School Family

We’re thrilled that Bill Harley will be adding his unique voice to the SchoolFamily.com blog!

A two-time Grammy award-winning artist and recipient of the Magic Penny Award from the Children’s Music Network, Bill uses song and story to paint a vibrant and hilarious picture of growing up, schooling and family life. His work spans the generation gap, reminds us of our common humanity and challenges us to be our very best selves. A prolific author and recording artist, Bill is also a regular commentator for NPR’s “All Things Considered” and featured on PBS. He joined the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence in 2001 and tours nationwide as an author, performing artist and keynote speaker.

Bill has a unique sense of humor and we’re looking forward to having his “wit and wisdom” on this blog. I asked Bill for a sneak preview of the types of things he’ll be sharing with SchoolFamily.com readers, here’s what he had to say…

“I’ve spent thirty years singing songs, telling stories, and writing books about children and the world they live in (including the two my wife and I have raised) I’ll share my thoughts on what I’ve seen in schools, families, and children’s lives. From playground rules to unfinished homework to moldy growths in the backpack – that’s my area of expertise. If you think your kid is the only one who would ever do what they just did, I’ll be there to remind you we’re all in the same boat.”

Bill has some great video and audio clips of his work on his website - www.billharley.com. My favorite is “Grownups Are Strange”.

Bill will be posting his first blog post in the next couple of days. Hope you’ll check back often and add your own thoughts and comments!

Very happy to let you know about the launch of two brand new sections on the site today!

Community – Thinking about how to keep your kids safe online? Wondering how to keep up your kids learning over the summer? Looking for book ideas? Share and learn with other parents of school-aged kids in our brand new community section. You can jump in and add your 2 cents to existing discussions or start a brand new topic. Hope you’ll jump in and start connecting and sharing!

Q&A – It’s really part of the new community but it’s such a useful feature (at least we think so!) that it deserves a special mention. A very simple Question and Answer format that makes it easy to ask whatever is on your mind. And of course we hope you’ll answer questions other folks have posted. It’s up to everyone participating to vote up and down the answers – this will make sure the really good answers stay at the top.

You’ll notice the “Community” and “Q&A” tab at the top have a “beta” icon on them. We’ve worked hard at making sure everything is running smoothly and have tested and retested all the new features. But of course there’s always a few glitches when something new is launched so we thought adding the “beta” icon was a good idea. If you see anything unusual or if you have any questions about these new features or how to use them please comment below or email us at community@schoolfamily.com.

Look forward to seeing you in the community! My username is klagden if you’d like to add me as a ‘friend’ after you’ve registered!

We’re thrilled that Connie will be sharing her insight and expertise here on SchoolFamily.com. As a teacher, she has devoted her career to making sure that her young students do very well in school, right from the start. Connie has tons of experience in helping youngsters learn the fundamentals for success at school. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Elementary Education, a Master’s Degree in Special Education, and has fulfilled all the requirements of the State of Rhode Island to be deemed a “Highly Qualified Teacher”. Connie will be sharing her experience with regular blog posts.

In addition to writing a newspaper column, Connie is a regular speaker on the subject of preparing children for school. As she was raising her own two children, she taught nursery school for four years in her hometown of Barrington, RI. She has been teaching early elementary grades in East Providence for the past twenty-one years.

Connie will be sharing all sorts of tips, ideas, and experience on the blog. She also has some great hands-on activities that are easy to do at home and reinforce core skills.

Connie’s first post will be going live tomorrow and it will talk about some of the skills children need to develop before they can master learning. Hope you’ll check back often and jump in with your own thoughts and comments!

With 4 active kids, I love running across a random playground where they can have fun and be active (read: use up all their energy before bedtime). 

And that’s what makes this little app from the KaBoom folks so neat.  They’re trying to map out every playground in America.  Do you know a few that aren’t on here?  You can even rate ‘em. 

Interesting to think about what the ratings should be based on. How high are the monkey bars? Coolest slide? How much goose poop? No local teens making the playground into a mini, offline MySpace page?

Anyway, give it a look.  I added a couple of playgrounds myself. Is your favorite playground listed? 

Why’d the Pilgrim’s pants fall down?  Because his belt buckle was on his hat!  Nice, right?

That killed ‘em at my house, though admittedly my audience of grade schoolers and below laugh at anything involving pants falling down. 

Related topic:  if you have a similar house to mine, then you might love some of our Thanksgiving printables (we call ‘em “print-and-use tools”) for keeping the kids busy and engaged this weekend.  Word finds, crossword puzzles, coloring sheets — plenty of activities for kids of all ages.  Our entire print-and-use library is here.

Finally, simply, sincerely:  Happy Thanksgiving! May you and your family be blessed this holiday and beyond.

That’s the intriguing question posed by Lisa Belkin over at the NYTimes moterlode page.

From where I sit, the answer is clearly “yes”, but I think it’s probably the wrong question.  Better to ask if parents can be too involved in helping their kids have school success, and then i think the answer is:  “Not if that involvement is done right”.

Rare is the school that has to turn away parent volunteers and where teachers wished parents would be less connected.  And parent involvement done right includes just the kind of balance and systematic loosening of the reins that Lisa is looking for.  Moreover, involvement is a lot more than attending meetings and school events (though I love those for their involvement benefits and their community-building elements); involvement also includes appropriate partnering on homework and school progress and making sure your child has the support he or she needs to flourish in his or her own way.

Our feature on the value of getting involvement right is a key part of this site’s DNA.  We also have a good quiz to determine if you are a classic “Helicopter Parent“.  

(Note: the comments on the NYTImes site make for an interesting read, too, including a healthy, heated discussion about cultural and ethnic differences around involvement.)

One of the things I’m enjoying most about our schoolfamily.com site is how the content and tools keep growing week after week. Rather than big 2.0 and 3.0 launches, our team works behind-the-scenes adding more and more to the site to help parents.

One of my favorite areas is fairly new; it’s our Print-and-Use Tools for school parents — all kinds of things that you can print out to make things more sane for us busy moms and dads.

Just a few examples include:

• Homework Checklist
• School Week at a Glance
• Reading Incentive Chart
• Get Ready for School Checklist
• Back-to-School Conference Questions

Have requests for more tools?  We’d love to hear about them (leave a comment here and we’ll be sure to check them out). And be sure to check out the whole site often, as things change (and get better and better) all the time.

How cool is this?  Was randomly surfing the web, when we ran across this back-to-school story from Connecticut. Was about to move on when I ran across this quote:

“As I surfed the Internet to find some of the most practical advice, I found a wealth of information and some excellent Web sites with advice on almost every area of concern, with tips covering the years from beginning pre-school to college. 
Some advice came from education experts, administrators and teachers, and some articles were written by parents who have been there. Some Web sites even feature question and answer and blog sections, where parents can communicate and ask for specific advice.
I found SchoolFamily.com to be most comprehensive and helpful.”

Nice. We agree.  If she loves it now –wait ’til she sees what we have in store for later this year and beyond. Be sure to bookmark this site (and maybe share with a friend or your whole school community?), because we have tons more resources coming up.  Idea is to make SchoolFamily.com the most comprehensive solutions/info/tools site for school moms and dads on the entire Web.  And according to Ms. Manciero — we’re getting there pretty quick!

Late notice, but I’ll be talking about back-to-school habits for parents tomorrow morning on Fox 25 in Boston.  Believe we’re set to go live at about 8:20 AM.  Will try and get the clip on here later this week, provided it’s not in HD (face made for radio — or at least lo-def!).