Category: Learning Differences

Following is a gentle guide to help you determine when it is appropriate to make a comment and when it might be better to keep your thoughts to yourself. 1) “Teachers should be compensated based on the test scores of their students.” You get to remark about compensation for teachers

Having carefully studied the ph levels of the dirt, I dug a garden plot in the yard with full sun and proper drainage. Having prepared the soil with the appropriate levels of fertilizer, I planted seeds according to the almanac, waiting for the most propitious day. The seed package said

A buddy of mine explained the likelihood of getting a book of poems published. Consider all money spent in entertainment industry. Movies make up the vast percentage of expenditures; books are almost an afterthought. Of all the books that are published each year, most are non-fiction–calendars, cooks books, political biographies.

Here’s a controversial sentence I bet you didn’t think you’d read in a column written by a person who studied developmental psychology in graduate school, has dedicated his life to education, and makes his living giving advice to parents about how to bring up healthy kids. For many neurotypical kids,

Do any of the following monologues sound even remotely plausible? Is there a syllable of truth in any of them? The speakers are men aged 70, 10, and 40 respectively. 1) “I know what I’ll do. I’ll wake up this morning and pretend that I can’t hear. That way, my

There is a story about Enrico Fermi, the great 20th century physicist. A graduate student is trying to impress the professor by spewing off a litany of sub-atomic particles. Fermi puts the student in his place by responding, “Young man, if I could remember the names of those particles, I

As I’m writing the newsletter this week, I am also actively, if sporadically, engaged in returning phone calls, answering emails, planning my next trip to see therapeutic boarding schools in Utah, thinking about what I’m going to get for my wife for her birthday, and giving some serious thought to

As a baby, Nero was easy to soothe. Within a few weeks of coming home from the hospital, he slept through the night. All his developmental milestones were within normal limits–talking, walking, potty training. Nero learned to dress himself, ride a bike, read a book, and make a sandwich just

A scant 33 years ago, at the ripe old age of 22, I eked out a precarious existence as a middle school math teacher at a private day school. I loved teaching; I loved my colleagues on the faculty; I loved my students. But their parents scared me to death.