Over the years, as Cass, Heather, and I prepared to leave for a festival or convention without Mikey in tow, he would warn us to be careful of all the freaks and weirdos that attend these things. He stopped coming with us about the same time I started telling him how good he would look in a kilt.

Shakespeare Festival: “Be careful. A lot of weirdos attend things like that.”

Radcon: “…careful…weirdos.”

Ren Faire: “Be careful… there are – ”

I can’t remember which event it was, but I finally cut him off, smiled reassuringly, and then pointed out what should have been obvious to my cowboy husband.

“You do realize that you married a weirdo. Bred with a weirdo. Are parenting two weirdos. Relax. We’ll be among our own kind.”

He response was to tip his head back a moment in thought, smile, and agree. “Good point.”

Not only did he not fuss at the most recent convention, he seemed to be encouraging us to attend another one in Seattle. I suspect that he enjoys the peace and quiet when we are gone, perhaps even sitting around in his underwear. But alas, still no kilt.

I am often asked the question, “So, how did you get into this?” I can answer that I was interested in this career since my earliest memories, and that I went into education intending to change it. But that’s not what people are looking for.  What they’re really asking is, “Why so pushy?”

How did I come up with these ideas, and then push so hard to implement them?

Here’s what lit that fire. While fighting to keep other people’s kids from falling through the cracks, my own daughter was being dangled over a deep ravine. 

The call came from my daughter Cass’s speech therapist. Cass was born tongue-tied, had surgery at age three, and was wrapping up her speech therapy by first grade. The therapist informed me that Cass had been put into a special education reading program by her teacher, and the therapist was correct in suspecting that I hadn’t even been notified, let alone consulted. “I don’t think she belongs there” the therapist said. I agreed.

More than agreed, I worried. I saw what happened when kids were tracked into resource and similar education programs.

And I felt guilty. I was helping other people’s kids get “off track” to reach full potential. How could my own kid now be there? What did I fail to do as a parent?

I also felt betrayed. This was my school district, and I worked hard for them. I now had the parent perspective of being blindsided and somehow dismissed in major decisions regarding my child.

So why was Cass in there? Cass had been labeled ADHD and dyslexic by her teacher. Yes, Cass did have a high energy level, making rapid connections from one topic to another. And yes, let’s just say she is “visually gifted.” To top it off, sometimes she talked funny; speech therapy takes time. However, the reading class was doing nothing to address these traits. It was just a place to put her.

I had been enjoying the success of designing personalized learning programs for students and watching them grow – both academically and emotionally.  I had just been trained in reading recovery methods, and I combined that with my learning styles research in an effort to help Cass.

I had two weeks.

Over winter break, I taught Cass to read using methods that worked for her. It required taking over the living room. We needed space and textured carpet for the whole body and tactile-touch approaches. Textured paper and medium point pens, writing with eyes closed. Elephant-nose letter writing in the air. Feeling the sounds as they were spoken by her, then by me.

It worked.

After only two weeks, Cass was retested and transferred out of the special education reading class.  We were then approached about having her tested for Gifted and Talented Education (GATE). Seriously. She was tested the following year, scoring 99% on the assessment.

By third grade she was reading at a college level.

She started college at age 14.

A remarkable young woman, she gives me many reasons to be proud. But I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t had the training I did. How differently might her path have been?

She is not an isolated case.

With this experience in mind, I continued employing personalized education strategies, with encouraging results. My “enthusiasm” was not always matched by my colleagues, even the supportive ones. This changed one particular fall after the school received the test scores from the previous spring.

I taught six sections of middle school language arts, class sizes in the 40s, and I endeavored to tailor learning to be competency-based and adjusted to their learning styles. My principal, a very nice guy, told me that he believed that kids often learn in spite of us. In other words, he appreciated my efforts, but stop working so hard. It probably wouldn’t make that much difference.

The message changed next fall. “Keep doing what you’re doing.” The language arts department was called into a meeting to review the test scores from the last spring. Anger and anxiety dominated the room. The administrators were coming down hard on the group for the abysmal results.

I was so confused. Sad. And more confused. Okay so maybe we didn’t spend much time on test-prep, opting for more authentic approaches. I had used formative assessments throughout the year, and I knew the kids were learning. Had I been wrong?

We were then provided with the details showing the scores for each grade level.  Sixth grade scores dropped. Eighth grade dropped too. However, the seventh graders, my wonderful seventh graders, had such an increase that the school average as a whole didn’t drop. It flat lined, but it held steady. I thought the vice-principal was exaggerating when he said, “You single-handedly saved the school” – and I still do because test scores shouldn’t have that much power (but that’s a topic for another time).

However, the scores were impressive. My students gained between 10 and 30 percentile points on average depending on the category. Statistically staggering. “Resource” students became “regular” and “regular” became “honors” (much to the chagrin of some honors parents – but that’s yet another topic).

It worked!

But boy was I tired.

I needed to make better use of technology to facilitate what I was doing. I had ideas of how that could happen, and I had the ear of the administration for sure.

However, those ideas came to a halt with the district’s response to No Child Left Behind. They adopted a beautiful curriculum set that I was looking forward to implementing. However, it came with a lesson plan book that was pre-filled for the entire year. It also came with scripts. Yes, scripts of what to say. We were supposed to put the whole district on the same track to see how well the curriculum worked. If I did anything different, I would throw off the results of their study.

But you already know how I feel about tracks. There’s also the issue of ethics.

While I had one administrator suggesting that I could close my door and do my thing, a newer vice principal would come in and scold me. I increasingly felt the urge to jump ship. And I did, right into the charter schools and other opportunities to continue developing personalized learning approaches. I earned the nickname “curriculum guru” and enjoyed invitations to review products and approaches.

The homeschool families I mentored and my own daughters were excellent guinea pigs, and we would discuss ideas for a dream school. In looking for options for my youngest daughter Heather, I began writing down what that model program might look like based on my previous experiences and reviewing hundreds of studies. I couldn’t find a school that met all of the criteria.

The day finally came to gather all of my research, resources, and contacts with other change agents, and create a model school. My business partner Chris was essential. He is a rare bird: an educator with experience in personalized education as both a teacher and administrator, who has a business degree and strong ethics.

I had been synthesizing everything I learned and created the Personalized Education Philosophy. With a small group of educators passionate about the philosophy’s tenets, Chris and I implemented a learning model based on the philosophy to create Christa McAuliffe Academy School of Arts and Sciences.

Okay, so that is definitely the short version of the story. It went through many steps, required slaying dragons in the form of unethical administrators, criminal CFOs, and really confused school boards. In the end, we decided to create a private school so we could maintain quality control to show how the model worked. We then opened our doors to public schools to use what we created so that all students could potentially benefit.

Our next step is creating a training program for teachers. For one, it benefits our school. We have to “untrain” as well as train teachers who come to us.  Second, this is how we can grow this movement. Other educators, even other schools, could use what we create. Third, it is a way to exemplify the “personalized” in personalized education. There are so many schools out there saying they are personalized but doing many things that run contrary to that statement. We want them to live up to their claim or step aside.

And there I go, getting pushy again.

Audio of text below:

Part 1

Part 2

Emotions run pretty strong at the end of Part 2, but this is an important topic in my own life as somebody who had to rise above being raised in a toxic environment with an authoritarian, oppressive (and both verbally and physically abusive) step-parent. 

~~~~~~~~~

I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as being a perfect parent. The kids do not come with instruction manuals, and even if you have it figured out for one kid, the next one will still manage to throw you for a loop.

However, over the years of teaching, studying psychology, and doing my best as a parent – which includes making my own mistakes – there are some patterns that hold true in most cases. This is what I would have liked handed to me as a new parent, and in areas where I have experienced success, this is what I have found to hold true. Enjoy.

What’s the Goal?

Most parents have two primary goals for their kids:

1. be self-sufficient

2. be happy

Having both the parent and the child keep those goals in mind can give a common ground to stand on when working through the challenges, especially in the teen years.

Build up with Self-Worth and Respect

Who is more likely to stay above the fray and not be tempted by peer-pressure?

1. The one  who is strongly confident, even proud of oneself, and holds a sense of self-worth and respect?
2. Or the one who is constantly criticized, feeling that no matter how hard one tries, it just doesn’t matter. Life will suck anyway, and there’s nothing one can do about it.

This isn’t a trick question, and the obvious answer is the confident person with a sense of self-worth and respect.  The real question here is how to create that person when parenting your child. The goal is to build up your child.  If you want your child to have a sense of worthiness and respect, then treat your child with worth  and respect, while also behaving in a respectful manner yourself.

The 5:1 Ratio

Yes, sometimes the negatives happen. Sometimes they are even beyond your control. However, keep in mind the five-to-one ratio: it takes 5 positives to counter 1 negative.  That means if you have one negative thing to say, it will take five positives just to get the kid back up to point zero. If you want to rise above ground zero, then you need more than five.

Make it Daily

How often do you let your child know that you love him or her? That you are proud of something your child has done? How often do you select a particular talent or aspect of your child’s personality and make note of it and how you are happy for it? It can be a simple thing, but acknowledge it. Look for the opportunities.

Logical Consequences Instead of Punitive

Real life has its own way of teaching. When mistakes (aka learning experiences) are made, allow for the logical consequences to follow.  There is no need for punitive punishment such as writing 100 sentences or any consequence that has to be created by you.  Instead, allow for an authentic cause-and-effect for both “rewards” and “punishments” in life.  One way to do this is to package things in the positive.

Package in the Positive

Psychology studies tell us that people, especially teens, do not respond to punishment – at least not in the way we intend them to. Instead, a more effective approach is to package things in the positive.  To simplify this idea:

• Negative Approach: You can’t have X because you haven’t done A, B, and C.
• Positive Approach: You can have X when you do A, B, and C.
• Even More Positive Approach: You can have X when you do A, B, and C, because you have already done Y and Z (acknowledging/reinforcing current accomplishments or positives).

This creates a clear sense of cause-and-effect that mirrors real life while empowering your child to be able to be successful in life.

An extra note on this one: Your kid could be asking to do something that you would never allow as a parent of minor. For this, you can state that your child can have “X” when reaching a point in life where he or she is independent and able to own the potential consequences, and here is what needs to be done to get to that point.  My youngest daughter looks forward to certain freedoms when she has posted her associates degree and has a full-time job; before anyone thinks I am being ridiculous, know that her current timeline for accomplishing this is age 17.

The “Sins of the Father” are Not those of the Child

Each person is unique, gets to chart a personal path, and make his or her own learning experiences. It doesn’t matter how much you screwed up in your life; that is for you to own.  Sure, use it to guide you, and don’t be a fool as a parent.  But also don’t “preemptively punish” your kid for your mistakes, unless you want to create a depressed kid. Find the balance with this one.

On the flip-side, don’t let kids tell you that your mistakes somehow disqualify your advice.  Explain that because you have “been there, done that” you are the expert. You are there to guide them.

All the Other Kids…

This argument doesn’t work for the parent nor the child. Again, each person is unique, on a unique path, and needs to be nurtured as such. What makes sense for one kid doesn’t necessarily have to be applied the same way with another. This can get tricky when you have more than one kid in the home. However, just because one sibling  did things a certain way doesn’t mean the other should too.

Also, as Sir Ken Robinson points out, we are not born with manufactured dates, and we need to quit treating kids as if they are stuck in a certain “batch” and limited as such.  Avoid arbitrarily limiting (or failing to limit) your child only based on age or what most kids do or don’t do; your child is unique and needs to be nurtured as such.

Girls

While all of this applies to both boys and girls, I would like to take a moment to emphasize how especially important this is for girls.  In our society, girls are often told to “be nice” in the same situations where boys would not be.  They are encouraged to suffer the disrespect of others.  If they state their views, they are even more quickly oppressed for being insubordinate.   We still have a long way to go.

If you want your daughter to be successful in this society, teach her that she is respected and worthy of that respect. Model by showing respect for her.

If you want her to only respect those who are worthy of it, then behave in a respectful manner in order to insist on it being mutual.  If she refuses to have anything to do with somebody who is being a jerk, respect her decision, for this is what you want her to do in life. You want her empowered to walk away from bad situations.

If you want her to have a sense of self-worth so that she isn’t apt to be taken advantage of, then build her confidence in all ways possible.

If you want her to feel power over her life, then show her how she has power within cause-and-effect scenarios and, even when things do not go according to plan, she still has power over how she responds to life situations.

If you want her to have a voice, then allow her to speak, and communicate with her in a respectful manner even when disagreeing. Value her perspectives, ask questions, and work together to find common ground.

Short and Simple

I could go on, but the formula above is simple enough to apply on your own to multiple scenarios. It is just that “you reap what you sow,” and don’t be dumbfounded when what grows is that which you planted.

And remember that this isn’t forever.  While you will always be your child’s parent, the time of your influence is shorter than you think. However, it will impact your child for the rest of his or her life.

Try viewing this from the outside looking in: In the current U.S. presidential election, so many people are talking about voting “against” a particular candidate, and voting for “the lesser of evils” of two of the three candidates available. When considering voting “for” a candidate that appears to be anything but evil, maybe even the one with the best ideas and track record of following through, the common response is that this would be wasting a vote.  Well, what if everyone “wasted” their vote…?