Maybe we need more "Childish thinking"

Here is a 11 year old girl speaking on creativity, bold ideas, trust and "Childish Thinking."

I love what is said here about adults trusting students. There is something scary about handing the keys to the classroom over to our students, but why not give up control. Let the students drive. Sure you may end up in a place you never intended, but how cool would it be to open up to a world you never imagined. Watch this presentation, get inspired by this brilliant mind and see that she is just as brilliant as the kids I see every day. The difference, our school system doesn't trust our kids.

So think bold, be creative, love the unknown, hand over the keys, you might just be inspired......

The way progress happens is that new eras improve on generations that came before you.

Interesting Research on Motivation and Sleep

Ashley Merryman’s and Po Bronson's book called NutureShock has interesting information on parenting and the effects of praise and rewards on kids. I haven't read the book yet. It's on my list now (Thank you Andrew!) but here is one author's presentation at Poptech! (www.poptech.org)

Some great insights from her presentation:

- Kids praised for effort tried harder problems.

- One sentence of praise different changed the outcome of performance and improvement.

- 85% of parent believe its important to praise intelligence.

- Self esteem is the most important part of the persons being....oops, maybe it isn't!

- Realizing that boosting self esteem may not have any effect on intelligence, in fact it may hurt!

- "When you tell someone you are innately great there is no need to improve."

- Missing the kick, it's not about self esteem it's no longer about trust it's more about the effort.

SLEEP STUDY!

- 60% of high school students suffer from sleep depravation.

- 5% of high school seniors get 8 hours of sleep, they should have about 9 hours of sleep.

- 6th graders who lost an average 30 minutes of sleep a night scored cognitively like 4th graders.

- A students get 15 minutes more sleep than B students, who get 15 more minutes of sleep than C students.

- Sleep affects college students too!

- Teen rebellion and moodiness could all be sleep depravation!

- Sleep is a health issue.

Sometime improving kids lives and making life easier, maybe getting a little more sleep could be the answer.

If you like this information check out Caroline Dweck's book mindset: http://mindsetonline.com/

Also check out information on sleep depravation and it's effect on our students: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_F._Dinges