I’m all about celebrating milestones. Births, deaths, birthdays, holidays–I’m your gal. However, there is a trend in our schools that disturbs me: the graduation ceremony.
Twelfth grade, college and even 8th grade Continuations should be lauded affairs, a recognition of many years of hard work. I have fond memories of my senior year revelries as my [...]

Human skin – it’s a funny thing. Of the many purposeful uses and all that the soft tissue must encounter each day, one might think we’d come equipped with full armor. But, no, we burn, bruise, puncture, bleed…wrinkle, freckle, splotch and sag.
As moms, the attention we give to protecting this fragile attribute of our children [...]

Discipline policies in Denver Public Schools have been praised as models for other districts across the country, but in a couple of recent cases, relatives of students have questioned whether the softer approach is protecting their kids.
In one, parents at Denver’s Edison Elementary went to police themselves to report a fourth-grader who they said threatened [...]

I have six sons. Circumcision has come up in conversation more than once.
I’m not going to share with the world if they are circumcised. The only thing I will say about the condition of their bodies is they are not all the same, nor do they need to be.
Foreskins are not Christmas sweaters. [...]

For JD Elvrum and his family, public school had too many strikes against it.
“His first three years of school were marred by teachers’ strikes,” in his Pennsylvania school district, said JD’s mom, Tillie Elvrum. Add to that a slight learning disability and many moves as a result of his father’s career — in the Air [...]

For the last decade or so, my family pretty much poured its heart and soul into my company. Until recently, I co-owned a graphic design and multimedia development firm that built health education research web sites, primarily for the government. They were large-scale, complicated – and as you can imagine – money from the government [...]

Since I’ve become a parent, I haven’t worried about whether or not bullying might happen…I’ve been flat-out waiting for it.  Because, frankly, bullying is nothing new.  We’ve all been through it at one time or another and while it isn’t fun, it’s reality.  But this type of bullying came in a way that I wasn’t [...]

We have little doubt that 2008 legislation detailing how Colorado schools could gain autonomy and create innovative programs was meant to cover new schools.
Yet, that’s what the Denver teachers union seems to be arguing, as it has objected to so-called innovation status for three new public schools in northeast Denver.
The irony is that the union [...]

The greatest thing about love – it’s an innate gift – it lives inside of us and we can, and should, give it freely to others. Appropriate to the relationship and situation, love can do amazing, life changing things. A hug, a kiss, a pat on the back, a helping hand, a kind smile, a word of encouragement, [...]

The moms and dads of Skinner Middle School — taxpaying types with steady jobs and sensible family cars — don’t look like a bunch of radicals.
But after meeting quietly for months to brainstorm, then to crunch numbers and compile data, they went public with demands that turn a decade of school-choice/school-reform thinking on its head.
Their [...]