When Spokane Schools’ Nutrition Services Director Doug Wordell needs ideas and inspiration about how to make small changes that make a big difference, he looks to Spokane Schools’ new project-based high school, The Community School. 

“It’s very diverse campus,” says Principal Cindy  McMahon. Students design their own curriculum based on real-world issues. “The only requirement is that they are invested in their own learning. Students choose here because they want to do school differently,” says McMahon. Read More>>

PARENTING   The 2008 election and Beijing 2008 Olympics should have had a lasting effect on the way we view the potential success of non-traditional families. Both the newly elected president of the United States and the most gold medal-studded athlete ever were stunning outcomes of single-parent households.

Yet most Americans don’t feel assured the next Barack Obama or Michael Phelps could be walking to the bus stop holding hands with just one parent. Read More>>

PARENTING   A is for Accident. The details of our first bone break are etched in our memories. Aubrey Springer’s now five-year- old tale is a dramatic one, involving titanium rods and two major surgeries; all born of a botched beanbag landing.

Aubrey’s mom, Misty, was used to hearing her three young children play loudly and acrobatically in the basement. Read More>>

PARENTING  Kristina Elverum was in a daze during the one-week post-partum follow-up at her obstetrician’s office. The friendly receptionist asked, “How far along are you?”

Elverum, standing alone in the waiting room, taking in the bevy of late-term pregnant women and new mommies cradling their newborns, quietly responded.

“I told her I’d already had a baby, then she was looking around for her, so I asked, ‘Can you get me straight into a room, please?’” Read More>>

PARENTING   When children across the world saw what happened to Veruca Salt on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, we felt vindicated. Any child villainous enough to demand a goose that lays a golden egg should be dumped down a chute!

But that was 1971.

Veruca Salt’s behavior no longer has shock value. Have you watched an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen? (Or anything involving the Kardashians?) Read More>>

PARENTING  Debbie Hieber doesn’t go far without her best friend, Mary Lou Bonanzino. The stylish, 50-something girlfriends serve on nonprofit boards and drink coffee and wine together, depending on the time of day. They have more than once been shushed as they gossiped and laughed loudly in an otherwise quiet café.

Hieber especially needs her friend when she talks about her oldest daughter’s death, as she is doing today in a rather loud coffee shop.

Alyson, she begins to explain, died in September 2009. After struggling with bulimia all through high school and the start of college, her depleted 22-year-old body gave out. Read More>>

PARENTING  When it comes to babies, parents probably encounter the most advice about when and how to introduce solid foods. After weeks and weeks of sleep deprivation, the thought inevitably arises: Could putting a little cereal in the baby’s bottle help the baby to please, please, please sleep just a little longer? Read More>>

PARENTING  Remember baby-proofing? Both fear and determination drove us to smother table corners and brick hearths with foam so our toddlers had free rein in the safe sections of home.

But what happens when we can no longer pad our children’s landings?

After reading a summer New York Times article, “Can A Playground Be Too Safe?” you may have felt nostalgic for the tall, creaky metal slides and jungle gyms of youth. Or you may have been worried. Read More>>

PARENTING  In this issue, I would like to address something that is hard to get out … namely, constipation. However, I want to address a very specific type of constipation that we see frequently in children — chronic retentive constipation, or as I like to call it, monsterpation.

I think the name is appropriate because often kids will have bowel movements that are enormous in size and quantity. Let me describe how this happens, because the physiology holds the answers to associated problems and solutions. Read More>>