Julia Steiny: How Governments Abuse and Neglect Kids
(Photo: George Hodan, Creative Commons) By Julia Steiny When still young and blissfully naive, I was appointed to the Providence School Board. I was sure my clever, well-informed interview with the outgoing Mayor had knocked it out of the park. I later discovered I was merely a goad to the in-coming Mayor. No big deal; […]
Julia Steiny: School Suspensions Model the Wrong Behavior for Students
By Julia Steiny Last week we looked at reasons why kids misbehave — how sometimes they can’t or they won’t act in community-appropriate ways. Whether it’s a choice for them or not, it’s always a big pain for the people around them. So this week we’ll look at the most common response to misbehavior, which […]
Julia Steiny: Instead of School Suspensions, Let’s Listen to Kids
By Julia Steiny Allow me to say right off the top that I believe each out-of-school suspension is a symptom of a mental or social issue. I’d call them symptoms of disease, but some are more like sniffles. In 2014, President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper sparked awareness not only of the frequency of suspensions, but […]
Julia Steiny: Mental Health Does Not Mean Mental Illness
By Julia Steiny I’m sure the ex-Congressman Patrick Kennedy had little to do with the copywriting for his new website, One Mind. But I wish he’d read it more closely. Kennedy has done great service lending his celebrity to advocating for the mentally ill in a number of ways. He’s making the talk show rounds chatting […]
VIDEO: Julia Roberts, Demi Moore & Margot Robbie top our list of SEXIEST movie MILFS
HOT MAMAS Julia Roberts, Demi Moore and Margot Robbie top our list of Hollywood’s hottest MILFS from Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle to Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. Watch their sexiest scenes here. Daily Express :: Films Feed
Julia Steiny: Christmas Is About Belonging to the ‘We of Me’
By Julia Steiny In one of my favorite plays, Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding, 12-year-old Frankie is frantic with loneliness. She calls herself “unjoined.” Her mother died in her childbirth; her father has little attention for her. She craves membership in a clique of older girls who shun tomboys like Frankie. The play aches […]
Julia Steiny: Why the Every Student Succeeds Act Will Never Work
By Julia Steiny Given the battlefield that is our current Congress, congratulations to them are in order for agreeing on anything. Together, miraculously, they revamped the old 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB was loathed from the get-go. It was a set-up for failure, since it was and is still statistically impossible to […]
Julia Steiny: Thanks to My Sons, Who Got Me Involved in Schools
By Julia Steiny Per tradition, this year at Thanksgiving dinner we’ll go around the table and say what we’re grateful for this year. Likely many families do this, driven by the mom or whoever is feeling under-appreciated, or wanting to call out the brats for being spoiled. Giving thanks is a fabulous habit. It’s as […]
Julia Steiny: A Small Gesture Toward Spreading Higher Ed Wealth
By Julia Steiny Consider for a moment that almost 90 colleges and universities have endowments of a billion – that’s with a “B” — dollars or more. At 5% interest, a billion earns $ 50 million a year. Harvard, of course, is the big winner at nearly $ 37 billion, an amount so large that others […]
Julia Steiny: Students Curb Classroom Misbehavior with ‘Shirt of Shame’
By Julia Steiny At the beginning of this school year, chemistry teacher Brandon Haggerty facilitated a negotiation among his “Crew” students to agree on group norms for themselves. Haggerty’s school, the Greene Charter School in rural, leafy Exeter, RI, is an Expeditionary Learning school where what would otherwise be an advisory program group are “Crews.” […]