Recently, John Oliver did a funny bit on native advertising.  If you are not familiar with the term, native advertising is when companies and organizations make their ads look like editorial content in print publications.  

As a writer, I know that the sale of ad space pays for the production of the magazine, and that the editorial and advertising departments each have their own separate, important job to do.  As a reader, I've noticed ads that look like articles, but since I'm an…

Almost all big crimes are conspiracies. We're supposed to try to solve them, à la Sherlock Holmes. But today if you try to explain a crime, you are called a “conspiracy theorist” as if somehow this is a wrong thing to be.

I can tell you it’s gotten weird. There are definitely a…

THE “CATCH-22” OF CAREER READINESS

from Steve Peha's 

From the first elementary school career day to the cover-letter writing homework in high school, we spend a lot of talking to kids about careers. This helpful article from the Wall…

ON SCHOOL DISCIPLINE, WE CAN DO BETTER

from Steve Peha's 

Dan Willingham has a great review of a new report on improving school discipline. Listen to this: “The report starts with two grim facts. First, present practices are…

Robert Slavin on Reading by Third Grade - Or Else

Since the performance measures (standardized) do not provide the information useful for improving performance, let's not try to make it so.  If we focus on those measures that do inform us about what students know and are able to do, and follow the paths that they lead, then results on standardized measures should follow.  If we continue to focus on the standardized results as meaningful, then we have to be clear about what they mean.…

 When Whole Word modulated into Whole Language (both being variations on look-say as a matter of fact), there was a great rush to add bells and whistles, lipstick and accessories.

 One of these bells and whistles was called literacy-rich environment. And the theory was that if you surrounded children with thousands of books, they would learn to read more quickly.

This simply is not true. We could all sit in a library in China…

In Kiwi magazine, I read about a great way to share books and promote literacy in your hometown.  Little Free Library is a way to recycle your old books and even read some new ones.  You can order a waterproof structure, or better yet, build your own out of repurposed materials, and place books inside. Neighbors come and borrow books and even leave some of their own books.  If you're really ambitious, leave a notebook and pen in the structure for people to write their responses to…