MSI Press Blog

  We cannot tell the back story of 10 Quick Homework Tips without telling the story of is sister book, 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents . So, here is the link to that back story , which we shared last Sunday Back Story of  10 Quick Homework Tips by Cindy McKinley Alder & Patti Trombly [Please do read the back story for 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents to learn how Cindy and Patti met.] A few years ago, after listening to the frustrations of parents trying to find time for everything as well as struggling to work with their kids at home more during the pandemic, Patti and I decided to create a “quick tip” book to help. It seemed homework issues were especially overwhelming and challenging for busy parents.   So, we worked together again and wrote a short book on   easy ways parents could help ease the frustrations of homework battles.   10 Quick Homework Tips was not as time-consuming, but just as fun for us to write.   It feels great to share so man...

Today's meditation from  Weekly Soul: Fifty-two Meditations on Meaningful, Joyful, and Peaceful Living   by Dr. Frederic Craigie: -46-   Understanding and love are not two things, but just one. When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.   Thich Nhat Hanh   As a young African-American boy growing up in predominantly white Boston suburb, Daryl Davis knew little of racism. As he moved along into his middle school years, though, incidents began to come up that showed him the dark reality of racial discrimination even in his comfortable northern community. His experiences prompted a life-long question, “How can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” As an adult, Davis became a professional musician, performing boogie w...

Back Story  of  365 Teachers Secrets for Parents: Fun Ways to Help Your Elementary Child Succeed in School  by Cindy McKinley Alder & Patti Trombly Nearly 30 years ago, I met Patti in the back row of a grad school classroom at Eastern Michigan University.  Our professor had us begin the class by writing out a “Bliss List”: all the things that made us happy.  When we compared lists, we were shocked to see they were almost identical! We were both due to have our first babies in a few months, both elementary school teachers, both working on a Masters in Reading, and both had a weakness for soft pretzels. We didn’t know it at the time, but that day sparked a decades-long friendship. Throughout the years, Patti taught upper elementary, and I taught the lower grades.  We met weekly with our four kids and, of course, always ended up talking about teaching and how eager the parents were to find ways to help their kids at home.  I eventu...

This book contains 100 miracles from the Gospels -- and similar true-story miracles for today, for a total of 400 (!!) miracles described, explained, and discussed in the book, with questions for individual or group reflection. Here is one of those miracles with its modern-day counterparts: A BIG FISH STORY  (Gospel account in Luke 5:1-11)  Peter and Andrew were fishermen by trade. They’d caught thousands of fish and no doubt loved to swap fish stories with their friends, but this particular fish story topped them all. Here is what happened: One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, great crowds pressed in on him to hear this charismatic street preacher. He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge—their owners had left them and were washing their nets. Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, its owner, to push it out into the water. Then he sat down in the boat and continued teaching the people. When he finished speaking, he s...

  Today's back story is about the book, It Only Hurts When I Can't Run  by Gewanda Parker. From the publisher: When Gewanda approached us with her pre-publication manuscript, it was clear that here was a person who had experienced tremendous trauma as a child. That is a story, of course. A sad story. However, what was also clear was her resilience in overcoming that trauma very, very successfully. That was a story worth publishing. An uplifting story. A story that can help others. More important for us as publisher, it fit into a line of such books, the leaders of which were Elizabeth Mahlou's Blest Atheist and Geri Henderson's and Seanne Emerton's Healing from Incest -- and ultimate prompted the commissioned book by Joanna Romer, Recovering from Domestic Abuse, Stalking, and Abuse . When it was released, Gewanda's book quickly flew to the top of Amazon's hot new releases lists: #4 Hot New Releases in the child abuse category #8 Hot New Releases in the fam...

  Loss changes us. Healing is not restoration to the person we were before; it is transformation into someone who carries both love and loss with grace. When grief enters, it rearranges the furniture of the soul. The familiar patterns of thought and feeling no longer fit. We search for the old self — the one who laughed easily, planned confidently, believed the world was predictable — but that person is gone. In their place stands someone quieter, deeper, more aware of fragility. The Myth of “Getting Back to Normal” After loss, people often say, “You’ll get back to normal.” But there is no “back.” There is only forward — into a new landscape shaped by absence. Restoration implies repair; transformation implies rebirth. The wound doesn’t close by erasing what happened. It closes by integrating what happened into who we are becoming. The Wound as Doorway The wound becomes a doorway through which compassion enters. When we have suffered, we recognize suffering in others. We listen di...