Biography

I am a yankee born but southern bred writer, teacher, advocate and doctoral candidate. Passionate about education and life-long learning, I give every free moment to the idea and support of free, appropriate public education for all children. I stand against the Common Core State Standards and see them as some of the worst written guidelines in the history of education. I stand against the corporate takeover of education and I stand by the findings of the 1991 Sandia Report which found no crisis in education in the US.  Creativity and innovation are the greatest gifts our schools can give and I am against turning our schools into those like China and South Korea where creativity and innovation are destroyed and student suicide is the norm. There is no shortage of STEM graduates and there hasn't been for decades. Standards based education doesn't work and it never has. That isn't to say some content expert designed frameworks aren't a good idea.  Poverty is the greatest issue in our schools today and I stand firmly against the wasting of billions of dollars on worthless testing.  There is no correlation between test scores and a "21st century economy." I am a scholar of the brain and learning. Stress and its damage to the brain is the biggest deterrent to learning in our schools.  Educators should abandon the idea of remediation and look to teach to a child's strengths. Teaching meta-cognition and optimism can turn a failing child around. I believe in classical education and think students need to write fluently with a pencil, not a laptop. Taking notes by hand improves memory and the cognitive benefits of learning cursive writing demand it be returned to the curriculum. I think technology in a classroom is more of a distraction than a benefit. Research claims reading on a screen reduces comprehension by up to 70%, I agree. Children need books, paper, pencils and crayons. 

I am a lover of books, movies and well-written television. A cabin in the mountains of North Georgia surrounded by nature and the billions of stars that fill the night sky is my home. I have rescues as pets and love the family I have chosen over the years as much as those I was born with.