For motivated, innovative thinkers, the school curriculum is designed to graduate world class innovators, entrepreneurs and humanitarians. With a choice of any world language to learn as an undergird to the projects, students will also participate in global online projects, connecting with students around the world to solve authentic problems.

With a focus on writing and communication skills, students’ work will be performance assessed rather than tested using traditional and ineffective testing methods. Stay tuned for more information regarding this engaging program.

Good teachers don’t need to be racing anywhere, much less to “the top,” “reliving Sputnik” or “building nations,” all phrases President Obama has used to paint a picture of his goals for teaching. What teachers need are ways to measure their effectiveness. But this is not easy. In fact, sometimes I think the education discussion is simply too nuanced to be adequately communicated to a mass audience. Recent films, news shows and speeches are not helpful in presenting truth or solutions.

The truth is that we need to begin with the student, not the teacher. We are placing a great deal of faith in the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). The PISA provides useful information but that information must be used to retool the system. See, we need more than high scores. We actually need students to graduate and willingly and enthusiastically enter professions. Data from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD, the creators of the PISA test used to globally rank student performance) tells us that focusing on raising test scores will not get us the results we desire. As reported on their website, a global polling of OECD students in 2006 revealed that “while most students said they were motivated to learn science, only a minority aspired to a career involving science: 72% said it was important for them to do well in science; 67% enjoyed acquiring new knowledge in science; 56% said science was useful for further studies; but only 37% said they would like to work in a career involving science and 21% said they would like to spend their life doing advanced science.”

As long as we continue to focus on holding teachers accountable for student success on a narrow measurement we will not recruit and retain the right professionals for the job. This isn’t the Olympics where we train in order to take home the gold. If it were, we would include independent school children and homeschoolers on the scoring team and see if we could up the rankings. The OECD created the PISA as a tool to inform instruction, not to evaluate teachers or become the instructional ends. We have not yet clarified as a nation what the ends of education are and how to ensure students attain those ends. We can side step this issue all we want by blaming teachers, pointing to scores, disarming unions, throwing copious sums of money around but until we decide how we can get students involved in actually performing and demonstrating mastery of and desire to do the kinds of tasks needed for the jobs of the future, then we are wasting our time.

We must begin with the end in mind. What do graduates need to be able to do on the job, rather than on the test? How do we inspire students to enthusiastically embrace careers in the sciences once they have the knowledge to score well on the test? How can we attract and retain teachers who can not only get students to achieve high scores but who can inspire young people to desire fulfilling careers? Before we solve the wrong problem, we need to develop new performance criteria that is compatible with 21st century learning. We should be talking about assessment reform as the most important first step to true school reform. The president should be using his bully pulpit to make this discussion intelligible and intelligent.

Eulogies

Mike Crum

Consultant and Friend of Dr. Mel Levine’s

My wife noted that since Friday, I’ve been using the word “transformative” quite a bit. It’s a very powerful word and she’s right, you don’t hear it often. In fact, it doesn’t even appear in the spell-check dictionary on Microsoft Word. It’s reserved for game changers, be it people, or experiences.

Mel – Mel was transformative.

His research, his neurodevelopmental framework, his empathy, unbridled creativity, and of course his sense of humor. Mel’s life’s work may have been based in the sciences, but equally genius and uncanny was his ability to bring non-traditional partners and often adversaries together. Teachers, parents, clinicians and kids working together as a team, rather than in isolation or even against one another.

One area where he wasn’t so transformative was sports. I remember asking him to re-tell his fabled His baseball camp stories. Can you imagine why, each summer, Mel’s parents sent him to baseball camp? The irony of Mel learning the finer points of a sport requiring keen hand eye coordination. Fast forward to his medical residency at Harvard when the attending asked Mel if he was going to pursue surgery, no Mel said, that’s good the attending replied.

His love and admiration for his big brother Lennie, who was the amazing athlete in the family, and who, one weekend, let Mel come visit him at Harvard in the dorms – that weekend providing Mel with an opportunity to see the limitless possibilities of education and that there was only ONE university in his future ——— BROWN! Or, as Mel referred to Brown, the drunken stepsister of the Ivy League. While at Brown Mel was valedictorian and he won an award from the state of Rhode Island for his work with at-risk kids.

From Brown, Mel went to Oxford, where he apparently always drew an audience —— in the dining hall. His recounting of the stories in his best or worst English accent, of the other students gathering around Mel at breakfast just to see how much Levine would spill.

And of course the lifelong bonds and friendships Mel developed at Oxford. I do hope that Justice Souter will share more with us about their antics together — particularly their trip to Morocco in a rental car – as Mel never did quite tell me the whole story.

I was so fortunate to work with Mel while he was with All Kinds of Minds. We traveled the country raising money for his continued development of tools and research to transform the lives of kids and families, and educators and clinicians across the world. No matter where the city, we always knew where the Verizon Wireless store was so we could replace lost and left behind phone chargers.

We usually met with donors for dinner prior to one of Mel’s talks, and I carefully selected restaurants without regard for their food, an impressive Scotch collection would bolster our efforts much more than a meal. Balvenie always trumped a good chef!

After only two visits with donors it became very clear, that, to a donor, not one person or couple really knew about All Kinds of Minds’ programs. They had, in fact, made past donations and based their future donations on their gratitude for and love of Mel. Whether it was $25k or $250k, these folks gave because of the impact Mel had on their lives, and their children’s lives. Period.

When raising money, we had a very complex system that Mel personally developed. He would talk — then lean back. When he leaned back, it was my turn to make the ask.

Let me interject here a critical point, I’m not sure how many of you noticed this, but Mel would often begin humming when he was bored with what someone was saying. So, often, after he leaned back, I would have to speak loudly, so as to drown out the humming!

Let me also add, Mel had a pop culture IQ of zero. Somewhat admirable but downright hilarious in Mel’s case. He told me of a singer from Key West who he met name Jimmy Buffet (as in ‘buffet dinner’). Then the time we met with Lorne Michaels and his wife Alice at the Rainbow Room. Afterwards Mel said, “Well, it’s not likely he’ll donate since he’s a hedge fund manager.” No, Mel, when he left dinner he was headed back to the studio to rehearse Saturday Night Live with Ashton Kuthcher. All of which was lost on Mel.

When Mel left All Kinds of Minds, I decided to join him on his next endeavor. In keeping with his passion for triple entendres, he created Bringing Up Minds. He said, “Get it Mike? Bringing Up Minds! Bringing Up Minds! Bringing Up Minds!” As usual I was about two entendres behind, but eventually, I got it. Mel was a content producing machine! We actually called him the machine! On Mondays I’d ask how his weekend was and he’d have written five chapters or developed a curriculum for third to fifth graders on memory.

Mel was a genius and he was a machine.

Mel passed away and left us with 4 books.

An educational masterpiece
A children’s book
A memoir of his fight, struggle and battle to save his reputation
A work of fiction – I had lunch with him 2 weeks ago and he was beaming with joy, sharing his creative energy with me as to how much fun this book had been
Bambi, we are here for you today, 4 days from now, 4 months from now, 4 years from now. We will all be there for you.

I’ll close with two final thoughts:

Does anyone need a donkey? A mammoth donkey? There’s a special going on – buy one get 5 free.

And finally, something Mel used to always share with me when we’d say goodbye, he got it from Bob and Ray

Write if you get work — and hang by your thumbs

Bill Coleman

Physician, Colleague and Best Friend

I’m Bill Coleman and I met Mel in 1982 as a fellow at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. I came with him to North Carolina in 1985 and we’ve been friends and brothers ever since. I was touched when Mel told me I was his best friend.

Today is a Robert Frost day here today in Boston, a cold New England winter day. Mel loved the poetry of Frost and has many of his first editions. Mel took the road less traveled and that has made the difference in his life and contributions.

I would like to share a few of my memories of Mel.

As a mentor Mel led by example. He was not a hands-on nurturing type. But if you worked hard and were loyal to him, he would work with you and give you some feedback. He gave me opportunities to write articles with him, to speak and become known nationally. Working with Mel was like parallel play. His dedication and enthusiasm however were infectious. It was exciting to work with him. No one could copy Mel with his work with children. That was his specialized area, and he himself developed the concepts and techniques.

Many of his former fellows and followers have gone on to develop their own areas of expertise and make contributions at the national level. Some are here today like Lenny Rappaport, Frank Oberklaid, Paul Dworkin, Neil Schecter, Judy Palfrey, Patricio Vives, Karen Miller and others who may be here.

Mel’s creativity, optimism, insight, compassion and humor affected us all.

Mel was able compartmentalize his many interests and able to focus on each activity with intensity. For instance, he may have received a $20,000 contribution the hour before, but not even mention it in a later conversation about a patient.

Among his many interests were clinical work, training residents and fellows, research and writing, speaking engagements, his gourmet club, animals, musing, time alone, Mozart, single malt Scotch, reading, the Carolina / Virginia Waterfowl and Pheasant Society (which he founded), fundraising for his Institute, spending time with friends and spending time with Bambi.

He loved his wife Bambi most of all, and despite his long hours of work during the week he told me that, “on the weekends I am married to Bambi.”

Mel, Bambi, my wife Julie and I spent many countless happy times together: taking 3-day trips to the annual waterfowl art festival on the Chesapeake Bay, many dinners together, trips on the road for barbecue and bluegrass events and sharing Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at each others homes. We shared many 3-way birthday parties with Steve and Susie Schwarcz in Chapel Hill. Mel and I had hundreds of lunches together, often picking out restaurants where we could people-watch together – one of our favorite activities, watching the hippies and the yuppies.

Before dinner, at our homes or at restaurants, we loved to sit for an hour sipping single malt, talking and telling jokes until our sides hurt. He loved spending time with my son Justin, often at the fireplace at our home. He admired Justin greatly for his work in the Clinton White House. After Justin died, Mel read a Robert Frost poem at his memorial.

Mel and I also spent countless hours in his office, chatting, talking about patients, catching up with each other’s lives – and these spontaneous chats are among my favorite memories.

Mel and I had wonderful times going to meetings of the Carolina / Virginia Waterfowl and Pheasant Society held every four months in small rural towns and attended by farmers, good-ole boys in bib overalls, some wearing Confederate Flag baseball hats, VFW pins on their shirts and most of these folks smoked or chewed tobacco. Despite our outward differences we were all united in our love our birds. We did tailgate sales, chatted about birds and taking care of them. Someone would give a speech on a related topic and we would we eat a barbecue lunch with ice tea – very sweet ice tea. Mel would arrive in his Lands-End shirt, L.L. Bean pants, old work boots covered with manure and a John Deere baseball hat. He was in his element.

Mel often bought geese and pheasants at these meetings, never telling Bambi – when she wasn’t with us. As we drove home in the early evening he joked about how he would sneak the new birds into his pens at midnight when Bambi was asleep and presumably would never know of these new additions. But…Bambi knew Mel, and the next morning she would make a tour of the pens and discover the new birds.

Mel got me started on my own waterfowl collection, now up to about 60 geese and ducks of many varieties. Speaking of ducks, I have a little story I’d to share with you. At many of our meetings I would often introduce Mel or speak ad-lib at a reception. I would remind the audience about Mel’s openness and acceptance to all kinds of kids with all kinds of minds and that he told me that what he wanted engraved on his gravestone were the words, “He Never Owned a Duck.” This invariably drew a big laugh from the crowd.

Mel’s beloved people in his life were Bambi his wife of 42 years, his niece Beth, his deceased sister (Beth’s mother) and his older brother Leonard.

I will end as I started, it’s a Robert Frost day here today, a cold New England winter day. Mel took the road less traveled and that has made all the difference in his life and contributions. Now the road has ended. The woods are silent. Overhead, a lone goose is flying. Its lonely “honk honk” is fading in the sunset. I love you Mel. We all love you Mel. Thank you for 71 years of inspired life. We will miss you. Goodbye Mel.

Jason Mitchell

Nephew of Dr. Mel Levine

The first airplane flight I ever took by myself was Boston to North Carolina to see my Aunt Bambi and Uncle Mel. I was always excited to go to North Carolina because I knew I’d get spoiled by my Aunt and get to hang out with my uncle. We’d feed the animals, ride the tractors and play with the ever growing array of farm toys. There was my best friend Margot, old Rose and the whole family of white German Sheppards that looked like Tari and were happy to be my friends.

Mel would wake me up as the sun was first coming up to go do the farm chores with him and we’d head down to the barn to stock up on feed and supplies. We would spend the next couple hours together replacing food, cleaning out the pens, checking eggs and doing everything else that life on the farm takes. The whole while Mel would tell me about which birds were behaving, which were causing trouble, efforts to keep the foxes out and all the other animal drama going on at Sanctuary Farm. For a nephew, this was at good as it gets.

There was also another side of Mel. The serious time on the trips when Mel and I would talk about how things were going. Like lots of kids I had trouble getting started in school. I had trouble reading and was lumped into a group of students at the bottom of the academic totem pole. Needless to say, this didn’t make me feel good about myself. Mel understood and would talk to me about it. He helped diagnose how I learn, recommended I start going to see his colleague and through this I learned how to read. My grades started to go up as did my social life and most importantly, I started to gain self confidence. By the time I graduated High School and then College I was ready to take on the world. When I went to see Mel about a year ago he agreed and told me in my personal life and in business I would have a lot of success. He told me he was proud and excited for my future. Coming from Mel, my famous uncle and friend, this meant the world to me and always will.

Marc Mitchell

Brother-in-law of Dr. Mel Levine

Few men have the ability to change the world. Mel was one such man. Every child who struggled to read a book, who felt left out of the teacher’s view, who felt alone and couldn’t keep up with her peers in school was helped by Mel Levine. His brilliance was focused and eloquent, defining and redefining new academic and intellectual realms. He showed the world that because we are all different, we all learn differently and we posses “all kinds of minds.”

Mel had three passions: The first was my sister, Bambi whom he met 45 years ago at Children’s hospital. He a resident, she a social worker, they fell in love and have stayed together in Concord, Manila and North Carolina. They raised dogs, cats, mules, donkeys – mammoth donkeys, horses, bulls and of course, birds. They also kept swans who mate for life and swim in their pond together.

His second passion was animals and food. It was hard to distinguish when the cats are Brie, Gruyere and Boursin, the dogs are Chablis, Riesling and Fleurie, the goose was Pate, the mule was Rosé and even the Bull was Jonnie Walker Black. Their house became an animal farm, their garage a rookery, all of it a sanctuary for the rare, the endangered, the ornate, the exotic. Mel never did anything halfway.

His third passion was his work. Up at 4:30am to write the next chapter of his next book while others slept. Then he was off to a clinic where he saw thousands of kids struggling for acceptance by their teachers, peers and parents. He wouldn’t accept that these kids were lazy underperformers but identified the mismatch between a child’s unique learning style and the expectations of his teachers, peers and school systems. He felt empathy for each of his patients who struggle to be accepted in a demanding and unsupportive world. But his impatience led him to go beyond helping kids one on one. He moved on to help children classroom by classroom, city by city, country by country. His books became best sellers in academic libraries and airport bookshops. His lectures were attended by thousands and hundreds of thousands of doctors, teachers, parents, and children. He found himself on television ranging from a PBS documentary to a discussion with Oprah. He could not and would not stop until he had changed the world; until we all recognized each child’s individual ability to make a contribution. He dedicated one of his books to “students who too often have felt the horrible pain of isolation or humiliation – in the hope that his work could help them find happiness and acceptance.” His was the true meaning of “no child left behind.”

But success had its price. Shy and withdrawn by nature, Mel was unprepared for the prominence that came with his work. He was unprepared for the lack of privacy, for the demands of constant travel, for the demands of being a celebrity. And most of all he was unprepared for those who would bring down someone who shows too much brilliance, too much success, too much publicity. He was unprepared for the mean and untruthful accusations of wrong doing, when in his heart he knew he had done no wrong. He was unprepared for a world in which his integrity, his morals, his work was challenged on a world stage in ways that he could not defend.

So we are gathered here today to celebrate a man who gave everything he had to make the world a better place for all kinds of minds. His death is a great loss to us as a family and to the children, parents, and educators whom he touched directly and indirectly. Few of us have the opportunity to change the world. And few who have that opportunity actually succeed. But Mel was different. He had the opportunity and he embraced it in a way that he embraced everything he did: without compromise. As a result, the world is a better place for millions of children around the world who have benefited from his teaching, his writing, his advocacy, his passion. The world is a better place because of Mel Levine.

A Tribute to Mel Levine 2011

I remember that day.
My first on the UNC assessment job.
Paired with a doctor, Mel someone.
I hear he’s famous. Brilliant. Demanding.
Insightful. Caring. High expectations.
But completely unknown to me. I’m nervous.
I study quickly – his books brilliantly written.
Familiarity of ideas, new vocabulary,
Clarity of thought, exciting new connections for learning.
Makes me think, makes me smile.
That first assessment with him is astonishingly eye-opening for me.
His intelligence imparted in immensely clear language.
For twelve years I learn in his presence.
My clinical skills honed and nurtured.
Kids are helped to understand
Strengths, weaknesses, affinities.
Demystified. Successful.
Repeated positive learning supports for hundreds of unique kids and families.
All Kinds of Minds.
But much much more.
A best-selling author. An inspiring teacher.
A lover of the arts. And good food and wine.
His beloved menagerie: sweet giant donkeys, intelligent geese, gorgeous noisy waterfowl. And more.
Then accused of the unthinkable.
Not true. Not right. Too much to bear.
I’m so very sad and sorry.
An amazing mind. An amazing man. A giver of hope and help.
A life ruined by an immoral attorney’s greed.
-Ann Brownlee Hobgood, UNC Center for Development and Learning/All Kinds of Minds, 1996-2009

What role should schools play in nurturing these team-oriented qualities in their students? A good team member as one who deliberately volunteers his strengths to the team most of the time. It follows that students must leave school with a self-assured understanding of their strengths and how they can bring these strengths to work in their professional and personal lives. People who experience repeated success will be the ones who know their strengths and creatively bring those strengths to the teams they join.

The best way to guide students toward finding meaningful work is to develop their strengths and to help them understand how they learn. If schools expect to develop innovative thinkers who can consistently perform in a highly fluid, furiously paced future, then it is imperative that they focus on helping students identify, and practice their areas of strength before they join the workforce.

Tough Choices or Tough Times reports, “Those who are comfortable working in artistic, investigative, highly social, or entrepreneurial environments are more likely to succeed….Schools will have to learn how to simulate these environments in many ways if our students are able to develop the abilities that will be so important to them.”

Increasingly, success in the workplace depends on performance criteria that are more mental and less physical than they used to be. For example, a journalist may be required to come up with ten new ideas for stories, software developers need to arrive at four new concepts for developing interfaces, teams are charged with creating plans to troubleshoot problems. This shift applies across the board in businesses. In the past, an auto mechanic could learn the job by observing the behavior of other people at work. Today, cars run on computers and learning through observation is not as useful as technical training. In an age when most jobs require intuitive decision-making, where more mental activities replace physical ones, traditional instruction and assessment is ineffective (i.e. the teacher demonstrates how to do something and the student who repeats the performance best receives a high grade).

In the 21st century workplace, a new premium is placed on creative problem solving, teamwork and collaboration. Our schools will “bridge” students into the workforce when they begin to focus on developing student strengths and teach students how to bring those strengths to the teams they work on.

In 2011, Jossey-Bass will publish the definitive book for classroom teachers on Differentiated Instruction. Authored by Jenifer Fox and Whitney Hoffman, this book will provide over a 100 lists with tips, suggestions, and ideas for differentiating the K-12 curriculum. In March, 2011, Jenifer Fox’s learning story will appear alongside such people as Arne Duncan in a book called Faces of Learning also published by Wiley. You can pre-order faces of Learning on Amazon.

Wow, suddenly that tag is everywhere. Hallelujah. It seems as though educators have been waiting forever to have our day in the news. Our time has finally come. So why do I feel so anxious?

It’s because the neglected topic of education is at its center the topic of hope and change. Its offer of new meaning, possibility and opportunity touches us all. Now that the media is catching hold of this topic, there is the new possibility that as a nation we will embrace the multitudes of educational problems with multitudes of creative solutions — each customized for the particular need — in the right place, with the right measure, in the right time. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? That would be really smart if all of us out here with our expansive educational backgrounds could seize this opportunity and make the United States stronger on the heels of this issue. That is the change that so many are hoping for now. And it makes me anxious, because there is little evidence that we know how to get this opportunity for change right.

We all know there are many problems out there — from underpaid teachers to dilapidated learning spaces. There are many great needs around education. How can we prevent this moment from churning over our airwaves as a reductionist, partisan debate over the obvious points such as the teachers’ union, charter schools and standardized test scores and instead flow through the national dialogue as an inspiring call — an educational awakening?

Bitter, polarized positions promulgated by evening pundits are at best uneducated. At worst, they thwart opportunities for parents and children to really learn about what is possible in life. That is what is at stake here: a meaningful future for our citizens, the lives of children, the peace of mind of parents, the chance to be a real citizen of the United States and the world. This conversation can ensure these things. These things are now threatened by our placing this issue on the back burner for so long. This is education’s moment and how we handle this moment will define our future.

The Great Education Debate — Let’s Get It Right

A very wise school administrator friend of mine used to note that there were four essential ingredients to giving children a quality education: time, space, love and money. The new debate on schools comes in part because of a massive influx of money into the education system, both through the Recovery and Reinvestment Act and from the continued interests of philanthropists like Bill Gates and now Mark Zuckerberg. There is no question the money is sorely needed. Like many educators, I worry that some of it is following poorly conceived programs based on bad data. However, it signals a shifting of priorities and, for that, all educators should be grateful.

Maybe this will mean we don’t have to scroll down to the bottom of every online newspaper to see stories about one of the things that matters most in life (learning) only to find a headline about an overpaid college president.

I am, however, concerned about the tenor of the debate which has arisen from education’s newfound place in the spotlight. On the sidewalk outside Waiting for Superman, on the campaign trail, in a living room watching “Education Nation” — I keep hearing the same expressions of conditional logic, “Well, we will never be able to fix the schools until we deal with_________________.” You can fill in the blank here: “teachers unions,” “building more charter schools,” “schools of education”, “defacto segregation.” This type of “there is no solution to this until that happens” approach crosses political lines, class lines and race lines.

Conservatives and progressives alike seek to demonize this or that element as “the impediment” to progress. We need to guard against such reductionist thinking and strive to maintain a holistic frame to the debate. Our educational system is enormously complex. We are not Finland or Singapore. There are more than twice as many students attending school in New York City alone as there are in all of Finland. There are 138 languages spoken just in the borough of Queens. There are no easy fixes, no angels and no demons. The conversation should be as nuanced as the lives of the various children who walk through the doors of our nation’s schools every day, intent on learning. Time, space, love and money. We are focused now on the money and certainly; the money can do a great deal to improve the issues of space, upgrading our crumbling infrastructure. As for love, no one who has spent time in schools can doubt that the work teachers do is an act of love. Let us be mindful then of time.

During his campaign, President Obama was smart to recall Reverend King’s invocation of “the fierce urgency of now” to rally followers to the immediate imperative of the nation’s problems. Nowhere is that urgency more evident than in schools. While outside, the debate rages on, inside the clocks are ticking. Together teachers and students are busy solving equations, revising grammar, testing hypotheses in a concerted, crazily choreographed dance to make the most of every day, every hour, every minute, of instructional time. For kids, time means everything. You only get one shot at sixth grade.

Let us keep our focus on the children and what they need right now. Now is the time for a deep, meaningful, thoughtful debate. We need to take the time to get it right. However, if we allow ourselves to be bogged down in reductionist bickering or sidetracked by provisional arguments, we do a shameful disservice to the children. They are in there even now, studying, working, learning, striving, engaged in the fierce urgency of now even as the debate rages on outside.

Although most of the country is still sweltering in the throes of summer heat, young people across the nation are thinking about new school supplies and what to wear on that on that anticipated first day of classes.

A new year means a new start and here are some strengths tips that will make the transition back to school easier for you and your child.

Teachers

Start the year off right by getting to know your child’s teachers. One way to begin to foster positive relationships with teachers is to sit down with your elementary or middle school child and together write your teachers a letter of introduction. In this letter you can include personal information about your family, your child and your hopes for the school year. For example, you may wish to introduce yourself with an anecdote about your most memorable learning experience. Follow this up with a few lines about your greatest hopes for your child’s school year. Introduce your sons or daughters to the teacher by explaining little known facts such as how you chose your child’s name or their favorite books, colors or funniest memory. Do this with your child, so the introduction includes both your voices. By offering little known facts in this manner, the teacher will get to know you and your child in a more a personal way from the start and you will signal that you desire a positive relationship.

Let the teacher know your child’s strengths. List two or three things that your child loves to do and ask the teacher to consider this when interacting with your child. Is your child organized? Talkative? Inquisitive? Every child has strengths they bring to the classroom. When you alert these to the teacher from the get-go, your child and the teacher have a foundation to build on.

Finish your letter by inviting the teacher to write back. Ask the teacher similar questions: what is your favorite book? What was your best learning experience? When did you know you wanted to become a teacher? It is even better if you have the time to have this conversation in person. However, teachers are extremely busy at the start of the year and might welcome the letter instead. Teachers also like to save things about their students and chances are a letter of this kind will become a cherished part of a teacher’s memory folder.

Friends

It is estimated that children spend more than 75% of their time in school focused on social interactions. More often than not, the quality of your child’s friendships will be a significant influence in their success in school. You can’t chose your child’s friends, but there are several things you can do to help. Children function best socially when they are open to diversity in their relationships. The idea of a BFF (best friend forever) is an attractive and alluring idea that is often a highway to unhappiness. Because conflict is an inevitable part of new relationships, those children who limit their relationships by declaring BFFs too soon, or latching onto a clique are often isolated as soon as the conflicts occur.

Before school begins, sit with your child and make a list of their strengths. List everything they feel energized by whether it is a sport, a certain subject or an activity such as collecting coins or stickers. Encourage your child to find a different person who shares each one of the strengths. When young people are associated with others around shared interests, there is more opportunity for uninhibited self-expression. The focus of the relationships becomes less about popularity and more about sharing interests. Remind your child often of the importance of connecting with different kinds of children, even if they don’t consider them friends.

Homework

Start the year off right by preparing the environment for home study. All children do not study in the same way. You can help your child by determining in advance where and when your child will study at home. Some people can study in the bedroom while others are more focused at the dining room table. Some people can concentrate with music, while others prefer silence. Room temperature can play a part in a child’s ability to focus. Is your child someone who likes it cool or warm? Does the study space accommodate this? Don’t assume that the way you study is the same as your child. Each person learns in a different way.

How do you get your child to focus on homework and not on social networking or computer games? Hopefully the homework they bring home will be engaging, active and involve others but you can’t count on that. Making deals or contracts about computer use in relationship to studying or homework can be effective. Rather than disallowing all computer use until the homework is finished, try breaking the study time up between school tasks and free time. Agree that a half hour of study may be followed by a half hour of computer or television. When you make deals and not only demands, young people tend to be more cooperative.

Communication

Listen carefully to your child. Adults have a tendency to want to give advice rather than listen to a child’s experience. If you can do one thing to foster your children’s successes it will be to listen to their experiences. Rather than asking your child what he learned in school that day, ask him to tell you a story of the funniest thing that happened, what surprised him most, or to describe the best interaction with someone. The quality of the questions parents ask their children will determine the level of response. Young people tend to open up when they believe adults are genuinely interested in their experiences. Don’t judge what your child tells you. Instead, follow up with more questions and comments as to what they said. Listen for your child’s uniqueness and individual experience with learning and school. When these interactions become regularly integrated into your daily routine, your child will see you are truly invested in his or her learning rather than simply wanting them to get good grades. Good grades are never as important as true engagement in learning.

The more you seek out what is unique about your child and begin to see these individual qualities as strengths to be shared, the more successful your child will be socially and in school. If you begin the year on a proactive note, showing your child and your child’s teachers that you are part of the learning relationship– then the chances increase for your child’s success in school.

Most everything students need to learn either can or will be able to be learned online. If you doubt this consider the multi-million dollar advertising campaign launched last month by Kaplan Learning promoting their online collegiate learning program. Jeffrey Conlon, President and CEO of Kaplan Higher Education says that “rather than asking students to conform to the traditional model for postsecondary education, we are conforming to them, providing a customized and convenient education experience that helps them meet their goals.” You can bet that if this is the way of the university, that high schools, with their 30% drop-out rates, will be next and Kaplan is only the rudimentary beginning.

The question we must ask our selves as a society is whether or not there is a need for school at the high school level and if so what is the purpose? One skill set we know people will continue to depend on is how to have meaningful relationships. This need will increase as our social lives move online in greater degrees.

We connect to others through an intricate web of relationships, and they need our input to thrive. The energy we apply to our relationships either sustains or drains them. This is true in our most intimate relationships with family and friends as well as our business ones where we work in person as well as with teams of people online we may never meet.

Relationship Strengths are the things you do for and with other people that allow you to perform well and authentically within your relationships. Relationship Strengths are the application of character virtues. Character virtues are qualities such as trustworthiness, forgiveness, loyalty, consideration, thankfulness, flexibility, and dependability. They also include such skills as being a good listener and showing empathy. These characteristics can be developed and used to enrich our relationships.

Meaningful relationships create meaningful lives, yet it is rare that schools actually teach students skills to promote long-term success in their relationships. We tend to ignore direct instruction in such things and work with the unspoken assumption that experience is the best teacher. Children need to learn how to choose friends, act on teams, listen, give and take, forgive and accept. As they socialize on the playground, in cafeterias, online in social networks and through the hallways, children are left to figure much of it out on their own. Adults are usually called in only when there is a problem. Many books–such as Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson’s Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys and Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes–address the social jungles in our schools. They are wise and practical books that describe the negative aspects that are already present in the social worlds of children. Schools of the future should focus on showing children that they have the power not only to protect themselves from negative interaction but also to turn these interactions around.

We throw kids in social situations all the time and hope for the best. And we often regret the results as we see kids endure bullying, loneliness, and hurt feelings throughout their school years and then conflict and misunderstanding on the job. Experience has shown us that most workplace failures are the result of relationship breakdowns rather than inability to master the tasks of the job.

We can teach students to identify Relationship Strengths, and then we can engage them in practicing and reflecting on them. Children engaged in discovering Relationship Strengths will better understand how they can form and refine the contributions they make to others. This practice will allow them to be more effective in both their personal and professional relationships and reap greater rewards from them. As we face the changes and challenges ahead for K-12 education, we would be wise to keep a focus on teaching Relationship Strengths because they are the one things that will be needed both on and off line, and in almost every situation imaginable. What do you think schools should teach young people?

As schools dig through the mounds of paperwork that accompanies their efforts to “race to the top,” we should be reminded of what the top is. The top of the human experience was identified by Abraham Maslow as the need for Self-Actualization.

Maslow describes self-actualization as a person’s need to be and do that which the person was “born to do.” An athlete must engage in athletic pursuits, an innovator must develop ideas, a comedian must make people laugh. These needs make themselves felt in signs of constant yearning. These needs are what many people today call strengths. The person feels lacking something when they are not engaged in pursuit of their strengths. They feel a need for self-actualization.

Standardized measures of achievement do not promote this important goal. Unless there is a study that demonstrates that test scores in other countries produce self-actualized, happy, citizens, than joining a race to get to that particular top is simply the wrong race.

Our schools today will get to the top as soon as we are able to teach children to discover their vocation in life, their calling, their destiny. When our schools are able to do this, we will be teaching young people to make a lasting impact on the world.

President Obama is right. Once children know their own strengths and talents and understand how to put them to use, they can create their futures. Schools are very good at teaching children about their weaknesses and helping them see what they cannot do and what they do not know. We are far less skilled at teaching students to understand what they love to do. This should be the nation’s educational charge.

President Obama said, “ We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.” Here, he was affirming what we know to be true, but what we deter when we try to standardize every child. The reality that the President understands is that every child is unique. All children have strengths and talents inside them, and yet there is the possibility that their uniqueness will go unrecognized.

Students today need to discover and develop their strengths in order to avoid a life of weakness. What does weakness look like? We stare weakness in the face every day and often have no idea what we are looking at or where it comes from. Weakness is a feeling of depletion, a constant draining of energy. There are countless ways that people experience and express feelings of weakness and depletion. It can manifest as the perpetual sense that tomorrow, or next year, things are going to get better—but they don’t.

Weak lives begin in childhood, yet often the damage done then is subtle and doesn’t show up until later in life, when many factors and events merge together to create feelings of uncertainty, a lack of creativity, a loss of direction, and an insatiable hunger for something more. Weak lives can cause people to make poor and hasty marriage choices or rush into careers they have no taste for, or blame others when things do not go well. Weakness is a trap, but it can be avoided. The opposite of weakness is strength. Strong lives are those that are marked by a sense of purpose, connectedness, resilience, and fulfillment. So how can we foster these traits in our children?

Children are not that different from adults. They want clear and realistic goals, expectations for their futures, and systems that will allow them to arrive at those goals feeling fulfilled and strong. They also want a voice in setting those goals and expectations for their futures. When children go to a particular college, take up a new hobby, or follow a career path just to please someone else, they end up in positions of weakness, not strength. No matter what their personalities or characteristics, children will not develop their true talents or discover their real strengths without a process of encouragement, nurturing, and sustained approval. Additionally, students need programming to directly help them figure out their talents.

Most parents share a growing anxiety about the schooling of their children. That is because the American educational system today is an anxiety-producing machine. The alarming message it presents is that there is not enough to go around for everyone to be successful. However, when children are encouraged to discover their uniqueness, there is suddenly enough to go around. They can begin to envision a future where they play a special role.

President Obama is correct; children’s strengths are not for us to choose. Each person must understand their own talent and take responsibility for them. However, there is something we can do: we can provide school cultures, families and strengths-based programming to teach them in practical, step-by-step ways to discover their strengths and talents. This is called the Strengths Movement and our President just affirmed that now is the time for such a movement in our schools.

As we advance in the world, our children will need to be prepared to enter a workforce that is entirely different from the one we are in today. Discovering and developing strengths in children will create a society that will allow everyone to benefit and flourish. Strengths-building programs are more than just another innovation in schools; they will be one of the answers to the problems of the future of education.

There are vast reserves of untapped potential residing in our children. Their strengths are as various as the children themselves. When we acknowledge that and truly know our children, everyone wins. Moreover, we will ensure our competitive edge as a nation. A national strengths awakening will take a revolution. In the long run, it is what will save us all. It is a big job, and it requires everyone’s strength. The time is now.