often “organizationally challenged.” Parents and educators are often dumb-founded when I inspire a seemingly unenthused pre-teen or adolescent into creating organized binders, writing in planners, and just generally being more proactive.

As I often tell students, adopting better organizational and time-management skills are steps in the journey to help them get wherever they want to go and follow whatever passions they dream to pursue. Why wouldn’t they want to get their homework done faster, and better, so they were more able to pursue whatever passions their heart desires?

Instead of spending forty-five minutes trying to find out what the homework assignment is (by calling a classmate, texting a friend, checking the often incorrect school website or sending smoke signals to a distant acquaintance) the student with the assignment written down in a planner would be done with it and on to something more fun or meaningful — going for a run, enjoying some quality Wii time, mastering those Eric Clapton guitar solos, or whatever else he or she is passionate about. In another familiar scenario, instead of completing a homework assignment and then losing it – which every student in my last workshop admitted to doing at least once in the past six months – getting organized would help them always know where their homework is, and avoid that dreaded pit-in-the-stomach, I-spent-an-hour-on-that-assignment-but-am-about-to-get-a-zero feeling.

Whenever I pose these scenarios to students, they nod knowingly and get a little wide-eyed. I can tell it has suddenly dawned on them that there are BENEFITS to being more organized! This will actually HELP THEM!

In the news, we often hear studies citing how students, especially boys, are falling behind in school, dropping out of high school at alarming rates, and not graduating from college. In my office, we see boys and girls who were previously overwhelmed  be transformed by the simple act of someone listening to what their personal dreams and aspirations are, and then helping them get on the path to those dreams, whether it involves improving their grades, finding a summer job, or developing their artistic talents. Often it’s the personal goals that drive the academic ones. By listening more to our students, we can encourage the development of their own intrinsic motivation and engage them in the process of becoming more enthused learners and contributors to society as a whole.

A few weeks ago, New York Times reporter Winnie Hu wrote a piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/education/01schools.html) on the personalized learning plans that sixth graders at Linwood Middle School in North Brunswick, NJ, are charting for themselves – as Hu notes, “electronic portfolios containing information about their learning styles, interests, skills, career goals and extracurricular activities.” These personalized portfolios are a wonderful way for students to start to see the win-win in becoming more actively involved with their educational experience.

Of course, career plans and personal interests can change over time, but the earlier we allow children to dream and develop their own aspirations, the more likely we are to get them engaged in their own learning process and feel they have a reason to be pursuing their educational opportunities to the best of their abilities.  When parents and educators work to promote more personalized learning, they empower and inspire students to work to their personal potential. Which is a win-win for everyone.

Monday Rec – Summer Fun!

March 15th, 2010

The last few days have turned L-O-V-E-L-Y in sunny California, and the respite from the rain makes me incredibly grateful. I am excited to announce our Summer Workshops for 2010, as well as our Back-to-School Organizational Workshop schedule. Take a look at our varied offerings, including our Middle School Debate Workshop and our Amazing Writing Workshops for both High School and Middle School Students!

Even though we are in the middle of March (with Spring just around the corner) now is the perfect time to start thinking about summer plans. This past week, I had two conversations with students and parents who were planning on going to academic summer camps because they thought it “would help their chances in college admissions.”

Spending $6,000+ to go to a summer camp just because you think it is going to improve your child’s college admissions odds is ridiculous. Over the years, I have worked with hundreds of kids who have been successful at gaining admission to the schools of their choice, and who spent their summers doing the most varied and wonderful things: Working as a grocery store bag boy. Starting a landscaping business with their friend. Taking art classes. Running a summer art workshop for elementary students. Volunteering with inner-city youth at a summer camp. Teaching dance. Life-guarding. Doing a wilderness expedition.

Start having the conversation with your children about what interests they would like to pursue this summer – preferably outside the classroom, and potentially something they have not been able to explore during the school year.

Remember: there are many ways to plan a meaningful summer, just keep in mind that summer should also be a time o get a chance to relax!! There is *no need* to spend thousands of dollars on a specific academic program or adventure – it will not set your child apart in the college admissions process. A program like that can be a wonderful way to spend a summer, but so can volunteering locally in a neighborhood garden or working in a coffee shop.

Monday Rec – Taking A Gap Year

February 21st, 2010

Over the next few months, many high school seniors will be hearing from colleges and making choices to answer the often-dreaded question about “where are they going next year?” The pressure from parents, relatives, community members and peers is often enormous and overwhelming, and some students, quite frankly, are simply not ready for college – or need a break before starting college.

Enter the Gap Year. A Gap Year is a year break between the end of high school and the beginning of college – it can be a wonderful time to explore, volunteer, travel abroad, get a job or doing something extraordinary. Quite commonplace in England and parts of Europe (Prince William famously spent his Gap Year in South America) it is starting to take hold in America, and makes quite a bit of sense for students who just need time off before starting their college life.

Personally, I wish that the Gap Year would become more commonplace and accepted – I think that students who choose to do a Gap Year and plan it wisely go into their college experience more mature, focused and grounded. The potential for outside of the classroom learning is endless and can make a real difference in a young person’s growth, development and perspective.

If you live near or around our office, this upcoming Saturday, February 27th there will be a Gap Year Fair at Los Altos High School from noon – 2:30 pm. Its free, and more information can be found here. There are many meaningful ways to create a wonderful Gap Year experience, and the most important factor is that it is created with some reflective and thoughtful goals, and offers the experience to see things outside the traditional classroom or academic setting.

Love From Canada and a Lunch in Sonoma

February 17th, 2010

I was just sent a lovely review of That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week that was written by Julie McKinnell for MacClean’s Magazine in Canada (see article here). The reviewer called me a “former banker turned educational consultant” which could be a little misleading, though perhaps in Canada banker means ANYONE who worked at a bank… I worked as an investment banking analyst for a bulge bracket firm that no longer exists right after college, but quickly learned that Powerpoint and Excel were not my greatest skills. I think I glossed over the whole “building-a-financial-model” thing, and my Excel shortcuts were limited to copying and pasting rows of cells as needed.

I rarely talk about my previous (and incredibly brief) stint in finance – in fact, its usually not even on my biography. Working at the investment bank was the best and worst job I ever had. It was the best job because it taught me what type of work environment I did not want to spend time in, and what type of boss I did not want to ever be – truly valuable lessons to learn right out of college. I learned that I loved working with people, and that my great relationships helped my books move to the front of the que and got me extra help when needed. I also realized that I hate inefficiency, and that spending an entire weekend (11 pm on Saturday night) re-doing a powerpoint that would barely be glanced at on Wednesday morning was not a good use of my lifetime.

I think that every experience, whether good or bad, gives us the opportunity to learn – which is a  lot of what I talk about today with my students. For instance, one of my students hates her club sport team, and for good reason. But talking about what she is learning about herself in why she doesn’t like her coaches and the way they run the team gives  her the opportunity to be more discriminatory when choosing a new club team. In a sense, she now knows what to look for and how to find the right team for her in the future.

Tomorrow, February 18, I am speaking at a luncheon for the Sonoma Valley Mentoring Alliance (see info here). Its a great organization, so if you are up in Sonoma, hope you can join us – its at noon at Saddle’s Restaurant.