Education is a business - the growth business. It cultivates the growth of our learners, translates the growth of new knowledge, and builds professional growth.

We often assume that all teachers within a discipline address the same curriculum. This isn't always the case. We frequently find gaps between goals and what is actually taught, and these gaps can have a lasting impact on a child's learning.

As educators, we are only as effective as what we know. If we have no working knowledge of what students studied in previous years, how can we build on their learning? If we have no insight into the curriculum in later grades, how can we prepare learners for future classes?

Feeling pummeled by the outside pounding of tests and standards, a teacher can easily hide and simply turn to the immediacy of the classroom. It is not surprising that many teachers burrow in their rooms with all that they know about their students. There is no place to take the information.

College costs continue to rise, and student loan debt threatens to price many Americans out of a college education and out of the middle class.

My parents are huge influences on me. My mother was an English teacher. My father played professional rugby and coached rugby for the Irish rugby team.

If you study both 'Gilligan' and 'Brady,' you will see they are based on a similar philosophy: that it's possible for different kinds of people to learn to live together, either in a family or stuck on an island with no escape.

My long-term dream is to have self-education in schools for mental, physical, and emotional health because we need to learn how to speak to ourselves in a loving way and to each other.