My favorite thing about moving back to my hometown is getting to walk my kindergartener to school every day.
It’s true that we would walk him and his brother to school when we lived in New York, but there was something about the wind tunnels, M15 bus fumes, and traffic...
I have always loved running. I was an avid runner for many years. That changed after I had my second son. I struggled to find time with a 3 year old and a newborn. That is why this fall I have been trying to find a lasting running routine. I recently downloaded an a...
A popular theme in life, often tossed about when we are complaining or agitated, is that less is more.
There are so many ways to downsize. Three weeks ago our family took on a big one: we moved from a large, beautiful home on a lovely park to a two bedroom apartment. We...
Many of us have heard about Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hour rule”, which indicates that to become an expert at something, one must put in ten-thousand hours of practice. Gladwell's rule derives from a 1992 paper published by a psychologist from Florida State Universit...
Over the past couple of months my 4 year old has become increasingly demanding. Almost daily I've heard, “Do this” or “I need a drink." I have found myself taking a lot of deep breaths, and thinking what happened to all those sweet words like “please” and “thank you”...
I’ve been a teacher, a staff developer at Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, a coach, a reading specialist and an independent literacy consultant. I’ve seen a lot of libraries- specialized libraries, school libraries, classroom libraries, neighborhood librar...
“It’s magic,” a teacher I was working with recently declared after a reading conference we co-taught with one of her kindergarteners. David is in his second year in kindergarten. He works with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist, and as a reader, he had...
Seven months ago my second child was born (well we consider him our third child since our first is a vizla/lab mix that holds a prominent place in our family but that’s another tale...).
I knew before our son was born that I would struggle immensely with the first few m...
When I was in college Oprah Winfrey was doing a lot of television episodes about gratitude. I remember learning about the concept of a gratitude journal and the challenge to write down five things each and every day that you are grateful for. I wasn’t the happiest of p...
