Back to Basics

There's been a lot of talk in the public arena lately about school reform, which is exciting on a number of levels. The education of our children should be part of our public discourse. We should hear about it on the news, talk about it in the break room at work, and debate about it (respectfully, of course) around the family dinner table.

But when we're talking about education, we have to remember that we're talking about much more than test scores. We're also talking about how to meet the most basic needs of children so that we can foster environments where learning can take place.

According to Philip S. Morse and Allen E. Ivey, most educational reformers agree that we should first attend to some basic needs before we can seriously address the more complex and sophisticated tasks that face students.

What are these basic needs? That's - in part - what we're covering in our new book, which is slated to hit the press in just a few, short months. Because we know that if we want to teach children about conflicts in Literature, we also have to teach them how to resolve conflicts in their own lives. And if we want them to respect (and listen to) their teachers, we also have to teach them how to respect themselves and each other.

So we're excited that people are talking about education. And we encourage those conversations to include how we educate and nurture ALL of our children in ALL areas of their lives.