Apt. 11D Newsletter July 2019 - Laura McKenna's Publications and Post
Apt. 11D
Laura McKenna's Publications and Posts
July 2019
Hi all!
I'm launching a newsletter to pull together in one place all my recent publications, discoveries, and adventures. I'm calling it Apt. 11D, after my longtime blog, because someone told me that newsletters are supposed to have cute names like GOOP or Dooce or something like that. I don't even live in Apt. 11D anymore, but I'm stuck with the name. Oh well. It could be worse. I could have called my blog "GOOP" and that would really be embarrassing.
Here, you'll find links to my published items about schools and parenting, as well as a sample of the random blog content.
I plan to keep this newsletter short and sweet -- some pictures, links, and a little gossip on the big stories.
Thanks for reading! Laura
Summer Travel
At the end of June/early July, my family and I were in London and Scotland. It was our first family trip overseas, and it was marvelous. We're already planning our trip for next summer. We are committed to making adventure a bigger part of our lives again.
A Personal Essay in Huff Post
On our trip home from Scotland and London, we had a terrible experience with our flight attendant. So, I turned into an essay and sold it in record time (seven minutes!) to HuffPost. It was shared widely on the Internet. I received some lovely personal notes from parents of children with autism.
If you would like to read more about our family's experiences with autism, here are some links:
What To Do With KIds With High Functioning Autism (blog post)
When Kids Sit Alone (The Atlantic, Sept 2016)
Boosting Social Skills to Kids With Autism (The Atlantic, June 2016)
A Reported Article About Guidance Counselors and Community College
Community colleges offer students a low cost education, flexible schedules, and direct career paths. But students aren't learning enough about community colleges at their local high schools, in part because high schools don't have enough of guidance counselors. I wrote about this issue for The 74, an online education website.
While working on this story, I met Jennifer Hernandez, who learned the hard way that a community college was the best path for her to get an affordable education. I'm thrilled that she found a way to finish her education at a four-year college without student loan debt and will begin her graduate studies at the University of Chicago this fall.
This is the first time I've written about guidance counselors, though I have written quite a bit about the cost of college. Here are some links:
The Unnecessarily High Cost of College (Atlantic, Sept. 2016)
Why Students Are Still Spending Too Much Money on Textbooks (Atlantic, Jan. 2018)