Tag: education

Episode

How Can You Improve Your Parenting?

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Practical advice for gifting the love of reading

There are dozens of things that we can do to improve our parenting skills. One thing that we can do is to help our children develop a love of learning and creative, independent thought.

When I reflect on my own experience as a young father helping my kids learn to read, I realize now that I made many mistakes. A lot of those mistakes were made out of shear ignorance. I tried to teach my children by applying pressure to perform well. And I am not a teacher by trade. I didn’t understand the necessary activities and building blocks needed to aid in developing cognitive ability and language skills. I made reading time a tense chore rather than an enjoyable discovery. I wish I had this conversation with New York Times children’s books editor Maria Russo when my kids were young. Sage advice from our conversation includes “Leave the teaching to teachers. Your job as a parent is to help your children discover the joy of reading.”

In their new book, How to Raise a Reader, Pamela Paul (editor of the New York Times Book Review) and Maria Russo (children’s books editor of the New York Times Book Review) divides the subject up into 4 stages of childhood – from babies to teens – and offer practical tips, strategies that work, and inspirational advice on how to help your kids develop a love of reading. Maria Russo was kind enough to chat with me on Life in HD. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

More information on How to Raise a Reader can be found here.

Music bed in this episode is Happy Ending by Scott Holmes under Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License.

Don’t let me be the only bad parent out there. Please share your reading horror stories with me here.

Podcast

Rise Above Poverty

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There are roughly 1.3 million homeless school aged children in America.  And research has shown that children who experience homelessness face a wide range of challenges related to their health, emotional well-being, and safety.  In this episode of Life in HD, you’ll meet Reggie Kelley who is the founder and director for the charitable organization Rise Above Poverty.  Reggie’s organization collects basic necessities for homeless school kids to help them worry less about their physical condition and appearance and concentrate more on learning.  This is his story.

To learn more about homeless school children in America, see this PBS article.

Music featured in this episode is provided by:

  1. Nicholas Mackin – The Beginning or the End – under Creative Commons License
  2. Yan Terrien – My Algo2  – under Creative Commons License – no changes were made to the song.

Podcast

I Chose Defiance – Part 2

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This episode of Life in HD continues with Carol Barbour’s story of turmoil and abuse of power.  Her tumultuous year in DC public schools ended with her school being closed and no new administrative assignment.  She picks up the pieces and gets a fresh start in North Carolina only to return to PG County where her career began.  But PG County offered nothing but barriers to entry.  This episode explores how a woman, when faced with daunting obstacles, refused to give up and reclaimed control of her life.

Music for this episode includes:

  1. Lobo Loco  Deeply Dungeon – under Creative Commons license
  2. Cutside Rain Drop – under Creative Commons license
  3. AllIknow (Hip Hop) by Makaih Beats is licensed under  CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

I Chose Defiance by Carol Barbour is available at Amazon