AXS CEO Troy McClain Featured at Special Needs Conference

Idaho Partnerships Conference on Human Services has a great featured speaker this fall: Troy McClain is the CEO of AXS , a full-service marketing, communications and business management firm focused on growing people and businesses to great heights. Their website says: Our annual conference is an opportunity to bring professionals, self-advocates and family members together…

What Mastery-Based Learning Would Look Like in Idaho

As we discuss children’s literature, it is important to examine connections between learning with and through the written word and the policies that determine what goes on in classrooms. Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra  is working to help lawmakers “move from the notion or the concept of mastery-based education to the actual concrete view…

What is the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction?

“Modern fantasy literature has unexplainable magic, and it is this element that captures the minds and hearts of children.” – Charles A. Temple, Miriam A. Martinez, Junko Yokota in Children’s Books in Children’s Books in Children’s Hands: A Brief Introduction to Their Literature. I love fantasy and science fiction. Children tend to read a lot of these stories because…

Guest Post: Failure Should Be Mindful Not Mindless, by Chris Wasden

Last week I did an interview for a Podcast with Dr. Travis Good. He kicked off the interview by asking the following question: In your book, you talk about failure being the spark that ignites the innovation cycle. Since more than half of all digital health companies fail in the first two years, are you suggesting that these founders get right back on the saddle and develop their next idea?  Here are my thoughts on failure. There are two different kinds of failure: mindless and mindful. The difference between mindful and mindless failure is the former occurs based upon continuous…

SCHOOLS ON TRIAL: How Freedom and Creativity Can Fix Our Educational Malpractice

Are America’s schools little more than cinder-block gulags that spawn vicious cliques and bullying, negate creativity, and true learning and squelch curiosity in their inmates, um, students? Nikhil Goyal, a journalist and activist all of twenty years old whom the Washington Post has dubbed a “future education secretary” and Forbes has named to its 30 Under…

Teaching With the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series

It’s a new school year, and Greg Heffley finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. The hazards of growing up before you’re ready are uniquely revealed through words and drawings as Greg records them in his diary. Diary of a Wimpy…