Jennifer Turner is an Honest to Goodness, Genuine Home-Schooling Mom Who Believes in student-led learning.

The Learning Curve February 27, 2012   Jennifer Turner

Jennifer Turner is an Honest to Goodness, Genuine Home-Schooling Mom Who Believes in student-led learning.

Jennifer is lucky to be able to benefit from A Cyber Charter School with on-line curriculum along with on-line teacher back-up and testing.

The benefit of all this to Jennifer’s two children is that, while they have to meet the state testing standards, she can allow the kids to progress through each item on the curriculum at the pace that best suits the child and also ensure mastery on all subject matter.

Hear how Jennifer practices Student Led Learning.

Hear how she works the interests and needs of each child into the lesson plans and material.

She is also able to allow each of her children to learn in the style best suited to the child—indeed she pays special attention to facilitating her children’s two different learning styles.  And this further enhanced by her practice of Student Led Learning.

Jennifer says this method of educating her children has developed in them a wondrous love of learning, and the ability to discover and master anything they will ever have to deal with in later life.

And the big bonus Jennifer has found is that Home Schooling allows families to be flexible in meeting all of the needs of each member of the family.

Hear Jennifer answer these questions:

  • What is student-led learning?
  • How do home school parents incorporate their children’s interests during instructed learning time?
  • How do our children meet state and federal school requirements by following the student led philosophy?
  • Can traditional school settings incorporate a student-led philosophy?

More wisdom from Jennifer at her Blog: http://www.studentsathome.wordpress.com/

 

Click here to listen  February 27, 2012 Jennifer Turner

Roger & Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

 

Imagine a parenting technique that doesn’t tell you what to do, but teaches the art of self discovery that can be implemented with your child for its benefit.

The Learning Curve February 20, 2012 Socratic Parenting

Imagine a parenting technique that doesn’t tell you what to do, but teaches the art of self discovery that can be implemented with your child for its benefit.

The big question parents should be asking is: when it works, why is it working; and if it doesn’t work, why not?

Our guest today with Roger and Virginia on The Learning Curve is Laurie Gray, the founder of Socratic Parenting.  Laurie’s experience includes having been a high school teacher, a civil and criminal trial attorney and author of young adult literature.  Currently she writes, speaks and consults through Socratic Parenting LLC as well as working as a child forensic interviewer and as a College Professor.

What would happen of you used “open inquiry” questions with your child instead of telling and indoctrinating?  Would it lead to greater self discovery and appreciation of truth?

Socrates is said to have stated: I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

Only the practice of “open inquiry” opens the mind for thinking.

Many wise educators have deplored the current educational system’s practice of treating kids as sponges to be filled with the attempt to wring them dry at exam time.  It is an unwise parenting practice also.

As Laurie explains, there is nothing more useless than a mind filled with others’ thoughts.

Hear Laurie explain the principles of Socratic Parenting — principles such as:

  • Be aware versus beware.
  • Don’t cause a child’s life to be ruled by fear.
  • Have the child being present with interested.
  • Acknowledgement and appreciation is a very important first step.
  • Accept who your child is.
  • Appreciate the positives.
  • And much more.

 

Clock here to listen February 20, 2012 Socratic Parenting

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

Are There Advantages in Single Gender Schools for Children? Does it Work Better for Kids the Way Schools Were Prior to Going Co-Ed?

The Learning Curve February 13, 2012 Cherokee Creek Boys School

Are There Advantages in Single Gender Schools for Children?  Does it Work Better for Kids the Way Schools Were Prior to Going Co-Ed?

Today’s guests are Beth Black and Denise Savage of Cherokee Creek Boys School. 

Beth is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Cherokee Creek Boys School, which is a therapeutic boarding school for middle school boys, ages 11-15, in Westminster, SC.The school is dedicated to “challenging boys and their families to discover what is real and true about themselves and the world around them.”  The program seeks to build character by offering a path of self-discovery that addresses the emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual needs of adolescent boys.  Among her many accomplishments, Bet was an Adjunct Professor for Florida State University while teaching “Communicating Disney Style” and “Marketing the Good News About Schools,” as well as a facilitator for the popular program “Disney Approach to People Management”, designed to share Disney’s internal marketing and quality service strategies with business professionals.

Denise is Academic Dean, having been a teacher since 1992, she brings extensive classroom experience with her to Cherokee Creek Boys School.  Denise has an exciting mix of strong language instruction skills, as well as extensive knowledge of Individual Education Plans, testing and interpretation, and experience evaluating and developing diverse curriculum models. At Cherokee Creek, Denise works to foster, in her own words, “enthusiastic and dynamic teaching as a means of creating and nurturing a lifelong love of knowledge.” She does this through Curriculum Development and academic oversight of a staff of teachers, by teaching a themed English and Social Studies class, and by preparing the boys for the moment when they actually leave the school. In a therapeutic environment, she feels her job is to get boys to reclaim their love of learning and back on an academic track so they are better able to perform as independent learners once they leave the therapeutic environment.

Learn why it is often better to have boys and girls separated in school  . . . it’s to do with their learning styles tending to conflict with each other.

The public school system currently forces boys to learn in the style best suited for girls!

Did you know there is an association of Independent Educational Consultants who can help parents find the best learning environment/school for your child?

Cherokee Creek Boys School

 

Click here to listen February 13, 2012 CherokeeCreek

Roger and Virginia at How to Learn Easily

 

What are the Real Benefits to You and Your Child of Going to Camp?

The Learning Curve February 6, 2012 — ACA

What are the Real Benefits to You and Your Child of Going to Camp?

Did you know many families go to camp as a family rather then sending the kids off alone?

Today’s guest is Peg L. Smith, the Chief Executive Officer of the American Camp Association, where she has been for over a decade. She has had a wonderful career and extensive experience in childhood, adolescent and young adult work.  With her BS in early childhood and family studies, she began her career in 1974 as a Head Start Teacher.  Later, in 1977 she created a career program that was implemented in five counties inIndianafor young people, following which she made Director of the Head Start Program for Child and Adult Resource Services.

Eventually in 1991, due to her performance in a number of other positions, Peg was appointed to the staff of the Governor of Indiana as Director of the Governor’s Step Ahead Initiative, and while there she also created the first Bureau of Child Development for the State and in 1995 became the director of the Indiana Youth Initiative.

Peg has vast experience in the service of and helping youngsters, so she is well qualified to give us some points of wisdom on how best to serve our children.

Hear Peg explain how best to select a camp for your child.

  • Should you make a whole family holiday out of it?
  • What special camp experiences are available?
  • How can you plan it so your child’s regular school grades benefit?
  • What other benefits can you anticipate from a properly planned camp for your child?
  • What funding and financial arrangements you can benefit from?

Peg is a font of wonderful information in this show with reference to the above and many other topics you’ll want to know about.

Contact the American Camp Association

 

Click here to listen February 6, 2012 Peg Smith

Roger and Virginia at the Learning Curve

 

 

LINKS:

American Camp Association linked to http://www.acacamps.org

 

Roger and Virginia at the Learning Curve linked to http:///www.howtolearneasily.com

 

How Can Parents and Students Work the Educational System to Best Advantage? What Are the Advanced and Innovative Ways to Tutor Your Child to Top Grades?

The Learning Curve January 30, 2012 Elaine Sigal

How Can Parents and Students Work the Educational System to Best Advantage?

What Are the Advanced and Innovative Ways to Tutor Your Child to Top Grades?

Today’s educational system is a labyrinth of bureaucratic pitfalls.  Even going outside the school system for private tutoring services has its short-comings.

Today’s guest is Elaine Sigal who has had near 40 years of experience in education at all levels from grades 8-12 and teaching at university.  At one point in her career in education she founded and ran a classroom based ‘brick and mortar’ educational company (from 1995 – 2009)

Based on this experience, Elaine founded STIZZiL.com.

STIZZiL is quite unique in that it is an online supplemental education company that offers tutoring, enrichment and support for students, parents and professionals of all ages. STIZZiL brings together the best US licensed, credentialed, and experienced educators from all over the United States and matches them to students, parents and professionals in need of help.  

 

Elaine’s experience has shown that “not just anyone can teach.” So she created a service that enables students, from the privacy and safety of their own home, to work with STIZZiL’s vetted educators, who teach in a synchronous manner using the best and latest in modern technology: audio, video, chat, whiteboard, and archiving capabilities.

 

Hear Elaine answer our question of how can a parent best raise concerns within the educational system regarding concerns they have about the learning environment of their child.  Who can or should you report to and how best to do it?  What are the best avenues to take action on?  How should you prepare?

What are the pit-falls in “No Child Left Behind”?  How can you “work” this part of the system?

In actuality, No Child Left Behind has drastically altered educational practices . . . teachers have been driven away from educating with the end result of the children actually learning things of value: instead teachers are forced to “teach to the test.”  This results in approximately half of teaching time being spent on practicing to pass mandated tests versus actually learning something.

It’s true . . . boys and girls behave and learn differently!  Learn how best to work with the difference.

Learn how you can help your child get better grades by providing a better learning environment at home.

 

Click here to listen January 30, 2012 Elaine Sigal

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve 

 

 

Build Brain Fitness and Accelerate Learning for Your Child

The Learning Curve January 23, 2012  Dr Martha Burns

Build Brain Fitness and Accelerate Learning for Your Child

This works for children and adults!

Just as exercise promotes physical fitness, exercising our brain improves brain fitness in four critical areas.

  • Memory
  • Attention
  • Processing
  • Sequencing

Today’s guest is Dr. Martha S. Burns who has been a practicing speech language pathologist for 45 years. Dr. Burns is on the Faculty of Northwestern University, Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders and who also works with Scientific Learning Corp.

Hear Dr. Burns discuss how one of Scientific Learning’s programs, Fast Forward®, helps learners achieve up to a two year reading gain in as little as three months.

Hear Dr. Burns discuss (in layman’s terms) the architecture of the brain, its “plasticity,” and how it can be knowingly addressed and developed.

In this show we’ll be discussing the types of fun games and exercises you can use with your child (or use yourself) to build and strengthen brain fitness and learning capacity and speed. These are the types of exercises that can be done anywhere: at home, in the car, on walks, at school; anywhere you or your child can interact with the environment or another person.

We’ll also discuss the distinction between video games that only entertain versus those that both entertain and develop brain “muscle.”

Dr. Burns has a wonderful blog listeners should also go to.

And go to Scientific Learning’s website for further information.

 

Click here to listen January 23, 2012 Dr Martha Burns

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

 

What Are the Three Types/Stages/Areas of Child Development?

The Learning Curve January 16, 2012 Anne Maxwell 2

What Are the Three Types/Stages/Areas of Child Development?

Learn to Work with the Child’s Chronological, Cognitive and Emotional Developmental Stages.

Today’s guest is Anne Maxwell, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and founder of The Child and Family Therapy Play Center.  She also founded the childfamilyplaytherapy.com website.

Anne has had extensive experienced dealing with “troubled,” “disabled” or “disadvantaged” children in her clinical career — but something was discovered by her: many of these disturbed or troubled children were, in actuality, highly gifted children who’d been misdiagnosed with one of the many fashionable designations used nowadays to try and fit the too sharp kids into the very dull system that is the US educational assembly-line.

Many of these kids, mislabeled with any one of the acronyms ending with “D” for disorder, were actually very bright youngsters driven into displaying symptoms of boredom, rebellion, disinterest or distraction due to them not fitting into a system that isn’t geared to deal with exceptional talent and doesn’t know how to correctly cater to them.

These gifted kids get stressed-out because they end up feeling they are not being heard or understood . . . but who doesn’t suffer when that occurs to them!

Out of this experience Anne has developed a system of tools and game playing routines that enable all children: gifted, normal or “different” to have the best brought out in them.

This is the second half of our interview with Anne, and in this show Anne discusses how you can “get it right” with your child.  The things you can do, the tools you can use, to help your child develop its full potential and reap the rewards in life it is due.

Learn the characteristics of a gifted child.

Learn the Three Stages and Types of Childhood Development.

Learn how to find out what is “in your child’s universe/mind” . . . this instead of blaming or incorrectly assuming what’s going on.

Hear Anne address The 10 Keys to Joyful Parenting.

Anne gives you an exercise of how to help your child realize its infinite possibilities.

Did you know children are often so perceptively sensitive they take on others’ emotions?

Learn how to honor your child’s uniqueness and not mold it into society’s expectations.

Did you know that “behavior” is often a form of communication.

Get Anne’s list of tools for happy parenting that will benefit your child.

 

Click here to listen January 16, 2012 Anne Maxwell 2

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

 

 

What Goes on in a Child’s Mind? What are the Keys to Childhood Successful Performance at Home and at School?

The Learning Curve January 9, 2012 Anne Maxwell  #1

What Goes on in a Child’s Mind?  What are the Keys to Childhood Successful Performance at Home and at School?

Today’s guest is Anne Maxwell, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, and founder of The Child and Family Therapy Play Center.  She also founded the childfamilyplaytherapy.com website.

Anne has had extensive experienced dealing with “troubled,” “disabled” or “disadvantaged” children in her clinical career — but something was discovered by her: many of these disturbed or troubled children were, in actuality, highly gifted children who’d been misdiagnosed with one of the many fashionable designations used nowadays to try and fit the too sharp kids into the very dull system that is the US educational assembly-line.

Many of these kids mislabeled with any one of the acronyms ending with “D” for disorder were actually very bright youngsters driven into displaying symptoms of boredom, rebellion, disinterest or distraction due them not fitting into a system that isn’t geared to deal with exceptional talent and doesn’t know how to correctly cater to them.

These gifted kids get stressed-out because they end up feeling they are not being heard or understood . . . but who doesn’t suffer when that occurs to them!

Out of this experience Anne has developed a system of tools and game playing routines that enable all children: gifted, normal or “different” to have the best brought out in them.

In this show Anne discusses how you can “get it right” with your child.  The things you can do, the tools you can use, to help your child develop its full potential and reap the rewards in life it is due.

Learn the characteristics of a gifted child.

Learn the Three Stages of Student Decline that affect all kids, but particularly affect the gifted child in the current system.

The Federal Education Act requires that every child’s needs are to be met.  Much has been done to concentrate of the “disabled” . . . it’s time to demand the needs of the gifted child be met.

 

Click here to listen January 9, 2012 Anne Maxwell #1

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve

 

 

How to Handle Bullies and Being Bullied at School

The Learning Curve January 2, 2012   Vicki Abadesco

How to Handle Bullies and Being Bullied at School

The issue of the effects of bullying at school has recently received nationwide prominence and it is a serious problem.

Bullying and being bullied not only interferes with a child’s success at school, academically, socially and health wise, but it can have life-long lasting ill affects on a person.

Today’s guest on The Learning Curve with Roger & Virginia is Vicki Abadesco, the director of Soul Shoppe, an organization devoted to helping students, teachers and parents eliminate bullying in our schools by giving students, teachers and parents the communication tools and techniques proven to be successful in handling bullies, student conflicts and the effects of being bullied.

Soul Shoppe last year alone served 75,000 elementary students nationwide through its school-wide workshops and assemblies.

Vicki Abadesco has some wonderful resources at her soulshoppe.com website.

Hear Vicki explain how Soul Shoppe’s program achieves:

  • Optimal Learning Environments based on a Foundation of Respect
  • Personal Empowerment based on awareness of choices we make
  • Skill Building to navigate life powerfully
  • Community Enhancement promoting empathy and a high level of functioning for all
  • Joyful Living—encouraging a sense of freedom on all we do

We see this as an important program for, as we state in the Professional Edition of our book, How to Learn-How to Teach: Overcoming the Seven Barriers to Comprehension, an “Area of Fear” is one of the vital fundamentals that must be handled if a student (or adult) is going to be able to actually correctly apply their attention to studying and learning anything.

Vicki points out that in the presence of fear a person’s brain and ability to learn actually shuts down.

 

Clock here to listen January 2, 2012 Vicki Abedesco

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve


Learn What Exercises and Drills You Can Use to Help Your Child Read Easily and Well.

The Learning Curve December 26, 2011 Jeffrey Pflaum 2

Learn What Exercises and Drills You Can Use to Help Your Child Read Easily and Well.

Today, with Roger & Virginia on The Learning Curve, we have the return of Jeffrey Pflaum, the author of Motivating Teen and Preteen Readers: How Teachers and Parents and Teachers Can Lead the Way.

Jeffrey is a 34 year veteran of teaching in the New York City School System where he achieved spectacular results in the classroom. He and his work have been widely cited in publications dealing with education and is featured on the Education Resource Information Centerat Teachers’ College, Columbia University and Indiana University. Also at the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, Illinois University.

Jeffrey is also a BAM! Street Journal Blogger at the BAM Radio Network serving the education community.

Jeffrey reveals the simple exercises and drills he used in his classroom to help kids become better readers.

Hear how Jeffrey taught his students that words can excite and incite young readers to create three-dimensional concepts and images; and that reading is like a 3D virtual reality created by the reader.

Jeffrey’s book is available at your local bookstore, Amazon.com and B&N.

Jeffrey can be contacted at jeffreyppflaum@gmail.com

 

Click here to listen December 26, 2011 Jeffrey Pflaum #2

Roger and Virginia at The Learning Curve