THRILLED TO BE A PART OF THE SHARP AS A TACK TEAM!

Hello All!

My name is Jon Haga and I am the newly acquired Programs Coordinator for Sharp As A Tack. When I first met J. at one of his fantastic Knockin` Noggin trivia nights I was fortunate enough to stick around for a while and speak with him about Sharp As A Tack. I was immediately interested in the company and wanted to learn more about his methods and how it positively affected his students.

Being an early childhood teacher in Chicago myself I was always looking for ways to differentiate instruction in a new and fun way. Soon after I went to one of Sharp As A Tack’s professional developments and immediately brought what I learned into my classroom. The students were entranced with the games and began to ask over and over again to play. The greatest thing about what he is doing is that the children didn't know that they were learning essential skills in cognitive development. They were interested in the games and had no idea of the knowledge they were acquiring. I would play games like Spot It! and Super Circles during our small group work and I would began to see how they started to pick up things easier in other areas of their daily lives. Over the next few months I began helping J. out at a few programs and witnessing in other classrooms, first hand, how game play was influencing cognitive development in a positive way. Not only was this method of learning influencing the cognitive development of children but it also created interpersonal skills that the students could not learn in any other realm of education. Age, sex, ability roles vanished and the children were able to interact through game play. I would see sixth grade students helping kindergarten students work through games of Word on the Street and Back Seat Drawing. I would see a group of fifth grade girls helping a first grade boy with Rock the Beat. Rarely do children of these different ages get to interact let alone work together. You could see within a day the children grow socially and emotionally in a very positive way.

When J. offered me the position of Programs Coordinator at Sharp As A Tack I jumped at the opportunity. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “nothing can be accomplished without enthusiasm”. J. saw the enthusiasm for teaching and for Sharp As A Tack inside me and I look forward to bringing my experience, knowledge, and enthusiasm to the Sharp As A Tack family and can’t wait to see this program in schools across the nation. Until next time...

Jon Haga

Meet our new Educational Programs Director!

Greetings!

I am Dana Vance, newly hired Educational Programs Director for Sharp As A Tack.  I was a classroom teacher for ten years, the past four in gifted education.  I first became acquainted with Jason three years ago.  He came into my classroom twice a year to do game days.  I was teaching gifted language arts to fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders.  At first I figured it would just be a fun day, a treat, a break from traditional academic work.  My students were extremely bright and as such dealt with a tremendous amount of pressure, both internal and external.  A game day was the perfect way to take a breather.  That was my rationale.  Over time, though, it became clear that more was going on than just FUN.  Not that fun isn’t enough, but there was more.  I watched fifth and seventh graders team up to play Loot.  Sixth and eighth graders battled it out over Abalone.  Students who never faltered academically found themselves unable to crack the master level of Rush Hour.   Grade levels became irrelevant when making teams to play Word on the Street.  I began to purchase some of the games that Jason brought and students played them when their work was done or when they needed a break.  We started to talk about strategy, about how our brains work under pressure, what it felt like to NOT be immediately the best at something.  We talked about different types of thinking and planning and how to apply game strategies to their academic lives.  Then I started to hear from parents that they had purchased the games and were playing them at home, having a ball as a family.  Yet another unexpected benefit!  Clearly more was going on here than just playing fun games!

The more I talked to Jason and looked at all positive affects playing was having on my students, I knew I wanted in on Sharp As A Tack.  I cannot think of another avenue that is so uniformly applicable in a classroom—any child can play a game.  Games can be modified for English Language Learners or learning disabled students.  Games can offer students on the autism spectrum a way to interact with their peers.  Games can help students with behavior disorders practice social skills.  Games can help gifted and talented students learn to deal with failure in a safe way.  Games help all students learn good sportsmanship, how to deal with losing and how to be a gracious winner.

I have always been wary of “curriculum in a box” programs, the kind where a teacher can purchase a ready made set of books-workbooks-assessments on a given topic and BOOM—instant lesson plans.  Those kind of generic programs are marketed to schools from New Jersey to San Francisco and are meant to apply to any student anywhere.  How is that possible?  Students are different everywhere you go!  Games, though, work with any student anywhere because games are not a program.  Games can be used in so many ways in so many classrooms with so many kinds of students.  That’s why I left classroom teaching to come on board with Sharp As A Tack.  We all know the education world is changing.  It’s becoming harder and harder to engage students in rigorous thought and exploration, harder for teachers to compete with video games, hard for districts to do more with less funding.  Using board games as an antidote to all that may seem old fashioned, but it’s exactly the opposite: brain games are the perfect way to engage students and capitalize on their engagement to address critical thinking, strategic planning and social skills, all the things we need the next generation to be able to do.

You will be hearing more from me in the future.  I am thrilled to be a part of the efforts of Sharp As A Tack to bring fabulous brain games to as many students as possible.  Look for news and information about using games with ADHD students, ELL students, gifted and talented students and autism spectrum students, and of course all kinds of other students too!!!

Dana

currently obsessed with Zertz 

Hello to all of our followers!

My name is Mandy, and I just wanted to take the time to introduce myself to our loyal followers.  I am the brand-new Research Coordinator for Sharp as a Tack.  I have been involved with Sharp (for short) since the beginning, starting as a program instructor for three different Chicago schools last spring.  Following a three-month hiatus where I did a paid research internship at Youngstown State University in Ohio, I was finally brought on board with J as a full-time employee.  I will not only be researching the effectiveness of our programs, but I will also be a regular program instructor. 

My hope is that through this research, there can be real steps taken by parents, teachers, and administrators to improve our floundering education system.  I have seen our programs work, even in one short semester.  In fact, just from working with the kids, I saw an improvement in my own cognitive processing speed!  I am certain that through the rigors of systematic scientific investigation I will be able to show not only that our programs work, but also how well and in what areas.  I also want to assure our readers that I promise to stay true to the science and resist the temptation to view our results with any bias.  In fact, we are considering university partnerships to avoid any question of our results or our intentions.

I am so excited to be a part of the Sharp as a Tack family.  It’s rewarding to be involved in a company that has a real impact on the way people learn, in such an immediate way.  I really want our research to be useful to educators and parents, and I can’t wait for our results to directly impact the students we seek to help.  Here’s to a great school year!

~~~ Mandy ~~~