A brand new school year has begun! A clean slate for both students and teachers. What will you write on this year's slate? Will it be a success story filled with laughter and learning? Sometimes we start out the year with high hopes and energy only to experience an emotional crash by Thanksgiving when we are indeed thankful to have a four-day weekend away from our students.

In much of the country, the Response to the Intervention part of Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been interpreted into a tiered approach to education. In most cases, Tier 1 is the typical education program, Tier 2 is a specialized program for students who need more intensive instruction, and Tier 3 is usually interpreted as special education. Though the addition of Tier 2 is a good step in the right direction, it does not necessarily catch all of the students who are having difficulties in school.

Often trainers are bombarded with acronyms and jargon related to the material they have to train. How can they help their participants become aware of the meaning of them in an enjoyable way? Here are a couple of Jargon Buster activities to try:

Hey Big Spender is an activity to help fourth graders solve addition and subtraction problems using decimals and currency. Balloons or Bust is an opener for eighth graders that look at the special properties of molecules forming polymers.

Click on the title of each workshop for more information.

The positive feedback and conversations I have with participants make presenting SCORE and RCTS one of the most gratifying experiences of my career as an educator and trainer. I only wish I had known about Bob Pike when I was teaching middle and high school! You can't miss when you've got a great product that's as engaging, informative, and useful as our Bob Pike workshops obviously are!

A seminar participant in our Bob Pike Group Boot Camp told me recently that a manager had asked her to do some training on time management. "I've got people showing up late for work, and I thought they could use some training in time management," he said. The absurdity of this statement was not lost on the other trainers in the room - we all agreed that all too often, managers look to training to "fix" all their performance problems, when training is not the right answer. This article is a preview in an occasional series of articles on coaching. From Bob Pike's Performance Solutions Cube, we teach that there are at least five other solutions to performance problems that should precede training. And one of those solutions is coaching. Here are ten tips for Coaching Excellence, taken from our Coaching for Success program.

If you believe that an organization's success is as much the will of the people as it is the will of the leader, then it is critical that we as leaders do whatever it takes to inspire success in others. Let us remind you of the devastating statistics that plague most businesses today. When you look at the data on employee engagement, satisfaction, loyalty and commitment, it's shocking! The majority of people today feel stuck, stalled, bored, frustrated and some are even actively disengaged when they come to work. Bottom line: there are far too many Dead People Working™ today. DPW are physically present but psychologically, emotionally and intellectually checked-out at work. Funny? Perhaps. Problem, YES! Dead People Working™ will not provide our companies with the kind of intellectual and emotional capital that we need to get ahead and stay ahead. It is time to think and act like a Sherpa.

Tech Tool: Facebook Applications for Learning There are many ways to use Facebook for both learning and productivity, and a number of apps that can help you do so. Among the learning world, the current mantra is "use social networking tools to improve performance." Consider Facebook. Indeed, there are countless other articles touting the benefits of Facebook and detailing why we should be using it in our various learning solutions. However, concrete advice on how to use Facebook has proven difficult to find. Check out these applications that represent some of the ideal tools Facebook has to offer online learning.

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