20 Techniques to Detour Around the Danger Zones: #6 Color Their World

Have you ever stopped to think about how the colors in this world affect you? I didn’t think much about it until I made a mistake with color in my home. My husband and I dined with friends who had just moved into a beautiful new house. Their dining room was painted a cranberry color that provided an elegance to the already exquisite surroundings. Continue Reading…

Talk To and With Your Children

Talk To and With Your Children

Several years ago, my husband Tyrone and I were in New York City when I saw something that made me cringe internally. We were in a hotel lobby in Manhattan when I spotted a double stroller. In the stroller were two adorable children who looked to be about 2 and 4 years old. Built into each section of the double stroller was a DVD player. Continue Reading…

The Value of Building Relationships

Relationships are everything! Familial and friend relationships, workplace relationships, and spiritual relationships all make a tremendous difference in our lives.

When you look at the first chapter in my best-selling book on classroom management, Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Detours Around the Danger Zones, you will find that the first chapter is titled, “Develop a Relationship with Each Student.” Continue Reading…

The Importance of Purpose

When students cannot see the purpose in a teacher’s lesson, they will often ask the question, “Why do we have to learn this?” This question makes perfect sense, since the purpose of the brain was never to make straight As or score high on a standardized test. The purpose of the brain is survival in the real world. So the question becomes, “What does this lesson have to do with my survival?”

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The Power of Visualization

Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, stated the following: Everything happens twice – once in the mind and once in reality.  The once in the mind could be called visualizationVisualization has been defined as the use of mental images to influence bodily processes and is one of 20 brain-based strategies that enables human beings to remember what they are learning.

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Confidence: If you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re actually right!

If you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re actually right!

This thing we call confidence is often difficult for a parent to see in a child or for a teacher to see in a student.  We can even have a hard time seeing it within ourselves.  But it is not difficult to observe in sports, so I would like to use a sports analogy to explain the concept.
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