Southwestern Advantage Blog

As an alumna of their sales & leadership program , I obviously loved the Southwestern Advantage products and believed in their effectiveness in reaching students.  Now, as an educator, I am even more convicted in the Southwestern Advantage products. I currently teach third and fourth grade students in a small school in the Sand Hills of Nebraska.   Most of my students have never been past a two hour radius of their home.   I try to incorporate as many “real-world” experiences to my students as possible while still reaching all the standards that are required.   I have found in my years of teaching that kids LOVE non-fiction books.   As a teacher, so do I.   Books about animals, space, and our Earth are so interesting to kids who love learning.   My students choose to use their free-time in the classroom reading the Explore and Learn and Ask Me books from Southwestern Advantage.   They are always quick to tell me the new facts they...

You have probably heard the saying –  If you always think the way you’ve always thought, you will always do what you have always done, and you will always get what you always gotten  – and quite frankly sometimes that’s not good enough for us. To illustrate the point, let me share some information with you about why train tracks in the United States areas wide as they are. See if you think it has applicability. The United States standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them inEngland, and English expatriates built the American railroads. Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used. Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jugs and tools that they used for bu...

A big congratulations to our Student Excellence Award winner, Hannah Riesberg !

I grew up in a community where if you didn’t get along with someone, the advice we heard from our elders was, "Learn how to." If we had trouble working with someone, the teacher purposely assigned us to a group so that we would have to work together. My parents insisted that I learn to work my problems out. They didn’t call other parents to complain about our problems and how they could fix them. I was disciplined by my parents whenever I lacked self-discipline -- when I was disrespectful to others, when I didn't do my share of the chores, or when I got poor grades. Did I like it at the time? Nope; but now as an adult, I'm grateful for it. And now, as and educator, I increasingly see the opposite approach growing into a dangerous parenting trend. Every parent wants to see their children happy, safe, and successful. Teachers want the same for their students. However, the growing hurdle is the mindset that if a child gets upset, the parent(s) should step in and fix...

From the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2013, I lived in the Rocky Mountain states. I spent one year in Montana, one year in Wyoming, and one year in Colorado. Now, if you’ve ever been out that way, you know two things: 1) it’s absolutely beautiful, and 2) it’s not very densely populated, especially Montana and Wyoming. One thing that this means is that to visit any city other than the one where you live, you have to drive at least an hour, sometimes three or four. I don’t know about you, but I get highway hypnosis pretty bad if I don’t keep my mind occupied while I’m on the road. So, when I would drive anywhere, I liked to call people on the phone. As you can imagine, though, sparsely populated areas don’t have the best reception. (If you don’t believe me, just watch any wireless provider commercial—the coverage maps are almost non-existent over the Rockies.) This led to some fairly awkward phone conversations. “Guess what happened? <static static> bro...

We aren’t as busy as we think.  Have you ever noticed how some people seem to have extra hours in the day? They go around being involved in about five million different things, plus have time for work, school, church, family, and a social life. And here you sit, just trying to figure out how to make time for getting your laundry done between the homework, the job, and having a least a little bit of a social life. What gives? The answer is SCHEDULE (or as business gurus call it, time management). Those people who seem to accomplish everything and then have time left over have a schedule and they stick to it. Now, a lot of people react to the word “schedule” the way they react to the word “budget.” It seems to reek of constriction and suck all the fun out of life. But the reality is just the opposite . Being on schedule, like being on a budget, simply means knowing what you are doing with your time and making intentional choices about how you want to use it. Just as a good bu...

I follow a lot of people on Twitter. It’s kind of like my daily headlines—if it’s important, it’ll show up. But it’s better than just having a newspaper because I can create the atmosphere of news I want to be exposed to; I can make sure that most of my headlines will take me to things that will help make me a better person today than I was yesterday. That means I follow a lot of people like Dave Ramsey ,  John Maxwell , and of course Southwestern Advantage . (I also follow Mental Floss because I love trivia.) Another one I follow is Inc.com , and last year, they tweeted a headline titled “Want to Be More Effective? Try a Mental Detox.” Intriguing, right? After all, who doesn’t want to be more effective at what they’re passionate about? So of course I clicked. Now, if you can, I recommend reading the whole article: the author lays out four things you can do on a regular basis to keep yourself focused on the important things and to do them better. But I just want to focus o...