All it took was an innovative math teacher to inspire 20 years worth of work.
Former Federal Way Public Schools Superintendent Tom Vander Ark is the co-author of “Smart Parents: Parenting for Powerful Learning,” a recently-published educational book meant to help parents navigate the many choices of today’s digital era.
And Vander Ark said he was first exposed to personalized, technology-enabled learning during his daughter’s fifth grade year at Enterprise Elementary. She had a teacher named Paul Wezeman, who had a “special appreciation for the power of the Internet.”
Wezeman incorporated a project-based learning approach by ensuring every two students had a computer in class.
“That was an inspiration for everything I’ve done in the last 20 years,” Vander Ark said. “His teaching is part of why we launched the one-to-one laptop learning in the secondary schools and the district was the first in the country for [public] online learning with the Internet Academy.”
Wezeman later taught at Illahee Middle School and eventually retired. But, clearly, the Internet and its endless possibilities for learners is here to stay, which is one of the reasons Vander Ark and co-author’s Bonnie Lathrum and Carri Schneider put together “Smart Parents.”
“We live in an era of extraordinary learning opportunities,” Lathram said. “This book seeks to help parents better understand the role they can play in advocating for their child’s individual needs and provides guidance for parents around the significant shifts that are occurring because of technological change.”
Lathram said “Smart Parents” takes compelling stories from parents who are “in the trenches” and provides practical tools for supporting student-centered and engaging learning in the digital age.
Now a grandfather, Vander Ark said there’s more opportunities than ever for learning.
“Today, learning is much more personal and it can happen anywhere or anytime,” he said. “If you can’t figure out fifth grade homework, you can just Google and find a video on any particular subject.”
But with more opportunities, come more challenges.
“It’s hard because you have too many choices,” he said. “It’s challenging to know how to make sense of all the options that exist. Between Apple and Google, there’s 200 learning apps.”
Vander Ark said managing children’s screen time, or online time, can be a challenge, which the book addresses.
Other insights include: What to look for when you visit your son or daughter’s school, family dinners and why they’re important and what you should talk about, talking to middle-schoolers about college and careers and the importance of family travel.
There are a series of toolkits organized by the child’s age level — young, middle and high school age — and each section has personal stories.
“This book grew out of our own experiences as parents and educators, as well as the experiences of parents who know powerful learning when we see it, but don’t always know how to find it or create it,” Schneider said. “We discovered, and captured for readers, an approach that empowers parents with new mindsets and tools to cultivate educational experiences for their children that place them at the center of their own learning.”
Vander Ark said the idea for the book came from a mother with high school kids. Already the author of “Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World” and “Smart Cities That Work for Everyone: 7 Keys to Education and Employment,” he and his co-authors felt the information should be tailored “for parents, by parents.”
Vander Ark works with Lathram and Schneider as the CEO of Getting Smart, a learning design firm and a partner in Learn Capital, an education venture capital firm investing in ed-tech startups.
Lathram is the learner experience manager as well as contributing author at Getting Smart. She has taught students of all ages in the U.S. and Tanzania. Schneider is the director of knowledge design at Getting Smart and has taught elementary college-aged students. She has also co-authored several other books on learning.
Vander Ark is already working on his next book, “Gen DIY” or “Generation Do It Yourself.” He hopes to have that book published early next year.
“It is for young people and their parents, as their parents are involved about decisions in high school or college,” he said. “We’re excited about options for post-secondary that exist. There are so many interesting new alternatives that we’re trying to help people make sense of those and there’s really cost-effective ways to find or create a career that you love.”
