TalkZone Newsmaker Interview: Dr. Jonathon Jefferson

Dr. Jefferson\'s book Mugamore was developed to compare the real life educational experiences of an average child during the last generation in which the United States led the world in education to a real child’s experiences today. We discuss why labeling children is counterproductive, and can hurt their development as students.

Buy Dr. Jefferson\'s Book Mugamore

Written from a unique in-depth child’s point-of-view, this book is designed to trigger a paradigm shift from automatically labeling children to patiently allowing them to grow into themselves. The author compares common disabilities chapter-by-chapter in sync with the child’s intentions (or lack thereof). This sharing of the educational lives of two children, coupled with peer reviewed literature and research, provides powerful motivation for change.

Jonathon Jefferson

Born in 1969 as the seventh of eight children to two Harlem raised parents, Dr. Jonathan Jefferson benefited from both the inner-city life of Queens, New York, and childhood summers spent on a farm in rural upstate New York. Academic, professional, and physical accomplishments have punctuated his life. After earning his doctorate from Seton Hall University in 2006 in the area of education leadership, management, and policy, creative pursuits such as self publishing memoirs, poetry, and photography have taken the edge off of an otherwise mundane existence as a public school administrator.

An adventurer by nature, he became the first African American to hike to the top of every mountain in the northeast United States over 4,000\' (115 of them) by September of 2000. At that time, less than 400 people had accomplished this feat; whereas thousands have scaled Mount Everest. Escaping to the U.S. Virgin Islands to manage a friend\'s Eco-lodge in 2009 provided him with the respite necessary to begin serious writing and research on the topics of life and education.

Dr. Jefferson\'s Website