Parents ‘n Schools

(GLO — Sept 09 — A law school classmate of mine was a photocopier salesman for a time before entering law school and had benefited from his international employer’s sales training program. He felt every lawyer should have sales training. I think he’s correct. And perhaps every educator should have sales training, too. We’re all […]

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Our next four Whacks on behalf of Inspiring Education are:
“Be Whacky”: Make fun of what you’re about. Be zany and off-the-wall. Laugh at a problem. Take it less seriously. Come up with an offbeat slogan. “We inspire, so you don’t have to!” “What’s inspiration got to do with it? (… Got to do with it…)” […]

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For those who recall the debate this year in Alberta over the terms of Bill 44 and the liberties it sought to preserve for parents regarding instruction in certain areas, I encourage you to read John Carpay’s recent letter to the SUN newspapers copied below. John is a very nice fellow, who does a great […]

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Operations began at good ol’ Parents ‘n Schools (by that I mean I pressed “publish” for the first time) back in the spring of last year (’08), and over the following nine-and-a-half months of 2008 this site recorded about 14,500 visitors and about 32,000 page views. We were pleased (by “we”, of course, well… you […]

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(GLO — Sept 09 — I have been remiss, I know, in not sharing more of Professor Stamp’s thoughts and writings. It’s genuinely good stuff. It’s been genuinely good stuff for decades. And decades before that. Heavy sigh.)
Gentle Parent, after some 120 entries over six months writing about whatever crossed my clearly confused mind, […]

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Our Inspiring Education Whacks for today are:
“Solve the Right Problem”: Repainting a piano that’s out of tune. To people with hammers, every problem is a nail. Looking beyond the first solution that comes to mind. Acknowledging and setting aside dominant agendas. One might say of “Inspiring Education” that education, by definition, should be inspiring. So […]

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Continuing our Whack Pack Whack at the side of Inspiring Education, the Whacks for today are:
“Exaggerate”: Distort. Think really big. Think really small. Think really long term. Think really short term. Inspiring education for the next 1,000 years! 100!? Would you believe… one week? It’s kinda hard to exaggerate the bigness of the challenge of […]

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Resuming with our Whack Pack look at the Alberta government’s Inspiring Education initiative, and considering the challenge of inspiring government schooling in light of whatever Whacks may come out of the Pack, here are four for today:
“Change Viewpoints”: Look from the other side of the mirror, or the other side of the question. We are […]

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(GLO — Sept. 09 — Perhaps, to visualize an outcome of Inspiring Education, one might visualize Homer and Lisa with the same mathematical symbol in the bubbles over their heads. Parent and child on the same page with their schooling, just as schooler and child strive to become.)
In a gift shop somewhere on vacation […]

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In the course of my correspondence last week regarding the book “Disrupting Class” with Gisele Huff, Executive Director of the Jocelyn Hume Foundation in San Francisco and Board Member of the Innosight Institute (her op-ed was posted here at good ol’ PnS yesterday), Ms. Huff kindly shared with me a “future history” written by Gerald […]

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