Strollerderby : interview

Interview with Marlee Matlin

editors — Tue, 05 May 2009 16:25:00 GMT

Today on Babble:

"Marlee Matlin"

by Tammy La Gorce

Oscar winning actress and mother of four Marlee Matlin has been far from typecast into the onscreen role of mom, but, she'd "love to do the story of Octomom!"

Read it here.

Ali Landry: Goodnight Doritos Girl, Spotlight on Mom

JeanneSager — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:01:00 GMT

If you've ever been embarrassed by your taste for celebrity parent news (admit it, Babble's Famecrawler the first place you visit), you're going to get a kick out of Ali Landry.

Once a member of the People's Fifty Most Beautiful People List and the famous "Doritos girl" from the late nineties, Landry now has a weekly Webcast that's allowing every day parents (us) instant access to celebrity parents. And Landry, ahem, is just as interested as the rest of us.

Landry sat down with Babble to talk about her new show, Spotlight to Nightlight, and parenting daughter Estela (twenty months).

First way she won us over? She admitted her twenty-month-old has already hit the terrible twos. Yes, that's a real mom talking there!

Babble: What got you into actually talking about motherhood and doing Spotlight to Nightlight?

Landry: I am a researcher. Yes, I am a little bit of a Type A personality. If I'm going to do something, I want to do it as close to perfection as possible. (laughing). Even through the birth and the pregnancy, I researched everything. I don't buy one thing without researching it. Everybody I meet, I ask them questions. I'm in the aisles at Babies R Us . . . when I was trying to figure out what bottle to give the baby (you know, I nursed for a long time, but I also supplemented with bottles), I probably asked fifteen women which bottle they used. I was driving them all nuts! I love researching the products, and I read every book... you study so much in school and in college but no one really prepares you for being a mom.

Babble: Did you find the internet really helped you with your research?

Landry: The internet was really my go-to. People today ask me about Estela, where did you get that for her? And I tell them, I got it online. I go to all the parent reviews, I look at everyting. I compare notes. I look at probably fifteen sites on the same thing. I'm a little crazy on those kind of things! I'm the go-to person for getting the shower list together for everbody, the products they're going to register for. My friends, before they buy anything, they call me! So, anyway, I was sort of dabbling, writing my own show which was going to be a talk show for moms . . . and this opportunity came up online. I thought this could be a perfect accompaniment to the television show. No one has ever addressed that on televison. I think they're all afraid that moms are not their target audience which I think is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Who do they think is watching daytime television?

The show is cut into three- to five-minute interviews with celebrity moms (most recently Sarah Clarke of 24) interspersed with interviews with experts on parenting-related topics. In other words - it's not just the celebrity parents themselves. It's the whole world. And that means nannies, bailouts and more.

Landry: People in general are fascinated with the whole celebrity baby thing, but to me the show is not truly about that. It's about being a mom, period. Whether you're a celebrity or not, I'm trying my hardest to get that relatability factor between celebrity moms and every mom whose out there. Truly, yes, they might be a little more glamorous. Yes, they might be getting their hair and make-up done and walking on a red carpet. But at the end of the day, they're a parent first. We're all going through the same thing, the same struggle. We're all trying to be a good mom, a good wife, a good daughter, a good friend. That's why I'm really trying to accomplish, to get these women to let their guard down and talk about what really matters to them.

Babble: What makes you relatable? You're this girl from Louisiana, but you're also the Doritos girl . . .

Landry: I don't even see that side of me. That's what I do, but that's not even at all who I am as a person. So, anybody who talks to me or meets me forgets about that. That's also what I really want to do with the show - to show we're all moms, we're all going through the same thing. We're all women first.

The shows are short, but Landry makes us feel a little better about our obsessions. And, hey, a celebrity mom who can admit she's got a terrible toddler on the loose? Someone we can totally relate to! Catch the show - also available in Spanish over at Yahoo's OMG.

Another Day, Another Dollar, Another Octomom Exclusive Interview

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Recently asked if she was planning to do a reality show, Octomom said, “Absolutely not! I have no interest in being famous. I’d love to vanish from the public eye as soon as I can.” Whom was she talking to about “vanishing from the public eye?” Life and Style magazine, which has Nadya Suleman on the cover of their current issue. Here’s a hint on how to avoid that pesky fame, Nadya: don’t give two-hour interviews to entertainment magazines.

Given the hypocrisy of her response about reality TV, I’m inclined to believe reports (from In Touch Weekly, which—surprise!—also has an “exclusive” interview with Suleman in an upcoming issue) that a reality TV show is already in the works for the Octomom and her populous clan.

On the pain of giving birth to ocuplets, Suleman told Life and Style, “With that many babies, it feels like your insides are being torn apart. The babies were ripping apart my organs.” Wow! She sure does have a flair for drama. I have no doubt that giving birth to eight babies at once induces a level of pain that I hope to never experience in my life, but her description sounds like it’s straight out of a gory sci-fi movie (or a particularly compelling segment of a reality TV show….). And judging from the endless images of Suleman gracing magazines, TV, and the Internet, it seems that all of her organs survived the birth.

Suleman was also eager to dispel rumors that she didn’t really, really want kids—since, you know, that’s what we’re all so concerned about. “People think I just woke up one day and decided to start a family,” she said. “I’ve been trying to have kids since I was 19 years-old!” And you think this makes it LESS insane that you have quite purposefully spawned 14 children by age 33? Judging from the cover of the magazine (which is all I have to go on, since there's no way I'm going to spend three bucks to read more of the interview than the online excerpt), Suleman is considering having even more children.

I’m starting to think that Nadya Suleman may be even crazier than she seems—crazy in a way that requires compassion and serious psychiatric treatment, not a media campaign, and definitely not a fertility clinic.

Photo: Life and Style

Hey Obama, Give This Kid an Interview!

JeanneSager — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:02:00 GMT

Damon Weaver's stuck his mic in the faces of the likes of Vice President-Elect Joe Biden, future Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and possible New York Senate-seat-holder Caroline Kennedy. So what makes him any different from your standard political pundit? He's just ten years old.

And now the Florida fifth grader is gunning for the biggest interview of his TV news career: he wants to land President-Elect Barack Obama.

Weaver is an anchorman for KEC-TV news, the show produced by fifth and sixth graders at Canal Point Elementary School in Pahokee, Florida. His four-minute bid for the Obama interview has gotten more than forty thousand hits on YouTube, and he's got a second video with Miami Heat guard Dwayne Wade and forward Shawn Marion putting in a few good words for the little man.

Marion says he'll play the president-elect one-on-one if he'll interview Weaver - although he can't promise he'll let him win. And Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Anquan Boldin? He's a graduate of Weaver's elementary school, and he's chipped in some cash to help get the pre-teen to the inauguration. The school threw a carnival to help make it happen too; and the boy will spend an entire week in D.C. in January. That's when he hopes Obama will grant a few moments of his time for an aspiring reporter.

"I can interview you any time, any day of that week - just have your people call my people," Weaver says with a wide grin at the end of his YouTube message."If you want to be my homeboy just like Joe Biden, all you have to do is just let me interview you."

Well-spoken (especially for a ten-year-old), Weaver is polite, sweet and hopeful. He's got just the right mix of "I can do it" and "oh please, let me do it" that makes you want to root for him. And he's done his homework - his video has clips not just of the NBA and NFL stars but of the agricultural importance of his hometown and the classrooms where he spends his days. He might be "just a kid," but he's obviously got something to say about the country's future - and his own.

So what do you think? Should Obama give this kid an interview and help make a real reporter out of him?

Juno Goes to Washington? Congress' First Unwed Mom

Mom Gets Hate Mail for Ending Kids Thanksgiving Party

Nintendo Scrabble Game Drops the F-Bomb

Mix Rap With Kid Shows and Whaddya Get?

Babble Talk: The Easter Bunny Can House Santa

Malia Obama Likes Her Parents' PDA

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:36:00 GMT

It’s an unspoken rule of teendom that parents kissing, holding hands, or making ga ga eyes is to be met with an emphatic, “Ew.” How many preteens do you know would openly admit that their parents’ public displays of affection make them feel good? Personally, I didn’t know any until just now.

The Huffinton Post dug up a clip from this summer’s Access Hollywood interview with the Obama family in which 10-year-old Malia Obama professes to like her parents’ famed PDA. When asked what romantic things she does for her husband, Michelle jokingly answered, “I take care of his kids” (with Barack agreeing that motherhood is “pretty romantic"), before going on to say that she thinks smalls affections go a long way—giving him a hug or kiss or sitting on his lap.

Malia eagerly interrupts to say that she likes to see her parents cuddling. "Kids like it when their parents are all...except sometimes when you get to be a teenager and people think it's embarrassing," she said. "I like it though. It makes me feel good."

In case you want to know what Malia feels so good about, the Huffington Post has also posted a slideshow of the best Obama PDA moments. Here are a couple of highlights:

Photos: Huffington Post

Roald Dahl's Widow Recalls His Childlike Sensibility

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 22:30:00 GMT

Felicity Dahl, the widow of the beloved children’s book author Roald Dahl, rarely gives interviews. 18 years after Dahl’s death, she finds it difficult to speak about her husband without crying. But in an interview with the Sunday Guardian, she spoke candidly about her husband's writing and personal life in order to publicize the inaugural Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which will be awarded to a humorous children’s book author on Thursday.

Felicity (pictured), won now runs the Roald Dahl Foundation, attributes Dahl’s popularity among kids not just to his humor, but to the fact that he treated children as his “equals,” never talking down to them or forgetting his own childlike wonder. He would drink pink milk for breakfast and constantly look for ways to surprise strangers with “treats,” such as buying all the nurses on his hospital floor new clothes in the last months of his life.

Dahl’s life was punctuated by tragedy. His sister and father died of unrelated illnesses within a month of each other when he was young, and his own daughter contracted a fatal illness many years later. But Felicity said he kept positive in large part by keeping his child’s mind alive and well. “He was always looking to help people and just make their day a little more interesting,” Felicity said, “because most people's days were very dull.”

Felicity is certain that Dahl would have been sorely disheartened by the advent of Game Boys and Nintendo Wiis that occupy so much of young people's free time these days. “I think [computer] games are absolutely appalling,” she said. “A child is never left on their own with nothing, so that they have to create their world.”

On the upside, one million of Dahl’s books continue to be sold each year.

Photo: Antonio Olmes/The Guardian

Why Roald Dahl Matters

7-Year-Old Steals Grandma's Car, Becomes Hero

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:00:00 GMT

You may remember Latarian Milton, the seven-year-old who stole the keys to his grandma’s SUV and took it for a joyride with his friend because “it’s fun to do bad things, like drive into a car?” (He did, in fact, drive into several cars on his joyride.)

Well, just in case Latarian’s grandmother didn’t teach Latarian right and wrong with her violent threats—“If I thought they wouldn’t take me to jail, I’d whip his behind,” she said—Latarian has now become a sort of star for his bad ass ways. This recent radio interview starts with the interviewers telling Latarian that they are big fans of his. When they ask if people stop him and ask for his autograph, he says, "I'm a celebrity."

So basically Latarian has learned that acting out in potentially lethal ways makes you cool, and that violence is a great way to express your anger, so long as you don’t get caught.

Photo: ecoustics.com

Interview: Larry Martinek of Mathnasium - Part 1

Brett Singer — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:30:00 GMT

The Mathnasium Philosophy:
Children don't hate math
They hate being confused and intimidated by math
With understanding comes passion.
And with passion comes growth - a treasure is unlocked.
(Source: mathnasium.com)

Do your kids hate math? Well, they don't. They may think they do, but what they really hate is "being confused and intimated by math."

That's what Larry Martinek (pictured at right, teaching), the creator of the Mathnasium Method, believes, and after talking to him, I'm inclined to believe it as well. Larry was a math teacher for 30 years, so he knows quite a bit about how difficult it can be to get kids to learn even the most basic mathematical concepts. At one point in his career, he decided to start doing things differently: teach math so that it makes sense to the students, rather than to the teachers. Radical idea, right? It's so basic, but somehow not obvious at all. He starts with skills as basic as counting, and uses seemingly simple concepts to show children how they can start solving math problems on their own. Even calculus is just an advanced form of counting. (As someone is something other than a math person, I'm going to take his word for it.)

Peter Markovitz and David Ullendorff had an idea for a chain of math centers, but they were businessmen, not teachers. Larry had become known in Los Angeles as "The Math Guy", so the pair approached him. At first they were skeptical, but after watching him work with students and seeing the incredible results, they committed wholeheartedly to what is now called the Mathnasium Method.

At Mathnasium centers worldwide, students are able to "drop in" whenever they like, although the sessions are usually an hour or more. The company must be doing something right, because there are now over 200 locations, not only in the United States but as far away as Thailand. (For locations, visit mathnasium.com.) I spoke to Larry about Mathnasium and his philosophies about how children learn math. Here is part one of excerpts from our conversation; part two will be posted next week.

Brett Singer: Tell me a little about your background
Larry Martinek: I've been a mathematics teacher in the LA area for the last 34 years. I started teaching inner city middle school in 1974 [and I] made a transition because I realized most of the kids I was working with were significantly behind grade level and the work that I was doing with them was all catch up work, trying to fix them instead of teaching them grade-level material. So I got involved in teaching teachers how to get kids off to a good start so by the time they got to middle school they were actually ready for middle school work. That work became so successful that I spent the better part of the last 18 years as a teacher trainer, and as a crisis teacher – I go into situations that are very difficult [and] straighten them out.

B: Why do you think the kids were not working at their grade level?
L: There are a number of reasons [for that]. Probably the most significant is that most elementary teachers were liberal arts major and were not math or science majors in college and there are very few classes in college on how to teach math. So when kids get into the classroom, the teachers work pretty much directly from the book...if the kids have difficulty, the teachers don't have the techniques [to] get them up to speed in a hurry. That is, during the school year that they're in. So if they leave a particular grade with gaps, say, a third grader, the fourth grade teacher has got to teach fourth grade curriculum and typically doesn't have time to go back and [repeat] the third grade material. That happens all the way up and down the line, and as a result the kids end up getting into middle school with significant gaps in their knowledge.

B: Are there classes in how to teach topics other than math?
L: There are definitely extensive classes in the teaching of reading. But since most teachers have a degree in liberal arts, they pretty well cover their liberal arts subjects in their other courses, if not directly how to teach them, in the content of the courses, whereas they did not take nearly as many courses in the content of math or the teaching of math. This is true also by the way of science; science teachers have a similar complaint. Science teachers lack a deep background of knowledge in the elementary years; they know what science [the students] are capable of learning but the system doesn't prepare them to deliver it.

B: How long has Mathnasium been around?
L: I met the two partners in April of 2002. We opened the first Mathnasium in October 1st of 2002. I ran that for 14 months and in January of 2004 we started franchising. We just opened our 200th franchise worldwide. We have about 140 domestic franchises and about 60 international. Because I discovered that my kids were so far behind in those early years, I started writing my own material. Being in middle school, we didn't have material for my seventh graders, [who] were really developmentally third and fourth graders. And what they needed was material that reflected where they were so that I could bridge the gap. If I taught them strictly seventh grade material but they were only fourth grade in maturity, there's little chance they're going to understand what's going on. Since '74, I haven't stopped creating material and that is the body of material that we use at Mathnasium.
In the middle of all that I became a father and at about age 4 it became obvious that my son was logically precocious and by 5 it was obvious that he was going to be a very strong math student. He started asking me things at age 5 and 6 that were way beyond his years, so I had to come up with different ways to explain things and in the process of doing that I created an entire new generation of material that took the standard math ideas and rephrased them in ways that make sense to kids. In fact that gave rise to what is now Mathasium's corporate mission statement, which is "To teach children math in a way that makes sense to them". That phrase "to them" is so important. For many, many years my son and I wrote material to the point where we had about 6,000 pages of curriculum that started Mathnasium, and we've added several thousand more in the years since we've been open. We have this very substantial library of material that we use to help kids, kids that need to get caught up, some kids that need to keep up, and some kids that want to get ahead. And we have the material to help all of them.
The Mathnasium method...requires that our instructors have multiple ways of explaining things, so that if the child doesn't get something one way, we can explain it to them a different way until we can hit on something that triggers something in the kid, so we can know that we've actually transmitted the information.

B: Who goes to Mathnasium?
L: Our core program is from second grade to SAT I, which would be roughly 10th or 11th grade depending on the student. We always have a pre-K through first grade program, and also a higher math program, which is algebra II, trig and pre-calculus. (Note: the grade level for these courses varies, but is typically 11th or 12th grade.) The main body of our enrollment is between 3rd grade and 8th grade, those very critical early and middle years. For so many kids, that's the make or break time...if they learn the foundations of math well at that point, they're going to find that math is actually fun as they move through the years, instead of growing up to be one of the people who go off and say "I hate math".

B: If a kid says to you, I hate math, what would you say to them?
L: As they say very boldly on our web site, it turns out that kids and adults really don't hate math. What they hate is the frustration, the intimidation, the embarrassment that is associated with not being able to do the math. If a kid says they hate math, I'm not going to tell them something. What I'm going to do is sit down and teach them something. In the Mathnasium process we do a very in depth assessment of kids, and from that assessment we're able to figure out exactly what the kid needs next. If I can teach that student the next thing they need to learn, the universal response is "Wow. That's cool." Because for many kids this will be the first time in years that they've actually understood what's going on in a math situation. Think about it: a kid who is two or three years behind has not experienced success in the classroom in many, many years. And when you give them that initial success, it turns out within the first two or three visits that almost every kid who comes in with that "I hate math" attitude, that all dissolves when we give them that feeling of success that comes from actually accomplishing the next thing they need to learn. It's really quite an amazing process. We get phone calls from teachers, parents, saying, "What did you do to my kid?" All of a sudden their attitude has changed, and the reason their attitude has changed is that they've been experiencing, finally, success. Once the kid emotionally buys into the process, we have a great chance of succeeding and getting the kid caught up to where they should be.

B: So there is an element of this that can breed confidence?
L: Absolutely. Success breeds confidence. The kids don't feel confident because they haven't been successful. That's the most common experience I've had with kids.

B: Is there spillover into other areas of academics?
L: Absolutely. All the way back in Plato's time, Plato said, "Did you ever notice that those that are quick with computation tend to pick up everything else quickly?" When the kids get the confidence, they get this can-do attitude, they benefit more from their time in their math class, and it definitely spills over into their other classes. For some kids, all of a sudden, they really feel they can do it.

Next week, more from the interview, including how No Child Left Behind may not be the best thing for kids, how a recent government study recommended methods very similar to Mathnasium's, and how math is important to many professions, such as carpenters and plumbers.

image: Mathnasium

Johnny Depp "Interview" Involves Small Japanese Girls Dressed as Pirates

Karen Murphy — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:30:00 GMT

I love me some Johnny Depp. In fact, he can hang out with me and be all eccentric all he wants. But I think there's a good reason why he's somewhat reclusive, which is also Reason #114 Why I Am Not A Celebrity: Weird interview situations. Watch as Johnny Depp is waylaid on Japanese television for an apparent (he thinks) interview, when instead he is regaled by four small, energetic and very loud girls dressed as pirates. Observe his reaction as he tries valiantly and politely to show interest as the bizarre show keeps going on, and on, and on. I love, though, how he really connects with each girl, giving them his full attention, shaking their hands and eventually hugging them. I hate to draw conclusions about public figures based on short clips of them interacting with people, but based on watching him with these girls, I'd say there's a very good chance he's an excellent daddy himself. Have the stomach for more? Here's Part Two.