Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

AP classes don’t challenge students

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How Children SucceedIn How Children Succeed, Paul Tough found that good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success. Students need to learn how to set and approach goals with mental contrasting, grit, the ability to take on challenges and face failures, and the ability to persuade other people to give them what they need.

Providing challenges is often given as a reason for AP classes (Advanced Placement courses, or IB courses, college courses designed to be taught in high school and success measured by a standardized exam.) But in our personal experience, that isn’t happening for several reasons. In How Children Succeed, there was evidence that agreed with this view….

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4 characteristics that lead to success

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How Children SucceedSo if good grades and lots of homework aren’t future predictors of success, what are the factors that do lead to success? In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough looks at characteristics they found in students from an underprivileged school where they measured success as graduating from college.

When KIPP started looking at their students who did finish college, they found that instead of being those that were the best scholars while they were at KIPP, “They were the students who were able to recover from the bad grades and resolve to do better, bounce back from [personal conflicts]; could persuade professors to give them extra help after class; could resist the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study.” – How Children Succeed, p 52

Obviously resisting “the urge [to have fun] and stay home and study” relates to self-discipline, but remember that while grades are a measure of self-discipline, good grades alone were not a good predictor of which students from KIPP would go on to graduate from college.…

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Good grades don’t predict success

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How Children SucceedIn my last post about How Children Succeed,  by Paul Tough, I covered how a student’s GPA is more a measure of self-discipline than IQ. The education system is set up to reward students with self-discipline and high GPAs with admission into college. In How Children Succeed, success of disadvantaged students was measured by whether or not they went on to graduate from college. In spite of this, Tough, surprisingly, concludes that the ability to perform well in the ways that school measures aren’t a good predictor of success, even though here success is measured by going on to college.

Specifically, good grades and lots of homework aren’t good predictors of success, and in fact can lead to stress that actually inhibits success….

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Self-discipline is more important to grades than IQ

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How Children SucceedMy alarming conclusion from How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough, was that the set of qualities that our education system emphasizes – measures, teaches, and drills – aren’t traits that lead to success.

Why are grades so important to us? What, exactly, do grades and GPAs measure, and how did they come to be known as future predictors of success?…

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11 Reasons your high-achieving student will fail

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How Children SucceedAs I covered in my post about getting back into the schedule of the school year, teens in high school are busy, busy, busy, trying to make sure they have enough AP classes, keep their GPA and their class rank high, and fill all the rest of the “free” time they have with extracurriculars and service hours, hoping to have resumes spectacular enough to get into a “good” college. It’s common knowledge that if you do your best in high school – especially if it means you can be valedictorian! – it will show everyone, including colleges, that you have what it takes to be a success in life. But does that common knowledge have it right?

Have we gone to far with the rigor of high school with overwhelming loads of AP classes, extracurriculars and volunteerism? Are there enough hours in a day? And if you don’t encourage that standard of excellence, are you encouraging your child to be a slacker?

If you don’t do what everyone else is doing, how can you be sure your kid is going to succeed?!?

It’s a question that keeps parents up at night.

So when I came across the book How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough,  I read it. (I was up, after all.)…

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Kohl’s Cares – Gift that gives twice donation

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In support of reading and kids I donated two sets of Kohl’s Cares plush and book sets to the local toy drive at our school. …

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The Martian – the book, the movie

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The Martian

Read the book?
Seen the movie?

Yes and yes.

I love a science fiction or fantasy novel that includes real science. And the book has more science than the movie.

Is the book The Martian, by Andy Weir, suitable for kids?

…

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Breaking Point – from bones to academics, everything has one

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A couple months ago I slipped on some water. I could tell you that I managed to catch all my weight with my right hand, so that I didn’t even get a bruise on any other part of my body.

Or I could tell you — that the over-achievement of my right arm and hand led to breaking my wrist.

Which has turned out to be more of a pain, in every possible definition of the word, than I thought it would be. Of course, I’m right handed. So this post, typed with one hand, will be short.

Related to the subject of this blog, I’ve been gathering information about education, job prospects, and entrepreneurship. This episode of the podcast Start Up, by Gimlet Media, shows an interesting connection between them. In this episode, the ADULT employees talk about the effects of their late hours and stress are having on their health and personal lives.

Their schedule sounds remarkably like high-achieving high school TEENS I know….

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How to add yourself as an author or editor new WordPress user

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For WordPress security, it’s a good idea to create a new WordPress user as an Author or Editor to use whenever you make new posts from an un-secure location, any place where someone else can access wifi and swipe your password as you enter it. You will need at least two email addresses to do this.

If you haven’t used my tutorials before, start by reading How to read my WordPress tutorials.…

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How to change your WordPress Username and Password

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Over one weekend I went from getting one or two login attempts, every week or so, to over a thousand in two days. The hackers didn’t get in, but it’s still alarming. (I ran a free scan of my site over at sucuri.net and also with the new plugin, WordFence Security, just to be sure my site is still secure.) If you don’t know much about WordPress security yet, read my post on WordPress Security for Beginners.

I haven’t been able to find a reason for the sudden increase in attempts; it’s probably just bad luck. But my research led me to install a third security plugin, Wordfence. (If you install too many security plugins, they can interfere with each other, but for now this seems to be a good trio.) I now how JetPack (it has a security part), Sucuri Security, and WordFence Security – all free plugins – intalled and activated.

I had already taken care of the basics, my username is not “admin” or “administrator.” But my username did have my url as part of a longer username, and with WordFence I could see that the hackers have tried using my url as my username. It was making me nervous….

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