#revisioningeducation

Learning and pizza. You might be wondering what could those two possibly have in common?

What are my 2022 Reflections and 2023 Intentions?

Megan Yoshino

Dec 29, 2022
4 min

What are my 2022 Reflections and 2023 Intentions?

Ending/Beginning of the year reflections have put me in a pensive mood for the last month or so. Confucius said, “Learning without reflecting is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.” So here are my reflecting, observing, and learning of 2022 going into 2023. Happy New Year everyone! I started picking intentions going into 2022 and feel like it’s been a game changer. No goals. Just intentions on how to live. Last year my intentions were: be flexible, be g

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Quality versus Quantity- What Values Do Your Actions Teach?

Megan Yoshino

Dec 3, 2022
3 min

Quality versus Quantity- What Values Do Your Actions Teach?

My kiddo came in one session totally defeated. His ninth grade Social Studies teacher assigned a book report assignment with a 2 page list of book titles that he could choose from. The catch? That teacher later told the students that those who chose a book that had over 1,000 pages didn’t have to complete the book report. Those whose books had less than 1,000 pages had to complete the book report. Shocked? Shaking your head? My student vented and shared this story with m

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Quality or Quantity Part II- If Social Promotion or Retention Doesn’t Work, What Will?

Megan Yoshino

Oct 31, 2022
3 min

Quality or Quantity Part II- If Social Promotion or Retention Doesn’t Work, What Will?

If you haven’t read Part I, please read it first! In my last post I told you about a student I was working with who did not master many skills from previous grade levels but was still passed to the next grade. The material got harder each year but he still didn’t know the basics. It was snowballing. And yet he was passed onto the next grade. Along with that complication is if grading is truly standards based, based on a skill reached, versus behavior, there is a lack of cl

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Quality or Quantity: If Social Promotion or Retention Doesn’t Work, What Will?

Megan Yoshino

Oct 1, 2022
5 min

Quality or Quantity: If Social Promotion or Retention Doesn’t Work, What Will?

Part I- My "thinking out loud" on holding students back, having students move on to the next grade, or is there something else that will help students better? Before I get into this, let me give you a little backstory of where I’m coming from. Yes, the pandemic learning gap is real. Some kids learned at home with little supervision because many parents were also transitioning to work from home. They were not only responsible for keeping an eye on their children to make sur

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The Two Thousand Year Old Stoics and My Kids

Megan Yoshino

Jul 28, 2022
3 min

The Two Thousand Year Old Stoics and My Kids

The assignment: write a speech acknowledging the challenges Odysseus overcame and give an example about your own personal challenge that you overcame. This assignment was for one of my eighth grade students. He’s been with me since fifth grade so the trust factor within my office walls is pretty high and the candor and vulnerability flows freely. At one tutoring session, my student wanted me to check his outline for that speech assignment. He chose to speak about a few yea

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Megan Yoshino

Jul 2, 2022
2 min

Small Wins: A Recipe For Success Part 2

In his book Atomic Habits, Adam Grant writes that the small wins are what build momentum. “The most effective form of motivation is progress. We get a signal that we are moving forward, we become more motivated to continue down that path. In this way, habit tracking can have an addictive effect on motivation. Each small win feeds your desire.” (198) In The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday explains something similar, “The little things add up. While the individual action is smal

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Megan Yoshino

May 30, 2022
5 min

Struggles: A Recipe For Success

Struggles. No one likes them. Most don’t want them. Some live most of their lives avoiding them. Few embrace them. But, like change, they are the only constant in life. As adults, we know that life is not doing only the things that are fun or the things that we want to do. No one truly enjoys paying taxes, having a stressful situation at our job, or colonoscopies. It’s never fun or comfortable to sit in struggles. But, those small struggles contribute to the community, p

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What's the HI Achievers core values ingredient list?

Megan Yoshino

Apr 30, 2022
3 min

What's the HI Achievers core values ingredient list?

Like a great recipe, there was a perfect combination of ingredients that were mixed together to create HI Achievers. Those ingredients are my four core values that guide everything I do. My core values are encouraging environment, truth, growth, and cuteness. Cuteness was so important to me because learning is fun. My tiny hobbit hole office is such a safe space that tears flow freely when frustrations arise, kids totally nail their reading and writing strategies inside he

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Megan Yoshino

Apr 2, 2022
3 min

Do You Want to Land Among the Stars?

Sounds dreamy doesn't it? Read on... My last post asked about the re-visioning of education and how you saw the future of it. However, before I delve into that, I want to share the basics of what makes “HI Achievers” and “The Learning Pizza” tick: my mission statement, core values, brand pillars. I cannot express what a labor of love those words were in creating all of that. I worked with a graphic designer who works with companies to create their brand messaging. He help

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Megan Yoshino

Feb 28, 2022
3 min

How Would You Re-Vision Education?

Did you ever think it was possible? Re-Visioning Education. Merriam Webster (my favorite website other than Sparknotes lol) defines revise as “to look over again in order to correct or improve,” followed by synonyms like “alteration, change, modification, redoing, refashioning, remaking, variation.” But the revision I seek is not to correct or improve what we are currently doing. Because what we are currently doing doesn’t seem to be working. The re-vision I seek is to re-

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The Learning Pizza. What does that even mean?!

Megan Yoshino

Jan 30, 2022
2 min

The Learning Pizza. What does that even mean?!

You've made it to my blog and probably clicked on it due to curiosity. Satiate that craving and dive right in to The Learning Pizza. What do learning and pizza have in common? Well, pizza. There is an infinite number of combinations and variety for pizza. Let me explain. One of my favorite places to go for pizza is Pieology because when I get there I can choose a type of: Crust (thin, thick, cauliflower or gluten free) Sauce (they have 8 different sauces) Cheese (there’s 5

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