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...

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...

value (val-yoo) noun 1. a fair or proper equivalent in money, commodities, etc, for something sold or exchanged, for a fair price in return 2. worth, or degree of worth 3. that which is desirable or worthy of esteem for its own sake; thing or quality having intrinsic worth value, by definition,  requires  sacrifice. you give me money. i give you milk. you wouldn’t buy the milk if you didn’t think you would derive at least the same  value  in drinking the milk that you are paying me for it. and so it is with our work. and our lives, for that matter. the things worth having (or achieving) are not the easy things to achieve. that’s why they’re  worth  achieving in the first place. they must be sought after. they must be  earned.  you’ve got to be willing to give something of yourself in order to get them. life doesn’t go around just  giving  away success to people who are not working for it. you’ve got to shel...

One of the things I enjoy about working as a Student Leader in the Southwestern Advantage Program is that I get help college students save more money in a summer than they ever thought was possible. Seriously, how many college students SAVE over $5,000 in a summer?  Even if a student were to make that much in a different internship, it's common to end up spending most of it by the time the fall semester gets rolling. Unfortunately, many students have never been taught how to handle that money in a smart way. Very few high schools teach money management, and a lot of parents never cover these topics with their kids either. So, the celebratory spending begins in August and ends when the money is gone. Granted, it can be fun to spend money this way, but it certainly is ineffective for building any kind of long-term wealth (which, thanks to the rule of 72 , is incredibly easy to do if you start at 19 - 22 years old). Good news: you can start being sm...

"For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." I believe Shakespeare was on to something there. In Hamlet , Act II, Scene 2, his lead character makes that simple but profound revelation.  And so it is with our everyday lives. Our encounters, victories, frustrations, close misses -- all are subject to our own internal voice. Those little electrical connections that are buzzing in our brains are evaluating, judging, and commenting on the activities and events that are happening throughout our day. We've all found ourselves at the mercy of our own thoughts, but when we figure out how to actively divide our thoughts into different categories, we begin to make some headway.  I discovered that my own natural tendency is to drift towards negativity. Left to itself, my internal dialogue is rarely uplifting unless I'm actively pulling it in that direction.  "Do I like this?" No. "Am I good at this new activity?" Not rea...

John Dryden once said, "We first make our habits, then our habits make us." Now that the school year is underway, it's a good time to rethink your personal habits and patterns, and perhaps make some adjustments. We've all heard the Biblical saying, "You reap what you sow." In other words, what you're doing today will have an impact on your future self. Everyday we are consciously (and unconsciously) planting seeds of a sort. Our seeds germinate. Most people do not live intentionally, with a purpose. Consequently they're operating in a less-than-conscious manner. Unless we are consciously forming good habits, we are unconsciously forming bad ones. What habits are you forming today -- right now? Have you noticed how easy it is to be lazy? It's easy to sit on the couch and watch re-runs of The Office. It's easy to browse Facebook until you look up and notice that four hours has passed and you missed class, lunch, and study time (and a...