Education is powerful because it changes and develops minds. A love for continuous learning facilitates growth, deepens humility, and enhances the yearning for a better world. Providing our children with high-quality education and the lenses to understand the world around them is the “most powerful weapon which a [civilization] has to change the world.”

We need to commit to teaching our students soft skills such as creativity, innovativeness, empathy, and inculcate in them a genuine interest and curiosity in the world around them if we want to create a better world. Teaching technical and analytical skills is at the center of formalized education today and while we teach our children important building blocks in math, science, languages, and social studies that develop the intellect, formalized learning do not intentionally incorporate softer, more “emotional” skills that build a student’s love for lifelong learning. This unfortunate omission produced students who are disengaged, bored, and rebellious. 

Lindsey Wander, who founded and runs World Wise Tutoring and a non-profit, Educate. Radiate. Elevate., believes that the love of learning is inherent in human nature. She’s made it her mission to provide all students, regardless of economic background, with the soft skills that underlie the love for learning and independent thinking. In this interview, we talk about her mission, strategies to keep students engaged and curious, what’s working and what’s not in American education, and her hope for the future.

About Lindsey

Lindsey studied to become a Biomedical Engineer and earned a B.S. in Biology, a B.A. in Chemistry, and a Minor in Mathematics. She took part in various science-based internships the world over to her passion and an environmental educator internship in Pennsylvania inspired her to return to college and become a biology teacher in California. Lindsey loved having her classroom and seeing her “kids” every day, inspiring a joy for learning within them while discovering new and creative ways to teach complex subjects.

When Lindsey moved to Chicago several years later, she became a full-time tutor. Through her professional and personal experiences, she could quickly assess her students, molding her teaching style to maximize their strengths and reshape their weaknesses into positive traits. She taught them how to learn, so they are always in the powerful position of being able to help themselves. This custom approach ensures they’re given every tool necessary to be successful, building their confidence and skills enough to be independent learners. She now shares her experience and method with her highly qualified tutors so that they can help more students become lifelong learners. 

Connect with Lindsey

World Wise Tutoring

Educate. Radiate. Elevate. 

Lindsey’s LinkedIn page

When I got married in the summer of 2012, I got fresh flowers. I wanted to symbolize a new beginning and welcome hopes of fertility, happiness, and fidelity. I splurged on the flowers and they arrived at our wedding venue wrapped in plastic and carefully laid in a new corrugated icebox. Our vendor wrapped the flowers with the proper packing material inside. In all the excitement of our wedding, we did not stop to consider using alternative flowers. But even if we did, I doubt we would’ve chosen silk or plastic flowers for 1 reason. I thought that they look fake.

But ordering fresh flowers for events and celebrations is costly - both to our pockets and to the environment. Reports state that sending the roughly 100 million roses of a typical Valentine’s Day produces some 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from field to U.S. florist with flower delivery flights burning approximately 30 million gallons of fuel.

In this episode, I talk to Megan Rapacz about how to protect the environment and our purse strings with reusable high-quality silk flowers. Today’s faux flowers are both beautiful and cost-effective. To meet the demand for these flowers in the wedding space, Megan, together with her sister Amanda, started a socially conscious business that offers beautiful silk flowers to engaged couples planning a wedding. We talk about starting a socially conscious business, finding the right partners to work with, staying true to the mission, finding the funds to start a new business, and setting bigger and more inspiring goals to aspire to as the business grows. 

About Silk Stem Collective 

Sisters Megan and Amanda Rapacz founded Silk Stem Collective to deal with these problems. Silk Stem Collective is a rent-and-return wedding floral service offering sets of quality silk flowers to environmentally and economically conscious couples. Newly married couples rent these flowers and pass their set off to the next couple after the wedding. Since the company started, it’s grown to offer 8 unique collections, with more on the way, of the highest quality silk flowers. More brides and grooms are getting beautiful flowers at a reasonable cost.

Megan and Amanda design bouquets that they would want at prices they would pay, with the goal of making these flowers versatile enough to fit every wedding vision but special enough to make their clients feel like a treasured bride or groom. Megan and Amanda also created a blog called “The Greenhouse” which is filled with original thoughts on flowers, trends, and tidbits they’ve learned throughout the wedding planning process.

Contact Silk Stem Collective

Facebook: @Silkstemcollective Instagram: @Silkstemcollective Website: https://silkstemcollective.com/

What would you do if you received news that turned your life upside-down and inside out in a moment? Sometimes, we receive bad news, news that we are unprepared for, and news that shake us to our core. Receiving bad news can trigger an avalanche of negative emotions and a whirlwind of dark scary thoughts. When we receive bad news, we try to run and hide because it would seem that not confronting the problem allows us to believe that we never received that news. Avoidance, however, is counterproductive because we cannot erase what has happened or the news we've received. The only choice we really have is to feel the big gaping hole in our heart, reframe the information we've received in our mind, find the strength we have (and believe me, everyone of us has a reservoir of infinite strength and wisdom if we tap into it), and turn bad news into saving grace, learning moments, and the opportunity to be thankful for the important things in our life.

Our guest, the beautiful and amazing Fitz Koehler, shares her terrifying experience of finding a cancerous lump in her breast seven weeks after a clean mammogram. But, as a fitness expert and race announcer, Fitz refused to play the victim or allow cancer to steal her extraordinary career or time with family. In her book, My Noisy Cancer Comeback, Fitz reveals the juicy and gory details of her 16-month battle, all while zigzagging across the United States. Enduring chemotherapy, radiation, and surgeries in the public eye wasn’t easy.

You’ll laugh, cry, wince, and cheer as she chronicles the clash of an avalanche of side effects with 22 major race weekends in her book. Her inspirational tale encompasses the terror of diagnosis, bald heads and black dresses, spectacular stages, parenting with cancer, perspective, and, most importantly, triumph. Perhaps, more importantly, you’ll walk away grittier, more optimistic, and inspired to conquer any obstacle. Fitz's book is a must-read for all cancer patients and their families. People from all aspects of the running community will also adore getting to experience a behind-the-scenes view of life at the helm of America’s greatest road races.

About Fitz

Fitz Koehler is a fitness innovator with a Master’s Degree in Exercise and Sport Sciences from the University of Florida, who has been teaching fitness around the globe for decades. She’s the president of Fitzness International LLC, a fitness company that specializes in fitness education via mass media, and fitness programming for children (Morning Mile). Along with teaching to millions in person via corporate speaking engagements and seminars in over a dozen countries…Fitz has promoted fitness through every avenue of mass media; books, television, films, radio, magazines, journals and online. Fitz’s mission is to tack ten years on to everyone’s life she comes across. Fitzness is not only an aggressive force in the worldwide push to increase health; Fitz has created a brand. Fitzness is a gimmick free, innovative, concise, fun and attainable form of fitness.

Reach out to Fitz

Email: fitzness@aol.com

The Morning Mile

The Morning Mile™ is a before-school walking/running program that gives children the chance to start each day in an active way while enjoying fun, music and friends. 

Fitz's Website

Order "My Noisy Cancer Comeback"