School Years

My sister called me first, choking up as she relayed the details and raced back to her job at the high school from an off-site meeting. The words she uttered stopped me cold: there was a school shooting in...

Initially, her response infuriated me inside. Relax? You’ve been handed an opportunity many children could only dream of, and you want to relax? Don’t you owe it to your teacher and school to represent them? Not to mention you’ve been given a gift, and we should share our gifts with the world. When I was growing up and an opportunity like this arose, saying no was not an option.

I am a mom of five kids, aged 8-14. And I feel fortunate to live in a school choice state, where we can decide what is best for each child. Three of my children attend the nearby elementary school....

Today is Read Across America Day.  But as a mama with the heart of a teacher, a passion for education ingrained deep within my soul, Read Across America Day is every day.   Read... It's Worth It I’m fully aware that...

The struggle to find child care is a constant battle and can cause major stress. It's a challenge to balance a convenient location, the number of facilities you have to pick up and drop off from (why do so few facilities take infants?!?) and the cost of care for multiple children.

Some child care centers, like the one my kids attend, offer extra curricular classes like dance or martial arts where they bring the instructor into the center to conduct class during the day. I was more than willing to pay extra for this class for the luxury of being able to skip the wait-list for a Saturday morning dance class we could otherwise attend and I not having to drive there. I wish there were more opportunities like that.

Sometimes however, the main consideration is the hourly rate of childcare versus the hourly rate for the parents. Depending on your situation, sometimes the math just doesn't justify one alternative over the other. Fortunately, there are programs to help when ends don't meet.

As the employer, you actually need to budget for quite a bit more than the hourly rate. When you hire a nanny as a household employee, you have to pay Social Security and Medicare for that person, as well as unemployment insurance and often payroll services

I went to Columbine High School. Remember that name? It was the site of one of deadliest school shootings in American history. Two students killed 13 classmates, then committed suicide in the library. Most people remember where they were when the...

Out of everything I do during a single day, there’s one thing that is my absolute favorite: reading. I’ve been reading since age five and have read thousands of books by now. I was so excited to begin reading to my...