Mom Behind the Curtain

every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard

We don’t need human calculators, so why are we training them? – Most Likely to Succeed, Part 4/11

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Most Likely to Succeed - Our education system was designed to train workers for jobs that are being replaced by machines. It's outdated.

Most Likely to Succeed – Our education system was designed to train workers for jobs that are being replaced by machines. It’s outdated.

I managed to write two posts on just the first few minutes of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed: about how the concerns of the filmmakers about school resonated with me, disputing the reasoning that kids quit liking school because it gets harder and questioning whether or not doing well in school really will lead to success.

After that brief introduction, Most Likely to Succeed spends quite a bit of time illustrating how computers will make knowledge-based jobs obsolete,…

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How important is doing well in school to success? – Most Likely to Succeed Part 3/11

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Does your kid hate school? Have you told them that it's for important so they can get a good job? How important is doing well in school to success?In my last post, I talked being able to relate to the experience of the makers of the documentary Most Likely to Succeed, because my kids don’t like school.

Their dislike of school started at a young age, but at this point I will admit that I might not be helping any. Because I also identified with the narrator when he realized that what he was telling his child about school – that you need to do well in school to get a good job – wasn’t true. In the past I’ve used statements, almost exactly like the ones he used, when talking to my own kids. Things like —

“You want to flip burgers the rest of your life? If not, you’ve got to do well in school.”…

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Most Likely to Succeed Documentary Review and Discussion – Part 1/11

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Most Likely to SucceedWhen I realize that I’ve come across a recommendation for a book in more than one place, it seems a sure sign I should read it. In this case, Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith, the book, was on my reading list for quite a while from various sources. I had even checked it out from the library twice but not managed to read it. Then I heard that our superintendent would be showing the documentary with the same name to both the teachers and parents in our school district. So I bought the book and started reading it….

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Entrepreneur skills Steve Jobs didn’t learn in school – Part 3/7

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Entrepreneur skills Steve Jobs didn't learn in school - Steve Jobs biographyHow did Steve Jobs, a college dropout, go on to found a computer company, get kicked out, help steer the success of Pixar, and make his way back to Apple and phenomenal success? Since he was a college dropout, it wasn’t from something he learned in college. In fact, he wasn’t much of a student in high school either. His opinion was that schools just made students memorize stuff, rather than teaching them interesting information. What were the entrepreneur skills Steve Jobs didn’t learn in school?…

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Outliers Book Review – Obsession to success, Part 4/4

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Outliers Review - obsession to success - Obsession to success - Develop an obsession with something you consider worthwhile, enjoy yourself, and let the chips fall where they may.My dissatisfaction with the current overbearing schedule for students in high school, has led me to do quite a bit of reading.  (To see my reading list for books about success and education, click here.) One of the first books I read was  Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell.

In the first half, Gladwell showed how the success of Outliers can be tied to luck, to timing, to “Opportunity.”

In the second half, Gladwell showed how the success of Outliers is also affected by where you come from and your culture, “Legacy.”

In my third post, I looked at my own conclusions from Outliers about what you needed to do to be successful. Hint: It has nothing to do with being a straight-A student.)

But the book is about what makes people an outlying success, like Steve Jobs. What factors does Gladwell think it takes to be an outlying success? Obsession….

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Outliers Book Review – What you need for success, Part 3/4

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Outliers Review - What you need for successMy dissatisfaction with the current overbearing schedule for students in high school, has led me to do quite a bit of reading.  (To see my reading list for books about success and education, click here.) One of the first books I read was  Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell.

In the first half, Gladwell showed how the success of Outliers can be tied to luck, to timing, to “Opportunity.”

In the second half, Gladwell showed how the success of Outliers is also affected by where you come from and your culture, “Legacy.”

There’s nothing like taking  the evidence presented to you and thinking that you can come up with a better explanation, even though you’re getting all the information from a secondary source. 🙂 (In other words, I didn’t get to see all the evidence Galdwell collected, just what he presented to me in this book.) But I think all the information can point to a different, more hopeful, and more active interpretation.

What you need for success – my take on Outliers, by Gladwell

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Welcome to High School, College, Success!

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ES Ivy, blog authorOn this website, I explore the question of whether or not the current education system, high school through college, is teaching what’s really needed for our kids to be successful. Or at the very worst, is actually hampering the best students. Do you know how much sleep your teen is getting? Does your child have lots of homework? Are you worried about how busy your kids are, how little free time they have, but afraid your kids won’t get into college if their “resume” isn’t packed? Have you heard about the rising rates of teen anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and suicide? This website is a resource for you.

Until I get an “About” page up and running, you can find out more about this website by starting with my first post on this subject, Success factors 1: What’s the Best Way to Guide Your Child Through High School to be a Success in College and in Life?, and following through the next posts.

Also popular, are my posts about the SAT, PSAT, and National Merit Scholars program.

If you’re looking for my posts on the best children’s books, recipes, DIY crafts, or family trip planning, you can find them on my other new blog, The Mom Behind the Curtain – because every mom wants to be an all-powerful wizard, at mombehindthecurtain.com. If you want to know more about me, E.S. Ivy, then for now the information up on my children’s author page, esivy.com, will have to do. Or look up at the top of my sidebar, and you can connect with with on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.

Outliers book review – Legacy, Part 2/4

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Outliers Review - how opportunity relates to successMy dissatisfaction with the current overbearing schedule for students in high school, has led me to do quite a bit of reading.  (To see my reading list for books about success and education, click here.) One of the first books I read was  Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell.

In my last post, I looked at the first part of the book, Opportunity as it relates to Outliers.

The second half of the book is titled Legacy….

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Reading List for Success and Education – guiding your kids in today’s educational world

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Will today’s schools prepare your child for success? If you’re questioning if test, retest and homework, homework, homework, are the best path to success, then this reading list for success is for you.

Following is a reading list of books for success I’ve read and would recommend about figuring out a path for your children in today’s educational world to prepare them for tomorrow’s reality. (At this point, this is only a partial list of what I’ve read. This is just the start of the list so that I can start making links. New books, both past and present, will be updated. When I can, I’ll also update with links to posts that I publish.)…

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Most Likely to Succeed – learning skills for success

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Most Likely to SucceedMost Likely to Succeed, by Tony Wagner and Ted Dintersmith has been on my reading stack for awhile. Our school district will have a special showing, so I moved it to the top of the stack! I’m really hopeful that a switch to this approach will help the homework load problem in our school. But, more importantly, from my research so far – including reading The Smartest Kids in the World, How Children Succeed, and Outliers – I think this approach will help better prepare our children for success in LIFE, not just in school.

I’m going to try a new approach, posting quotes to Twitter and Facebook as I read. Don’t have time to read the book? Follow along on my Twitter or Facebook account. (Kindle posts to my author personal Facebook account and won’t allow to share to my page, E.S. Ivy Author. If anyone knows how to fix this, let me know!)

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