Responding to Five Trends in Youth Morality (Part 1)
Follow @TimElmore If you enjoy keeping up with statistics on today's students, you'll be encouraged to know there are signs of improvement in their behavior. I recently blogged about some of the downward teen trends in cigarette smoking, drinking while driving, television viewing and even sex. Additionally, youth are drinking more water and fewer soft drinks. This is good news. However, one increasing
Why Talented Kids Become Troubled Adults
Follow @TimElmore Why do some smart, intelligent kids grow up to be apathetic, dull adults? Why do we hear of college football stars fumbling in life when they go pro? It is heartbreaking to see this happen especially to students and young adults we know personally. The next thoughts that follow are: Why did this happen and what caused them to
Bringing Out the Best in Your Kids
Follow @TimElmore This is the topic that resides in the minds of every effective teacher or parent. How do we appropriately influence our kids? How do we transform our kids, our classes, and our homes into places of consistent peace? How do we give up our ambition for control and allow them to endure some hardship so they can grow up
Let’s Never Forget the Real Purpose of Education
Follow @TimElmore Recently, one of our readers, Kara Bohannon, wrote in and mentioned that the blog post that day reminded her of her favorite quote and why she became a teacher: "Dear Teacher, I am the survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and
The Secret That Increases Effort 40%
Follow @TimElmore Several years ago, I met with a university student, pondering how to provide some difficult feedback on a project he’d just finished. We’ll call him Zach. Zach was a smart young man, but, like so many from Generation iY (the youngest Millennials), he was fragile when it came to taking constructive criticism. Zach is among the millions of kids
One Surprising Secret to Engaged Students
Follow @TimElmore Yesterday, I blogged about schools in Finland and how they seem to be able to engage their students so much better than we do in the U.S. The students appear to enjoy the learning process, often do work with little or no adult supervision, and score higher in comparable tests in other nations. Teachers say the students are: Engaged Happy Curious Genuinely learning Regardless
Lessons We Can Learn From Finland Educators
Follow @TimElmore Over the last four years, I’ve written several articles on the Finnish education system. Finland students consistently score high when compared to other industrialized nations in most subjects. All of this, as American schools continue to lag behind, globally. I’ll be the first to admit: There’s no simple solution. But what is Finland doing differently? What is their secret? Sophia Faridi
Five Words Every Child Needs to Hear
Follow @TimElmore I spoke to a Division 1, NCAA football player who dropped off the radar screen his senior year. All four years, he’d been a great student (3.8 GPA) and a well-respected starting player for his school. But after December (translate that — when his final season ended) he was missing in action. He didn’t show up to class, his
Messages We Must Send Millennials About Life After College
Follow @TimElmore I meet more and more students and parents who are stressed out about life after graduation. Some moms feel angst about the job prospects for their freshman son or daughter (even if graduation isn’t for three more years). It’s true, however, that one of the challenges in higher education is that they don’t always prepare students for the realities
The First Soft Skill to Develop in Students
Follow @TimElmore Frequently, I meet young job candidates who are freshly graduated from college and have never been taught how to make a good first impression. Or if they have, the adult who taught them did a miserable job. In our work with employers who hire recent graduates, we hear from them that their job interviews with teens and twenty-somethings go south
Providing Direction to Young Men: Five Steps To Take
Follow @TimElmore This week, I’ve written about young males and the fact that they are falling behind in society by almost every measure—education, work, mental health, and a life without addictive behaviors. Certainly not every young man is in this situation, but too many are disengaging and failing to keep up with females. As a result, they’re not growing up to
One Antidote to Male Disillusionment
Yesterday, I blogged about LeBron James, who, at 30 years old, provides a vivid case study of a male moving through four stages of manhood in a healthy way. Today, I feel the need to furnish a challenge to those of you who work with young males, whether it’s on a school campus, on a team, or as an employer
LeBron James: The Four Stages of Manhood
Follow @TimElmore If you watched any sports network this last weekend, you heard the news: LeBron James ended his free agent status and chose to leave the Miami Heat (after two NBA championships), returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers where he began his career. In a quote, he said: “Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from
A New Parental Report Card
Follow @TimElmore I had just finished speaking to parents at a PTSA event held at a public high school. As I conversed with many engaged parents afterward, one looming emotion filled their questions: I hope I haven’t made so many mistakes that I’ve ruined my kids. The fact is, millions of moms and dads are very engaged in the parenting process. However,
One Simple Truth of Leadership
Follow @TimElmore Because we, at Growing Leaders, believe in the power of using images to communicate truth—we plan to post a cartoon once in a while with a point to it. As far as I'm concerned, leaders must keep a sense of humor as we work with our teams and certainly as we work with students. It's the only way we're
Teen Trends: There’s Good News and Bad News
Follow @TimElmore The latest report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention just came out. It reveals the results of their regular "Youth Risk Behavior Survey" and contains both good news and bad news about the lifestyle of today's teenagers. Here are some highlights and thoughts on what we can do to develop healthy young leaders in this emerging generation of kids. Good
Ambition Comes From Incentive
Follow @TimElmore I spoke to a high school faculty member who works with at-risk students in lower socio-economic conditions. These students have been booted from a traditional public high school, and her school is their last chance to graduate as a teen. What moved me in our conversation was her passion to teach them and offer wisdom that will help them later
Risk and Rescue: What’s Harming Our Students Today
Follow @TimElmore Recently, I was asked at a parent conference why more parents today are stepping in and rescuing their children—sometimes adult-children—than in past generations. My reply was short and sweet: because more children are asking. Let’s be honest: we’ve seen a shift in both parents and kids’ expectations today. Adults seem to believe they are supposed to step in and “bail
A Counter-Intuitive Test to Guide Us as We Prepare Students
Follow @TimElmore A new study was just released that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. For years, parents and faculty have worked to create safer, cleaner environments for the children they’re teaching. We’ve attempted to remove hindrances to their growth and all roadblocks to their self-esteem. And may I say, those are noble goals. Our problem is: We may just have
Celebrating Independence Day with Perspective
Today, we celebrate America’s birthday. It was July 4th, 1776, that our nation’s founders signed the “Declaration of Independence” and launched a revolution that didn’t end for years. Our new identity was declared…but not realized until much later. It was a grand and risky experiment. Let me remind you of something. Historically, a nation’s natural state is most often that of tyranny,
Robert Morris University Introduces Video Gaming Scholarships
I just read a fascinating story about Robert Morris University. When Kurt Melcher was surfing the Internet one day, he searched for an old favorite computer game he played in his young years, Starcraft. He was surprised to find how many were both competing and collaborating while playing the game. And then, an idea hit him. "I was shocked at the
The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom
Follow @TimElmore Recently, I got permission from Josh Waldron, a high school teacher in Virginia, to repost a blog he wrote earlier this month. It’s called, “The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom”, and I offer it below. It’s an honest cry for reform from a practitioner: [Please note: Today has a longer post than usual.] “As the title of this post suggests,
The Cost of Bad Teachers
DISCLAIMER: Please know this post was intended to share a single leadership principle. I am concerned by some comments that I miscommunicated my point. It is simply that we need criteria in any industry that allows leaders to measure effectiveness and that every business—including education—must allow for team members that don’t perform to be dismissed. We do not agree with how