By: Tim Elmore     Brianna Rivera is an articulate high school student who wrapped her arms around a challenge that teens face today. Finding herself thrust back into society after quarantine, she said, “That’s a lot for me, after having been in isolation for 18 months. You want to get back into the swing of things, but there’s something kind of holding you

By: Tim Elmore     Last week, I posted a ritual I perform at the end of each year. A second ritual I do is a natural follow-up. It enables me to enter a new year on purpose.  After I invest a morning reviewing the previous year, I spend the second half of the day previewing the new year. I think, write, and reflect

By: Tim Elmore     For 36 years now, I have performed a ritual at the end of December. It’s the way I wrap up each year and gain some perspective on my life. I take half of a day to get completely alone. Usually, I get away from the house and find a quiet place to reflect. During this time, I think, pray, and

By: Tim Elmore       Several years ago, in a remote area of a country in Africa, local villagers discovered that some young elephants wandered from the herd. They were lost for some time. When those pachyderms were returned to their families, they were no longer babies. They’d changed over time. Researchers, called Mahouts, made some fascinating observations as they watched these stray

By: Tim Elmore       Jana Davidson teaches seventh-grade science and tenth-grade biology. Every day, she observes students entering her classroom feeling stressed out. Many of them feel overwhelmed. Anxiety has been normalized thanks to social media and a pandemic. When I asked Ms. Davidson how she helps her students manage their stress, she told me she assumes the best way is to take

By:  Andrew McPeak         A few months ago, I downloaded TikTok. Within minutes, I understood what all the fuss was about. I was laughing. I was surprised. I was angered. I was awed. Not only did I experience a wide range of emotions, but I also noticed that each emotional experience was short, beckoning me to keep swiping to the next video. “After

Generation Z, the youngest population social scientists are studying today, was born about the same time as Reality TV. You might remember the precursor to popular reality television was a 1998 Jim Carrey movie called, “The Truman Show.” It was a film about an unsuspecting man living in an average U.S. town whose entire life was monitored by television viewers,

By: Tim Elmore Anyone who cares about young people should see the data just revealed on Instagram and its parent company Facebook. Millions of teenagers, mostly girls, have spiraled into symptoms of depression and despair after spending time on these platforms. The data seems to indicate the connection between depression and Instagram is not just a coincidence. One teen, Anastasia Vlasova,

By: Tim Elmore I remember feeling tangible peer pressure in high school. Friends pushed me to smoke cigarettes and marijuana, drink beer, and be sexually active. This was not uncommon in the 1970s. Culture was morphing from traditional to rebellious as baby boomers and Gen Xers pushed boundaries and listened to their peers over their parents.  While I dabbled a bit in

By: Tim Elmore Bob Iger replaced Michael Eisner as the Chief Executive Officer of Walt Disney Enterprises in 2005. These two leaders are polar opposites and a picture of a leadership paradox. Over the years, Eisner grew increasingly isolated and overbearing, which ultimately led to a shareholder revolt and his own dismissal. His final years, many say, were marked by self-destructive

By: Tim Elmore There is a new term describing the challenge many organizations face today. It’s called absentee leadership. A leader or manager may be physically present but psychologically and emotionally absent. Why? They’re just not up to the challenge. A 2015 survey of 1,000 working adults showed that eight of the top nine complaints about leaders concerned behaviors that resembled absentee leadership. Employees were

By: Tim Elmore I had an epiphany a few years ago while sitting in the green room right before I spoke at a conference.  There were sixteen CEOs in the room, and I decided to turn the moment into an instant focus group. I asked these men and women if they believed that leading a team today is harder than it

By: Andrew McPeak Just a few weeks ago, I stood in front of almost a hundred teachers — the faculty of a mid-size high school in North Dakota. Together, we discussed methods for connecting with and leading students, and the changes that leadership in the 21st-century classroom requires. We talked about everything from student engagement, to student ownership, and even experiential

You may remember the tragic story from last April. A sixth-grader found his dad's 9mm handgun, loaded it with a magazine of bullets, and walked onto his campus at Plymouth Middle School outside of Minneapolis. He positioned himself in a hallway, shot the gun toward the ceiling, and watched fellow students run and scream in terror. His goal was to

By: Tim Elmore Building off of an earlier patent by John Duff, General Mills’ created its first Betty Crocker instant cake mix in 1947. Since the Great Depression and World War 2 were over, people were spending money again. Folks at Betty Crocker assumed that because they made baking easier sales would take off. But they didn’t. Executives were baffled that

By: Tim Elmore The postponed Olympics Games held in Tokyo are now history. As always, there were highs and lows for competing athletes, but I’d like to focus on some insights we gain as we watched this year’s young athletes perform.  The major difference for me in these Olympic games was the topic of mental health.  Among the biggest stories from Tokyo was

I met with fourteen C-suite-level leaders recently. They were from different industries, different age groups, different genders; but they all had something in common. When I asked them if leading people was more difficult today than it was when they first became leaders, each responded affirmatively.  "Absolutely!" said one. "One hundred and ten percent!" replied another. The answer was a no-brainer. This sent

The news headlines were dramatic: Schools debate on whether to shut down or to stay open; students struggle with quarantine boundaries; children and teachers are expected to wear masks as infections continue to soar. Sound familiar? Did you know those headlines were from the Spanish Flu in 1918? Much like what happened last year, most U.S. schools closed during the 1918 influenza

Two senior leaders of university clubs spoke to me in August about the challenges they faced with their organizations. Both were recruiting prospective members from the students on campus, but both were disappointed. They couldn't seem to keep committed members. The students either left because they had other options, or they just lost interest in the club.  I believe the problem

By: Tim Elmore In 1990, I began using a metaphor to teach students how they could earn the right to influence others. This metaphor has now become common language among educators: a thermometer and a thermostat. I found that while students are both simultaneously, they also tend to be more of one than the other depending on their environment: Thermometers simply

By: Tim Elmore Did you hear how Columbia University handled their graduation ceremonies? No, I’m not referring to mask-wearing or social distancing. I’m talking about the administration’s decision to host six separate graduation ceremonies, based on the graduates’ income level, race, ethnicities, and gender preferences. My concern has nothing to do with the pandemic, as each ceremony was a virtual one.

By: Tim Elmore I recently spoke at the 2021 Cobb County Student Leadership Academy awards event. Students were present, often with their parents and teachers, to learn about leadership and be recognized for what they’d achieved beyond academics this year. Pope High School was one school that was highlighted. Student leaders at Pope had recognized how much their classmates struggled with school during

By: Tim Elmore One decade ago, I began to hypothesize about a trait I observed in high school and college students. I continued to be baffled by how much they knew yet how little they’d experienced. I researched the reasons for this and came up with a term, which became the title of a book: artificial maturity.  Artificial maturity may sound like

By: Nautrie Jones 100% Virtual. 100% In-Person Learning. Hybrid. Synchronous. Asynchronous. If you are in any field relating to education, it is likely that both you and your students are quite familiar with one or all of these terms. This past year has been a challenge for us all. Students have been pushed and pulled in many different ways. Teachers have been stretched and stressed, and,

By: Tim Elmore It’s been over a year since students all over the world were sent home from school and instantly had to learn how to learn from home. Teachers tried to maintain academic standards as students transformed their bedrooms, dens, and kitchens into classrooms to try to meet those standards.  Some call these middle school and high school students quaranteens.  They’re now

By: Andrew McPeak A few months back I had the pleasure of teaching three sessions at a district-wide conference for K-12 teachers. As a part of my presentation, I made a point to talk about why building Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) skills during the pandemic was one of the most important challenges we could take on as educators. After all,

By: Tim Elmore Some are now calling Generation Z by a new name. They are known by many as Generation Covid, or Generation C. I have heard others call them, the Coronials. I released a book last fall called The Pandemic Population. They are the young people who will forever be marked as those who came of age during a pandemic.

By: Tim Elmore Gretchen Goldman is a scientist, a mom, and the research director at a nonprofit in Washington. Her job involves conducting television interviews and briefing lawmakers. Now, however, she is doing this work from home, near her young children and a chaotic environment. On the screen, Gretchen looks poised and well dressed, but she admits that if her laptop

By: Tim Elmore One fascinating study on the subject of compassion was conducted at Princeton Seminary in 1973. Graduate students who studied theology were asked if they were entering the ministry because of innate reasons (i.e., they cared for people) or for circumstantial reasons (i.e., their father was a minister). After the survey, each respondent was told to offer a Bible

By: Tim Elmore Last fall, a group of high school freshmen sat in health class discussing personal hygiene. The subject was already deeply personal, but it became awkward when Erica failed to show social awareness. When Jacob was unable to hear a classmate’s comments, Erica reprimanded him, saying, “What are you, deaf? Pay attention!”  Erica had no idea that Jacob was, indeed,

By: Tim Elmore This may not surprise you, but since the pandemic started, kids' screen time has doubled. Qustodio, a monitoring device that tracks screen time reports that kids' screen time has increased 100 percent since the COVID-19 outbreak started. One dad noted that his son played video games 40 hours in a single week. That’s a full-time job. Check out

By: Tim Elmore I remember it like it was yesterday. I met with three high school students following a major brawl after a Friday night football game. A group of students from each high school began trash-talking each other, and the clash got heated. Within moments, words were exchanged for fists. The fight required security guards, teachers, and parents to break

By: Tim Elmore I never thought I’d see this day. The government of the Solomon Islands, a nation of hundreds of individual islands in the South Pacific, is planning to ban the entire Facebook platform, ABC Australia reports. Yep — this is no joke. Facebook will be banned from an entire country. Why? you ask. Incivility. Bad behavior online. Cyber-bullying. Defamation of character.

By: Tim Elmore For years, younger generations have been the brunt of jokes by older generations who felt they were immature, lazy slackers who moved back home after college. A Twitter hashtag called, #HowToConfuseAMillennial even went viral, as social media posts often do. Some samples are: Show them a phone book. #HowToConfuseAMillennial Turn off their autocorrect. #HowToConfuseAMillennial Hand them a job