Grasshopper New Media Presents...

We found out yesterday that Punk #1 has been accepted into the “REACH” program for next year. That’s our public school’s gifted program. Aidan’s been a part of the program since 1st grade. The big difference in fourth grade is that the program becomes a daily replacement for the classroom math and language [...]

I read an article in the New York Times about the difficulty in providing education for autistic children. Fundamentally, the argument goes like this: Autistic children need intensive and expensive education and therapy early on if we hope to have them function independently later in life. Without this education, they will likely be [...]

My five year old granddaughter corrects my French.  Carefully, patiently, frequently.  ‘No, Grama, it’s *burrrr*’ she says, doing that impossible Francophone thing with her tongue that makes the word sound like a cat’s purr.  ‘Br?’ ‘Burrrr, BuRRRRR!  Say it again, Grama.’  Sometimes she sighs and gives it up as a lost cause.  At other times [...]

From here to there, from there to here, school budget cuts are everywhere. You’re hearing about it too, aren’t you?
Music programs
Art programs
Life skills programs
Industrial arts programs
Special Ed support
Reducing, combining, removing program elements in order to balance the financial blocks that our schools are built with. Its like a game of Jenga, pulling [...]

I got a chance to talk to Joel Arquillos of 826LA this past week. The 826 projects have “outlets” in several cities, offering free tutoring and creative writing classes for kids after school, as well as doing outreach to schools during the week. They have summer writing camps. But the best part [...]

Was listening to PRI (Public Radio Intenational) several days ago – heard a story on “The World” that got me thinking.
The story was about a tax-payer government program in Germany in which the German government selects from top student applicants and sends them to a training school which lands them top jobs at 4-star hotels [...]

Since I have lived and had children in school in the state of Indiana, the state standardized testing has been in the fall.  This meant that students would be tested on the material that they had learned the previous year and had probably forgotten over the summer.  The result was that schools tended to spend [...]

Nothing in life is more constant than change. And if you are like me, the only thing constant about me is my resistance. I’ve lived several lives in my little existence, some good and some bad. I’ve worn a lot of different hats; the ignored child, the family castoff, the black sheep, the runaway, the [...]

My oldest child, my little man, is in Kindergarten. Because of budget cuts in the school system in my town, just like everywhere else, kindergarten is only offered Monday, Wednesday, and then every other Friday. Since I work full time, that schedule didn’t work for me. Thankfully, the childcare center on lab at work [...]

I work in a middle school.  Middle school is that scary place where teens and preteens try to figure out who they are and where they belong and what in the world to do with their hormones and deodorant, all the while being expected to do their homework and pass their classes and navigate the [...]