I want to understand what my clients need to do in order to access health insurance for academic language therapy for dyslexia, so I'm testing it on my own insurance plan. It has not gone well. Let me preface this by saying that I believe my particular insurer - UnitedHealthcare - is not a great... Continue Reading →
I wrote an email to a luminary in the science of reading yesterday. He's a big shot - he's led school systems and government panels on reading and advised more than one president. He's got lots of letters after his name. He writes a blog where he reviews the literature and discusses what it means... Continue Reading →
Someone asked a job/career board earlier this week "what graduate degree should I get after being laid off?" A perfectly fine question, but it struck me as backwards. The question came from a view of themselves as lacking, as deficient. This person wasn't asking what they might do with the skills they had, or how... Continue Reading →
Rowing has a term for a person in their first year of competition - a novice. I was 14 in my novice year, exhilarated and subsumed, like anyone newly in love. Everything about rowing interested me, from the intricacies of the stroke to the way we put the riggers on the boat. I was a... Continue Reading →
I do hate that word. It has wormed its way into work-speak and we now pivot everything, from lunch plans to strategies to careers. The thing is, its actually a pretty evocative and accurate description of a thing many of us are doing right about now. Including me. I've loved public health since I went... Continue Reading →
When my son was small and interested in science after binge-watching Sid the Science Kid we enrolled him in a study of behavior and the brain. You know, for fun. He spent a couple of mornings at the University of Maryland playing with graduate students, including taking the famous Marshmallow Test. (I'm sure he ate... Continue Reading →
In middle school I had a Trapper Keeper binder, black with a sparkly unicorn on the front. I loved that thing. In my mind I can still see the unicorn among the clouds, feel the smooth vinyl cover and hear the vvrrrpp of the Velcro flap opening. Funny, that, because I don't think I actually... Continue Reading →
What is up with our fixation on finding a silver lining? Every dark place must have one, an up-lifting promise that everything will be okay, that things are not so bad as they seem. We are a people who must make lemonade out of lemons, damn it. Why am I thinking about dark places and... Continue Reading →
My son's shoes are now bigger than mine, and I sometimes grab his hoodie for a quick dash outside. I am no longer the mother of a small child. When I see pregnant colleagues in the hallway I bite my tongue so the stories of my own pregnancy and time with my baby don't spill... Continue Reading →
When is settling for pretty good more productive than aiming for something a whole lot better? I think about this quite a bit as I go about my work life. It's not just that aiming for perfection is often counter productive, but that a restless insistence on finding new ways of doing old things tempts us away from the... Continue Reading →
Open Door Policy 