Five years ago, many of the brightest minds in Michigan business and education proclaimed Michigan needed to double its number of college graduates. Since then, state education policy has been characterized largely by funding cuts, tuition increases, and an ever-growing amount of student loans.
The pressure is on like never before for parents working to both groom their kids for college and pay for those advanced educations.
Well, here’s a little help…
Kalamazoo Gazette writers and parents Julie Mack and Rosemary Parker have authored a short new instructional book called “The Essential Parenting Guide to Navigating Middle School and Beyond.” You can buy it online here for less than the cost of entry to a high school football playoff game.
Here’s a little background from one of the authors, Julie Mack, who just might be the most knowledgeable education reporter working at a Michigan newspaper…
“We picked middle school at the advice of Kalamazoo Promise administrator Bob Jorth, who said that high school is too late for kids to turn it around. He’s also the one who advised us to keep the book short and inexpensive — short so that parents wouldn’t be intimidated and inexpensive so it could be purchased in bulk. (Bulk price is $3.50 a copy.) The idea was to create a very practical, but very reader-friendly book with checklists, timetables and personal stories. The Gazette printed the book this summer and it seems to be catching on among school districts and organizations around here. However, it is written generically, so it really applies to any community in the state or country.”
Thanks, Julie! Keep up the great work!
One Comment
Education
quote in here’s a little background:
Its not that they don’t care Mack said “it’s that they don’t know”.
I can really relate to that statement because my parents were ones that just didn’t know probably due to the depression and the war and the fact that his father died at a young age and left my grandmother to raise several of the children on her own.It is so important that a child has direction when growing up and if not, society pays the price. I didn’t even know why I was going to school. It was just something I had to do. I graduated at the bottom of my class and under my senior picture it said “School, oh yes, I drop in occasionally”. There is one thing that my father and mother did teach me that has been a great benefit in my life. “be honest, don’t be a sheep and just follow the crowd” I was fortunate and married a good woman and had 7 children. But the one thing that made a difference was a statement that a sister-in- law said to my wife when she asked about paying for college because we could not afford to send them. She told my wife there is help available. Mostly through the efforts of my wife, they all attended major university’s and graduated.It took our oldest son 7 years in mechanical engineering. Our second son 6 years in industrial engineering.
Our first daughter 4 years in elementary education.Our second daughter 6 years to complete her physician assistants degree. Our 3rd son 4 years in electrical engineering and 2 years form MIT in finance.Our 4th son 5 years in marketing (He played football in college which extended his college time) Our 5th son in supply chain management in 4 years. He also played basketball in college; he went to summer school to complete college in 4 years. My wife then went to college and graduated in marketing and entered the work force after being a stay at home mother until the children were in high school.Today all of our children are working in what they went to college for.There were many bumps in the road along the way, but we were all in it for the long haul and the only regret I have is that I did not receive the support when I was young. I firmly believe if the school children that do have support from home would encourage ones that don’t the rewards would be many.
We are all in this game of life together and if our society fails we all fail.
Dale Westrick