A movable feast: For some, the world is a classroom

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"Evidence suggests that home-schooling in America is a growing trend. In a weeklong web-only series, TODAYshow.com reports on the challenges and creative opportunities presented by this approach to education.

Niall Gifford, 11, attends school on a sailboat in the South Pacific. Markos McFerrin, 7, has done countless math and spelling lessons on the back of a tandem bicycle. Jen and Maddie Farmer, 12-year-old twin sisters, have completed curricula in Greece and England.

These typical American kids are having exotic educational experiences for the same reason: Their parents have chosen to home-school them so they can travel.

For such families, “travel” doesn’t mean frantic vacations to Disneyland. These moms and dads want their children to see the world, experience other cultures and learn, learn, learn.

Of course, pulling it off can entail major lifestyle upheavals. Jobs need to be left behind (or sabbaticals requested), houses need to be rented out, modes of travel need to be selected, budgets need to be carefully crafted. For many parents who home-school away from home, wrenching themselves so completely from their regular lives has not been simple.

But has it been worth it? Oh yeah.

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Boys may benefit from aggressive play

Bring it: Boys may benefit from aggressive play - Health - Kids and parenting - msnbc.com

"In her 30 years as a kindergarten teacher in Illinois and Massachusetts, Jane Katch has watched graham crackers, a pretzel, celery, tree bark and fingers all become transformed into imaginary guns and other weapons. And she has learned to work with, rather than against, the violent boyhood fantasies that accompany these transformations.

'When you try to ignore it, it doesn't go away. And when you try to oppress it, it comes out in sneaky ways,' Katch said.

Not every teacher agrees. Schools have become battlegrounds between the adults who are repelled by the play violence they see and the children — primarily boys — who are obsessed with pretending to fight, capture, rescue and kill.

While some educators prohibit this behavior, other educators and researchers claim that banishing violent play from classrooms can be harmful to boys. It's a debate entangled in gender issues, since nearly all early-childhood educators are women, and they may be less comfortable than their male counterparts with boys' impulses.

While this behavior has been around far longer than toy guns and superhero movies — boys appear to be hard-wired for more active and aggressive pursuits than girls — many adults see this aggressive play being fueled by the violence portrayed or reported in the media.

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13 Careers for the Next Decade

13-careers-for-the-next-decade: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: "We offer a baker's dozen of professions that promise income growth, work-life balance and social impact.

Few decisions are more important than choosing a career. And especially in these uncertain and changing times, no decision may be more difficult.

U.S. companies, saddled with increasingly onerous costs of employing people, are downsizing, cutting employees' hours, hiring temps, automating jobs and sending work offshore. Meanwhile, technology is redefining existing jobs and demanding new skills from an aging workforce, and new competition for jobs looms in the form of 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants likely to get legalized in the years ahead. Perhaps most potent, the U.S. is experiencing the largest transfer of gross domestic product from the private sector to the government sector in history -- and shifting jobs along with it.

In these roiling times, what are smart career choices? Of course, the best career for one person can be the worst for another, but I believe these 13 are particularly worthy of attention. From among thousands of occupations, I selected the 13 that rank best overall based on these criteria:

• Likelihood of Sustaining at Least a Middle-Class Income. This subsumes three factors: likely job growth, income potential and being under the radar (so there's less competition for jobs).

• Socially Redeeming. There may be jobs, for example, as casino managers and tobacco executives, but such occupations were immediately excluded from consideration.

• Quality of Life. Reasonable work hours, freedom from toxic or noisy work environments, and so on.

• Status. Most Kiplinger readers will not, for example, be attracted to owning gas stations, even though some gas-station owners make a great deal of money."

Homeschoolers hit the gridiron for first time in New Orleans

By Mike Hoss / Eyewitness News wwltv.com (CLICK to read more)

"John Burke is a 13-year-old eighth grader who has been homeschooled his entire life. And he loves football, but as a homeschooler, there wasn't a team.
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So his dad made him an offer.

'He said that he would put me into school so I could play high school football,” John Burke said. “I felt it was a strange idea.”

That's not a problem anymore. Now there is the home school Saints, New Orleans' first tackle football team made up entirely of homeschool kids. Thursday was just their second time in action.

“Yeah it’s exciting, I love football in general and the adrenaline rush of being able to go onto the football field after never being able to play,” said player Sam Mauras. “Its just exhilarating to go out and represent New Orleans.”"