Digital Coaching Archives

Why Coding?

June 22, 2015 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

Coding instruction is a hot topic, and never has the role of computer programming in education been more discussed, questioned, dissected, and applauded. So what’s the big deal?

Watch this great video from Code.org, a non-profit dedicated to growing computer science education by making it available in more schools, and increasing participation by women and underrepresented students of color.

The opportunities that computer programming instruction in the form of coding can lead to are enormous, but, as discussed in this NY Times article, I Am Woman, Watch Me Hack,”…just 0.4 percent of all female college freshmen say they intend to major in computer science. In fact, the share of women in computer science has actually fallen over the years.”

Many young people, especially women, do not come into contact with engineers and programmers at a young age; and they don’t really understand what they do. Coding provides a point of entry for everyone to learn skills that will help them throughout their lives.

As more of our commerce and education takes place on computer screens, it has become increasingly important to learn coding. Working on a computer and starting to understand exactly what is involved in making a program work puts your child in a better position to thrive.

As a great introduction for kids, check out this awesome Hour of Code instruction video to get started on coding:

Happy Coding!

Written by: Editorial Team, My Learning Springboard, Inc.

Learning Concierge ®

June 1, 2015 Leave a Comment

Growing With Families Over Time

It has always been our mission to grow with families over time and to flexibly respond to the various needs of family members along their educational journeys. Our Learning Concierge ® service is intended to make getting started as simple as possible for families. We’re here to help with any of your educational needs.

Because we grow with families over time, we bring a unique perspective to integrated and effective educational problem solving and decision making. Over the course of a school year, we help families to navigate myriad decisions and scenarios, including but not limited to:

Getting to know students over time and sharing in their many successes motivates us everyday. That we can grow with students from preschool to lower school to middle school to upper school to college is truly differentiating, and having expertise within each of these divisions and schooling chapters informs our planning work with families regardless of when they come forward. Brad and Faya have truly redefined educational consulting.

A Boutique Multidisciplinary Educational Consulting Firm

When we conceptualized My Learning Springboard in 2009, we envisioned a boutique multidisciplinary educational consulting firm unlike anything of its kind in NYC or beyond. We imagined a truly holistic, integrated practice that would partner closely with families, schools, and professional colleagues in ways we only wish that every industry would embrace for more effective problem solving among stakeholders. “It takes a village” is a commonly understood phrase, and we walk the walk everyday.

This week you need a biology tutor. Next week you need a Latin tutor. This term you need a writing coach. Next term you need a math specialist. Your youngest child is a struggling reader. Your oldest child wants to pursue independent study surrounding computer science. Last year was an amazing school experience, but this year is shaping up differently. Maybe you want to pursue a school exploration. Years ago we worked on the kindergarten admissions process together, and now it’s time to launch a college process.

You have 2 or 3 or 4 children and each needs a different school environment. One attends all boys, one attends all girls, one needs a specialized setting, and the youngest is in nursery school. Each student approaches work differently, and their ages require different expertise. From advanced subject areas to scaffolded and targeted remediation, we have you covered!

As a Learning Concierge ® service, our faculty includes professors, upper school teachers, lower school teachers, middle school teachers, learning specialists, special educators, subject matter experts, and early childhood educators available for in-person and/or remote instruction. We skew toward highly experienced, highly qualified teachers with advanced degrees and 5+ years of teaching experience. Many teachers have been with us for 10+ years, and this continuity speaks to our highly effective collaborative approach.

Our close working relationships with related service professionals across every field is a huge benefit to our families, too, and we’re able to VIP introductions and fast-track appointments with neuropsychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, special education attorneys, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and a variety of other professionals.

An Unexpected Turn

Sometimes the journey takes an unexpected turn, and that’s one way that we’re able to flex our unique expertise as Learning Concierges. Though families often set out to be in one school environment from grades K-12, it often plays out differently for any number of reasons. Perhaps a student who started in a single-sex school is ready to try coed, or a student who started in a religious setting is ready to try a secular school experience, or a student who started in a mainstream setting presents with a need for a transition to a specialized or therapeutic school setting. Or maybe you’re faced with an involuntary search because of disciplinary action.

It’s our creativity, tenacity, attention to detail, shared values, cross training, and collective expertise – among other qualities – that sets us apart.

Your Learning Concierge ® Team

We don’t know any Educational Consultants with expertise to move in all of these directions or a myriad of others. That Brad and Faya are the only Board Certified Educational Planners in NYC at the K-12 level, both Learning Specialists, both College Counselors, and both triple designated by the most stringent association groups – AICEP and IECA – for mainstream, specialized, and therapeutic school planning is highly unusual. From strategic planning to crisis management, Brad and Faya bring tremendous efficacy, empathy, and patience to their partnerships with families and schools. Their 16 school years in private practice and long-term relationships with families and colleagues is a testament to their success, work ethic, and dedication to lifelong learning.

Brad and Faya are your Learning Concierge ® team, and working with My Learning Springboard provides an unparalleled experience for school planning, private tutoring, and test preparation. Every recommendation is specifically tailored to your family’s needs and your student’s profile. Everything is a choice. Everything is organized at will. Everything is modular.

Instruction and consulting efforts are curated to specifically meet your particular needs and parameters, and your privacy is of the utmost importance. We’re intentionally boutique so that every family has the opportunity to work directly with the Co-Founders, and any teaching effort has the benefit of a small teaching team to support planning and implementation. Collaboration with school professionals or other related service professionals with whom your family is working is always an option.

Admissions Consulting (PreK-12) and School Planning:

College Counseling:

Tutoring and Executive Function Coaching:

Test Preparation:

Scheduling A Planning Meeting

Whatever your educational need or wonder may be, please don’t hesitate to contact us. An initial school planning meeting is usually the best way to get started. These meetings can be 30, 45, or 60 minutes by Zoom, by phone, or in person per a family’s preference. A single planning meeting allows us to talk more substantively about your family’s specific needs, priorities, and goals so that we can determine possible next steps. We’re committed to developing unique solutions for unique learners!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards,
Brad Hoffman and Faya Hoffman,
Co-Founders and Learning Concierges, My Learning Springboard

Homeschooling

May 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

Successful homeschooling programs can be designed and delivered in many different ways depending on the student’s age, academic performance, emotional and adaptive functioning, passions, interests, and location.

Under the leadership of Brad Hoffman and Faya Hoffman — a husband-and-wife team and both Board Certified Educational Planners — My Learning Springboard is a boutique multidisciplinary educational consulting firm and learning concierge® service offering school planning and placement, academic tutoring, and test preparation at every level from nursery through college. Our school planning and placement expertise includes both day schools and boarding schools across mainstream, specialized, and therapeutic settings as well as virtual schools and homeschooling.

Families may choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, such as:

Facilitating a pre-professional track for student athletes, actors, performers, dancers, and entrepreneurs.
Customizing the curriculum, learning environment, and schedule.
Managing a medical or emotional issue.
Continuing a school program while traveling for an extended time period or managing two home locations.
Accelerating or remediating instruction.
Using specific pedagogical approaches.
Enhancing family relationships.
Providing guided and reasoned social interactions with peers and adults.
Teaching and imparting a particular set of values and beliefs.

Regardless of the circumstances, our Leadership Team works closely with families, and often mental health and medical professionals, to design comprehensive homeschooling programs or supplemental enrichment, including thematic units, special projects, experiential learning opportunities, or service-learning and social action.

We help families to navigate, determine, and execute the best course of action with the support and supervision of a professional and multidisciplinary teaching team. This work includes helping families to identify and supervise appropriate and skillful teachers as well as comply with and exceed state and school district regulations. When planning homeschooling programs for students taking a leave of absence, we often collaborate with faculty from private schools to ensure continuation of the school’s program as well as credit recovery.

Please contact our office to discuss your family’s specific needs.

5 Reasons to Teach Coding

April 20, 2015 Brad Hoffman Leave a Comment

By Merle Huerta
Original Source: Edutopia
Originally posted April 17, 2015

Coding is a new type of literacy

Wired Magazine reported that reading and writing code is the new literacy. Those students who master it are better prepared for a technical revolution that spans cultures and language boundaries. That’s because coding isn’t just a language. It’s a way of thinking about problem solving.

Coding is a tool to improve educational equity

Coding in the classroom is a means of bridging the digital divide. That means more than granting technological access — it’s a way for all students to use technology for creative engagement. Without coding in the classroom, many students in lower socioeconomic communities will miss the opportunities it affords. In fact, Holfeld et al (2008) found that schools in poorer neighborhoods restricted computer use to rote learning rather than using technology for creative engagement. Discouraging a more creative use of technology in the schools creates a butterfly effect. In Washington State, where 93 percent of high schools don’t offer AP computer science, a 2012 study found that out of 1,200 AP computer science students, just 48 were black or Hispanic. By making computer science a required course for high school, especially in lower socioeconomic schools, educational equity and opportunities improve.

Coding offers inclusion

Temple Grandin, author and professor at Colorado State University and an autistic adult, said, “Without the gifts of autism, there would probably be no NASA or IT industry.” Non-profits such as nonPareil are acting on those talents. Created by two parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, the organization actively recruits high school students with ASD, trains them in software development, and then places them in IT jobs. The environment, a cross between a school and a company, is a natural segue between high school and the adult workplace.
Knowing there are programs for kids with ASD is good news for parents who shoulder the responsibility. Of those children with ASD who do enter the workforce, nearly 80 percent will be unemployed or underemployed. By teaching coding to students with developmental disabilities, teachers aren’t merely harnessing and developing innate talents. They’re better preparing these kids, making them more marketable and employable in a high-tech economy.

Coding can improve neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity, a term that essentially means the brain can change, has assumed a pop-culture status, and any activity linked to it takes on a magical, brain-promoting aspect. While not all activities genuinely classify, in the case of foreign language acquisition, there is evidence. Researchers in Sweden observed visible brain changes in those children and teens who learned a foreign language. Over a three-month period, the brain structure in those who acquired a second language grew, specifically in the hippocampal area (which is involved in learning new material and spatial navigation), and in three areas in the cerebral cortex. Students who “had better language skills than other students, who put in more effort in learning, experienced greater growth.” In another study, Mechelli found that children who acquired a second or third language, even a computer language, showed functional changes in the inferior parietal cortex.

Coding improves STEM proficiencies

Analysts suggest that by 2020, there are expected to be one million more computing jobs than students in the U.S., which could leave an untapped market of $500 billion. Currently, the U.S. is ill prepared to fill these jobs. In one international study across 65 countries, the U.S. ranked 23rd or 24th in most subjects and 27th in math and science. Girls were particularly at a deficit.Forbes Magazine reported, “Women hold nearly half of all jobs in the U.S., but less than 25 percent of all STEM jobs.” By making coding a classroom requirement, educators are better equipping students for this market.

Despite the documented benefits, coding in the classroom is offered in only a smattering of U.S. schools. Less than ten percent offer AP computer science, and students who have access aren’t necessarily being encouraged to pursue programming.

Why the Lack of Emphasis?

Teacher Shortages

Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org, cites lack of trained teachers as the biggest obstacle to getting computer science into the classroom, and software developers have little motivation to shift from the private sector into education. Why teach if the corporate world is far more lucrative? Partovi feels that policy makers and private funders must come together and fund training for teachers in computer science. In the interim, TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) is placing computer scientists in high school classrooms across the country. Their goal is two-fold:

Get computer science education to the students.
Educate teachers in code literacy to make them technically proficient to teach coding.

Bias

A report by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows a bias in how teachers perceive abilities of male and female students when it comes to STEM subjects. Researchers found that “when teachers knew the children’s names and identities, they graded the girls lower in math than the outside grader, while scoring the boys higher.” The trend had long-term ramifications. Those girls tracked in the study were less likely to sign up for advanced math, science, and technology courses in high school.

Other Priorities

If computer science isn’t a requirement, why bother changing policies? Currently, 15 states allow computer science courses to count toward high school graduation. Private schools have an easier time implementing curricular changes. The problem is in federally funded schools. With tight budgets, public schools are mired in layers of decision making that makes it hard to change curriculum. The key, with the help of corporate sponsors, is to help policy makers see that computer science merits the same weight as math and science prerequisites.

Educators and parents who agree should write to their state’s department of education, and get involved with non-profit organizations such as Code.org and companies such as Microsoft who are working to improve digital literacy in the schools. For digital initiatives with the developmentally disabled, nonPareil can partner with schools, and organizations such as TEALS can expose students and teachers to the opportunities that coding in the classroom provides.

Is coding part of your school’s curriculum? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

Reading Specialists

April 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

Do you have a child who is struggling with reading comprehension, decoding or fluency? Or perhaps your child is ready to accelerate reading or writing instruction? If so, you may be seeking a Reading Specialist, Learning Specialist, or skillful educator.

Remediation or Acceleration

At My Learning Springboard, we value the science of reading and an approach that considers the 5 pillars of a strong reading program to support your child’s reading and writing development. We especially believe that building strong foundational skills in preschool and the primary grades is a strategic investment that bolsters a child’s success as a lifelong learner. Because each student’s needs are different, our reading specialists and learning specialists are well versed in a variety of approaches, interventions, and programs so that we can tailor instruction to each student’s needs using evidence-based practice that maximizes engagement.

Our reading specialists and learning specialists include both elementary and secondary educators, special educators, and dyslexia interventionists with expertise in Orton-Gillingham based programs, including PAF (developed at Windward School), Wilson, and Boost. Other programs we regularly use include Judith Hochman’s Writing Revolution and Sounds in Motion.

Our reading specialists and faculty also provide enrichment teaching and accelerated instruction for students ready to take on more difficult reading and writing tasks. We begin instructional planning by gathering as much information as possible, which often includes conducting individualized assessments in order to determine a student’s decoding needs, developmental spelling stage, independent and instructional reading levels, and writing needs at the sentence and paragraph (or multi-paragraph) levels. This benchmarking helps our reading specialists or learning specialists to more effectively customize targeted reading and writing instruction in any or all of the following areas:

In our work to help students become confident readers and writers, our reading specialists, leadership team, and faculty also help parents to support their children’s reading and writing development at home.

Popular Programs and Approaches

A variety of reading and writing programs are used depending on the needs of a particular student. Similarly, students are matched to specific Reading Specialists based on the student’s needs and the Reading Specialist’s professional expertise. We value customizing the approach for each learner, thus our practices are informed by research, programs, materials and diagnostic tools that include but are not limited to:

Orton-Gillingham
The Science of Reading
Phyllis Bertin and Eileen Perlman, Preventing Academic Failure (PAF)
Dr. Judith C. Hochman, Teaching Basic Writing Skills
Frances Santore, Sounds in Motion
Patricia Cunningham, Making Words
Dr. Donald Bear, Literacy Development and Words Their Way
Dr. Jan Richardson, Guided Reading
Stephanie Harvey, Strategies That Work
Fountas & Pinnell, Guided Reading and Writing
Advancing Literacy, Teachers College, Columbia University

Writing Instruction Framework

Our writing instruction is also informed by the 6+1 Trait ® Writing Framework developed by Education Northwest.
These writing traits include:

Ideas
Organization
Voice
Word Choice
Sentence Fluency
Conventions
Presentation (+1)