Coast to coast travel used to take weeks by stagecoach. Trains speed the process up quite a bit. Now, I routinely fly Atlanta to Los Angeles in about 4 hours. Technology has sped up how we travel, cook, and communicate. However, speeding up learning tends to...
My third grade teacher did something amazing. She authorized us to pass notes in class. Not kidding. We could send and receive notes as long as we wrote in letter form with heading, greeting, body, close, and signature. We also had to put it in an envelope with the...
I remember the first time I watched Destin’s Backward’s Brain Bicycle episode in his show, Smarter Every Day. My biggest take away from his experience was realizing that learning looks a lot like failure. If he were being graded on performance he would have received a...
It all started with orange. I’m not sure why I decided orange was the perfect color for questions, but I started using an orange colored pencil to mark questions in my Bible. I started in the gospel of Mark keeping track of the questions people asked of Jesus, as well...
Back in high school when I was playing basketball, my poor eye-hand coordination earned me a rather consistent spot on the bench. When the coach did put me in the game, my dominant emotion while playing was frustration. When I missed the rebound or missed my shot...
Little did I know when my friend and I entered the lunch room that she was about to forever change how I learned to spell. Once we were seated with our food trays my friend pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and pulled a pen out of her purse. “Esther, do you know...
When I was 11 my parents decided to take us on the mother of all road trips. I’m not sure why the road trip was connected with writing in my mom’s mind, but it was. She bought me a notebook and encouraged me to write, as she did, about where we were going and what we...
Hand signals have worked for me with both lower and upper elementary students. I have used some of these on occasion in ministry contexts with middle school and high school. I’m guessing you can find an application in the home as well. Be aware that some hand signals...
If math were a pool, the most successful swimmers would be those who were given ample time in their formative years playing (ie: developing skills) in the shallow end. In a real swimming pool a child learns the skills necessary for good swimming, such as how to float...
I tried out for a part in a musical once. I was one of the last to audition. While waiting, I heard the same lines sung over and over and over. I had those lines down cold! Yet, when it was finally my turn, I reversed the first two lines. I never sang in that...
