The Missing Piece: Educating New Kids for a New World

We are in an education crisis. We need to restore the teaching profession to one of respect and support and provide effective education to enable current students, the "new kids," to rise to their full potential

"What a fabulous book. Herm and Dolores have written a truly inspirational resource for teachers. This should be required reading for anyone preparing to enter the classroom--and for anyone who needs to step back and rethink, think through, or reconsider their practice. They speak to the reader's heart as well as the head, and Herm's poetry is the best medicine I know for preventing teacher burnout."
--Carol Jago, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and long-time middle and high school teacher in Santa Monica, California

"The Missing Piece by Dolores and Hermon Card is the book we've all been waiting for about how to educate the 'new kids, ' this evolutionary bunch of uniquely different individuals known variously by labels as quirky as they are. You name it and this book covers it, and in a style as usable as it is advanced. Dolores and Hermon encourage students to make connections to themselves and then work beyond themselves to extend their reach--'to work with us, not for us.'
"The raw truth about our current education system and how to fix it is covered, with poetry, with solutions and with expansive teaching styles that include meditation, Reiki, chakras, the higher self, and the importance of spirituality. No, this isn't new age; it is new thought, in its most courageous form--a balanced and realistic way to educate the whole child.
"I was blown away by The Missing Piece. No one else has looked at our educational system today, and the various proposals to fix what's wrong, with eyes and hearts broad enough to recognize what was and is still missing, what the 'new kids' must have--a holistic approach. Thank you, Dolores and Hermon Card, for giving us a miracle."
--P. M. H. Atwater, L.H.D., author of Children of the Fifth World, Future Memory, and Near Death Experiences: The Rest of the Story

Herm Card is a retired English Teacher from the Marcellus, New York, Central School District. He is a former baseball player and coach at Syracuse University, NCAA baseball umpire and an educational consultant to the national Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. His background in education is extensive 32 years of classroom teaching, along with over 20 years of professional development consulting and motivational speaking. He is well versed in the state of education today, and has written extensively on the topic as education columnist for the Eagle Newspapers. He has received numerous awards and grants for his teaching, innovative classroom programs, poetry and photography. He is a New York State Educator of Excellence, and his Celebration of Poetry program was named a New York State English Council Program of Excellence He has published three books of his poetry and has credits for numerous articles, poetry and photography in education journals throughout the country, and received a cover photography award from the National Council of Teachers of English. He served 10 years each on the boards of New York State English Council and the Central New York Teacher Center. He is a former editor of The English Record, the professional journal of the New York State English Council. For five years he served as a consultant with CTB-McGraw Hill and the New York State Education Department on the development, evaluation, implementation and scoring of the current series of New York State ELA assessment tests, and authored Barron's New York State Grade 5 Test Preparation Manual. Despite the textbook irony of those last associations, he is an activist for the cause of minimizing the burden of assessment testing and government in education, in the quest to return teaching to teachers. Dolores Card has taught metaphysical classes and Reiki certification for 25 years. She is a Reiki Master, ecumenical minister and spiritual advisor.