Coach Bill / Dad, Entrepreneur Special Educator, American Political Scientist, Writer, Musician.

To be able to live a life and be known for elegance and sophistication is no easy matter. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan gracefully accomplished this with poise. Having lived nearly a full century, she was on the forefront of an American landscape that had dramatically changed in her ninety-four years of life on earth. Technology, social movement and increased opportunity all were prevalent themes signifying great positive disruption across our land at the time of her birth. Henry Ford had just begun to democratize owning a vehicle by mass-producing it at a low-cost, the first world war had just come to an end and airplanes were connecting the world like never before.  A New Yorker, she starred in over ten movies and performed on Broadway before she began her romance with Ronald Reagan and became the First Lady  of California and eventually, the United States of America.  Mrs. Regan belongs in a special pantheon alongside former first lady Jacqueline Kenned...

‘Teaching is personal,’ sais my colleague from England, Alastair Arnott. Yes, and it is an art form also. What do we do with the limited time and space given us? Batman is actually a make-believe character and is NoT coming to rescue the public educational system…  Why not increase the amount of professional license We give ourselves to create, be entrepreneurially-minded,’ and focus on rapid growth?  In order to do that, many of us Educators have already taken an incredibly powerful step in reaching out to each other by the use of social media tools, like Twitter. We are learning from each other and the potential for our pedagogy is getting better and better as more of us find that the world is not flat, nor round, but an elevator, and we are all in it. Heck, I tweet the President all the time.. any day now he will give me a favorite to one of my tweets mentioning him or my abstract blog post on the executive function skill rigors found in being the President...

Breaking your routine and schedule breaks your pace and momentum. The moment you backslide and meander into a change in your routine...watch yourself.  King David left the battle to his Army Chief of Staff, Joab, and found himself with too much time on his hands and made a huge mistake with another man's wife. He should have kept to his routine. He had to be in the battle. Sun Tzu recollects anecdote after anecdote where military leaders left their routines, left their adherence to the guideposts that ensure victory and lost in battle. Just changed jobs..look out! Just got married... look out! Moved to a new house...look out! Starting college....look out! Look out... Look out every time you change your regular schedule... Getting back from vacation...look out! Dropped out of school.... look out! Have a disciplined schedule and it will keep you.  Get back to your regular times that worked so well before. Never arrive. Never tell yourself you have made it and can now rest.... a ...

As a long board surfer of almost twenty years, having lived on O'ahu, Hawaii's famed North Shore, I have both experienced first hand and seen the immense power of crashing waves. It is quite a spectacle to behold especially if the breaking wave is coming on you. It is in that split second that I realize it is all coming down on me, that it is going to hold me down, scrape me against the reef, pummel me and then disorient me.  I am trained to use my energy smartly, since my body cannot come up for air. I literally meditate for 10-15 long seconds as the wave has its way with me. What can I do? Minimal energy expenditure to protect my head and face is all I can muster, knowing full well I must leave gas in the tank for the rest of the waves that will mercilessly crash on me to repeat the situation. You see, waves come in sets. You get stuck in the crash zone, and you will be there a while. the wave  sets come in 4-10 waves at a time. Your shoulders, back, arms, chest, and...

Does a Teacher/ Coach's mindset and expectations drive a program? Can it mean the difference between great, lackluster, and a dismal educative outcome? To say that in any field or industry one's mindset and expectations don't have a direct impact on performance level would probably be very naive. So the time before a coaching session, or the Teacher entering the classroom, is as important as during the actual instruction. Being a routine reader of Sun Tzu's, 'The Art of War,' I find it useful to consider the current chemistry and existant rapport that I as a parent or coach may have with the child. From a diplomatic perspective, and with a focus on keeping the experience positive an able-bodied parent or teacher can be able to begin establishing new, sturdier framework from which to launch varied initiatives inversely focused on toning executive function skills, like mental flexibility. Reading up on Sun Tzu helps push the mind to consider and extrapola...

Sun Tzu, the author of "The Art of War," a 2,500 year old book that is a must-read book for business executives and military leaders alike, noted the following, which I have paraphrased: To win in battle, one must know oneself, and their opponent. Yet, he also noted that if one knows thyself, yet not one's opponent, then for every battle one, he/she would lose a battle. Lastly, if one does not know thyself, nor one's opponent, then he/ she would suffer defeat every time. Of course, as a Special Educator, the students I work with 1:1 are not my opponents, or enemies. As an Educator, it behooves me to always monitor my best way of delivering instruction. I must ask myself honest questions all the time. Its like I have an Executive Functions Coach sitting on my shoulder when I am empowering a learner. From a Special Educators perspective, good instructional delivery to an exceptional learner entails the rapid adaptation of the Teachers instructional approac...