Children’s attitude toward no-school day is a sign of their growing up and become mature. I remember my daughter used to be excited about any no-school days. She even expected a lot of bad weather days so that there would be more no-school days.

To her, it meant no homework, nothing but play. Even after I told her to work on some long-term projects during these no-school days, she still expected no school days somewhat to be relaxing, insisting no-school meant no work. Thank goodness, she has outgrown this attitude, a sign of being mature and responsible.

I used to complain a lot about American kids having too many no-school play days. I still think so. But then, if teachers leave children to the parents, it is up to the parents to make most of these idle days. After all these years of dealing with teachers and schools here, I have come to this conclusion: for your child’s education and his future, you really cannot count on any schools or teachers.

I talked to them, making them understand that I could give them a second chance but in real life they might not have the luck to meet people who are willing to give them this second chance, therefore they might end up having a bad mark in their record for all their lives.

I might not be a good teacher but in the long run, when students look back and reflect upon this, they will learn a lesson, heavier than a grade. I knew I was working with young people and they have a long way to go in their lives. Don’t we have the saying — “young and foolish”? I don’t want their youthful foolishness follow them all the way.

If a student thinks he were a loser because of a bad grade, he would give up trying and start heading downhill. What happens next is he will slip to the bottom faster than he has thought. I would do anything to prevent this downward movement.

The tragedy is not many teachers realize this downward triggering role that they can play in a student’s life.

I am not sure if I have posted it. I shared with my daughter who agreed to give it a try. I am sure people will benefit from this.

(1) Be focused in class–you always get more done by pure concentration.
(2) Train your memory–ability to retain knowledge.
(3) Enhance your reading comprehension
(4) Develop your writing skill
(5) Learn to take notes with images
(6) Learn to manage well study process

For some reason, the girl alway dreamed of becoming a college professor of mathematics. Though she was admitted into Princeton University, she was toiling heavily all the way through her first three years.

Finally, on her final year, she broke down upon learning from one professor that she was not cut out for mathematics. In the end, though she managed to graduate from Princeton, she wasn’t able to land a job and to this date, is still unemployed and disoriented.

I was wondering if she could have fared better than this in her life journey if she had been better adviced before she headed for mathematics professor dream.

After KUMC purchases our company, the two research departments will naturally become one under one manager. While the one at KU has a PhD and MBA, our manager has a Bachelor. Our manager might be squeezed out after KU buyout, even though she is also very capable and experienced. Hence, she left on her own before she was told to.

To me, this emphasizes the importance of one’s education in the long run. If you plan to climb up to a higher level of management, very often higher than a bachelor degree makes big difference.

She agrees with my assessment, even though she thinks I have given myself more credit than I deserve. At least I have kept in mind children’s education all the time.

Children with proper parental guidance should be more mature and feeling superior to those without, unless they choose not to follow this guidance.

My mother said when we were little, they only made sure that we had food and clothes and books to read. Their only hope was we could find some job to support ourselves when we grew up. Great expectation! Really?

To be sure, my parenting of my children is vastly different from that of last generation’s. In fact, I have tried to align my expectation of my children with their expectation of themselves. It took me some time to explain this idea to my mother. Call it generation plus cultural gap.

I told one parent that a child’s education was not complete without a musical instrument and a sport event. If school work challenges their brain, sport their body and the mastery of one musical instrument challenges both. On top of this, both sport and music contribute in their own way to building a strong character –perseverance, focus, goal-setting, and competitive spirit.

This parent told me that since her child started figure-skating, she became more open and self-confident. Sport has boosted up her self-esteem and brought a change in her personality. Isn’t that wonderful!

She is a 30-year-old single mother of two, one 12-year-old, the other 5-year-old, full-time employee, recently awarded full-ride scholarship, one of only 10 people from across the U.S. selected out of about 12,000 applicants for full-ride scholarships to her chosen University under the Project Working Mom program.

With the scholarship, she will continue working on her bachelor degree and will go all the way to get her PhD. in psychology. Her dream started when she was in second year of high school. But it was delayed because of a baby when she was 18 and the need to make a living and support her two children. More than a decade has passed, yet she still holds tight to her dream.

Now she is more than ever determined to pursue her dream degree. She knows her road ahead will be full of hardships but she is resolved to let nothing stop her until she reaches her goal.

If you listen to your mother and practice piano for an hour in the afternoon, these music lessons can produce profound and lasting changes that enhance the general ability to learn.

“Assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to … calculus.

“The musically adept are better able to concentrate on a biological lesson despite the racket in the classroom… They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad calling working memory, an essential skill in the era of multitasking…”

For this reason, I hope my children will keep up their piano or violin practice even after they are out of school.

Lynndie England is famous for her role in the infamous torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the occupation of Iraq. The pictures reveal without any doubt a perverted mind. It is ridiculous to hear her self-defense and her all-out efforts to whitewash herself of any wrongdoings.

In a May 11, 2004 interview with Denver CBS affiliate television station KCNC-TV, England reportedly said that she was ‘instructed by persons in higher ranks’ to commit the acts of abuse for psyop reasons, and that she should keep doing it, because it worked as intended. England noted that she felt “weird” when a commanding officer asked her to do such things as “stand there, give the thumbs up, and smile”. However, England felt that she was doing “nothing out of the ordinary”.

“England maintains that she was goaded into posing for the photographs by her then lover and more senior fellow soldier, Charles Graner. ‘They said in the trial that authority figures really intimidate me. I always aim to please.’”

Lynndie England’s experience emphasizes the importance of developing and following your own philosophy of life unwaveringly. This includes, among others, a clear sense of right and wrong, no matter what others say. Do the right thing always. If it is wrong either morally or legally or whatsoever, do not do it, no matter what, even if you are under the highest pressure. At the very least, always follow the golden rule of “Do-unto-others-as-you-would-have-them-do-unto-you.”

A single bad deed never fails to boomerang, even though good ones might disappear like nothing happens. Lynndie England could have avoided this scandal if she had a clear idea of her philosophy of life and a tiny bit of sense of right and wrong.

Immediately, I see the advantage of this approach. It can actively engage students in learning, better than handing them questions. In order to do a good job, the students need to think critically and creatively. The students learn much more than the subject matter itself.

When I was teaching sociology courses back in 1993 till 1996, I created a list of questions and asked my students to seek answers while doing reading assignments. I thought it a better way than simply giving out reading assignments.

If I had a chance to teach these students again, I would do as this European History teacher did. If I had a chance to work with little children about their reading, I would try this method, too. Because it is such a superior method of teaching!

The speaker gave a detailed analysis of the serious flaws in the design and engineering of the architecture. These flaws are the root cause of the collapse.

I think it a very good lecture for the young people in that they could learn what professional responsibilities means and the deadly consequence of the irresponsible behavior on part of some professionals.

I am pretty sure I have dwelled on this topic many times before so much so that even my daughter can recite it. This was on an elementary school textbook. So many years have passed and with so much goings-on, I can never forget the story of Hanhao bird. The story goes like this.

When the sun is warm and bright, all the birds are hard at work, with the exception of Hanhao Bird. When a bird reminds Hanhao of getting ready for the cold weather, Hanhao said, “The winter is still far away. I will enjoy myself in this sunny day.”

Hanhao plays all the way until the winter arrives. At night when other birds are resting in their cosy nests, the shivering Hanhao regrets not to have built one for this moment. He keeps chanting this verse. The next day when the sun is out and Hanhao starts playing again, forgetting all about his nest. Thus, eventually he dies in the midst of cold winter night– a lesson for us all.

(1) Emotional shopaholics, “Shopping brings me out of a depressed mood,” said one of them.

(2) Bipolar shopaholics. When certain people with bipolar disorder hit a manic high, the first thing they think to do is shop. “When I was high, I couldn’t worry about money if I tried so I don’t…”

(3) Obsessive shopaholics. If you feel an urge to buy the same top in eight colors or to replace your coffee maker monthly because you keep finding “better” models, you may be an obsessive shopaholic. They must shop to feel that everything is OK.

When you reach to such a deplorable state, obviously something must be wrong with your life or with your feeble mind. Either you need to have a worthy goal to reach or a meaningful engagement to make you feel worthy and proud. I surely wish my children and my dear readers never fall this low.

(1) Word perfect. Babies raised among books obtain an average of three years more schooling than book-free children. That mean babies should be read to as early as possible.

(2) Boys chase girls. Boys score low in class that girls dominate. I don’t have convincing explanation on it. Probably, girls tend to bring out their best when they compete with other girls. And boys lack of the drive to compete with girls.

(3) Clique here. Seniors with more close pals have high GPAs. This is very much understandable when classmates serve as study buddies and help each other to reach their common goals — good grades.

(1) The new building will house the same old group of teachers who have created 50% dropout rate and one of the lowest performance schools in the U.S.
(2) Schools with worst performance are often rewarded with the highest funding – New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, NJ, a $185 million high school.
(3) This came in the time when nearly 3,000 teachers were laid off, with many needed programs slashed.

The assumption behind this colossal spending is people attribute the poor school performance to lack of good facilities, instead of honestly confronting the real issues of parental responsibilities, the student’s lack of interest and any much-needed work ethics, and on top of its all, the whole culture that breeds the main student body .

I don’t have ready data to back up this but I strongly believe on the average the U.S. public schools spend far more than the average schools in China, yet the performance and achievement are depressingly lower here in the U.S.

Let’s face this simple fact: education is not something you can buy. Emphasis on education is inherent in a culture. You find it in most of Asian and Jewish cultures. Without a thorough cleaning of the whole culture involving predominantly Hispanic and black student body, this bleak situation will remain stubbornly hopeless, regardless how many millions are poured into these schools. It will only get worse as this student body grows bigger.

I don’t know where the classroom is and how much she has to go before she enters her classroom. But I know clearly we could have avoided all the morning rush if she had got her clothes, school notes, and school bag ready the night before. The next morning we left at 6:30 AM and arrived at 6:49. I hope my children can learn a lesson from what happened on this morning.

“Reading makes a full man; conversation a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man writes little, he needs to have a great memory; if he converses little, he needs to have a present wit: and if he reads little, he needs to have much cunning, to seem to know, that he does not. Histories make men wise ; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.”

You may be wondering why history makes one wise. When you study history, you have to be able to think in term of time and space and understand events and their relationships, then search for the answer for why event happened the way it is. History enhances your research and critical thinking ability and of course writing ability, too. Plus, it is so much fun reading about history. After all, don’t you want to know the rise and fall of Roman Empire?

The main idea of the first part is the following.
(1) Get up early. Clean around and put things in order. Go to bed early. Make sure the door is locked and the windows are closed. The key point is to do something useful after you get out of bed as opposed to watching TV or playing games or surfing the net mindlessly.

(2) At each meal, you should alway remember they don’t come by easily. There are lots of works involved in the making of your clothes. The main point is: nothing comes by easily. Do not waste anything.

(3) While you prepare for the rainy days, you should start digging well before you feel thirsty. The message is self-explanatory, that is, you save for the time when you need it urgently.

To be sure, this is not the first time that I drill these messages into their heads. I know repetition always works.