This month’s Employee Spotlight features PSG’s VP of Sales & Business Development I have seen many changes in the industry since entering educational publishing in 1979. After teaching elementary school for five years—I was the big guy with the long hair and curly beard towering over the first and second graders—I moved to educational publishing, a typical career change for many teachers. I’ve [...]
For hundreds of years, students in the United States who didn’t quite fit the mold often received no education at all or were even institutionalized. Even after the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA or EHA) in the 1970s, many youngsters slipped through the cracks and did not receive an adequate education. Overhauls in recent years, most notably No Child Left Behind [...]
Here in America, there’s a large amount of pressure to decide at an early age what you want to do for the rest of your life. But how can people make such important decisions without any experience to inform them? Further, where can anyone get this sort of experience? Personally, I found job shadowing at PSG to be an excellent opportunity to see [...]
I have a bad habit of multitasking. I watch TV while I study, listen to music while I study, and hang out with friends while I study. Doing two things at once makes me feel as if I’m making better use of my time. But, interestingly, researchers have discovered that humans can’t actually multitask. What we call multitasking is really just quickly switching [...]
With the push to expand focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in curricula, there have been worries that the arts will be left behind. The notion of adding the arts into STEM has been floated around, with many educators considering “STEAM” over STEM. In 2012, John Maeda, former president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), announced his initiative, which [...]
I’ve never considered LinkedIn to be within the wide spectrum of social media. It has a visible sense of purpose and credibility that other forms of social media, like Facebook and Instagram, lack. However, as a means for people to publicly interact, LinkedIn works using the same format as these other outlets by allowing users to follow/friend/connect with other users—unless their profile is [...]
I speak one language fluently, and that’s English. I can neither speak nor understand Hebrew, although I can read it. I recognize the occasional Latin vocabulary word, can hold a disjointed conversation in Spanish and know how to communicate the basics in American Sign Language, falling back on finger spelling if necessary. However, I often think how great it would be if I could [...]
Education was very important in my house when I was growing up. My mother went to college and was a first–grade teacher. My father went into the US Navy and then became a machinist, eventually owning his own machine shop. Nevertheless, even though one parent was a college graduate and one was not, there was never any question in our household that my [...]
“Books. People never really stop loving books,” said the Doctor in BBC’s hit show Doctor Who. In this episode, the Doctor and his companion travel hundreds of years into the future to the universe’s biggest library and find that, even in the future, we still love reading and sharing knowledge and ideas. And those people who love libraries and love reading also love [...]
When I think of The Catcher in the Rye, I think of its iconic cover: the yellow font overlaying the merry-go-round horse, the way the red drapes itself over the white background and seems to continue off the page. Similarly, when I think of The Great Gatsby, a face sculpted out of a dark blue sky comes to mind, fireworks lighting up the bottom of [...]