Reading at Some Private Schools Is Delayed
When I was looking at preschools for my daughter, I was torn between my roots as a progressive educator – a person who firmly trusts in the development of children and the need to educate and nurture the whole child – and pressures to seek out a school that would “maximize my child’s potential”. Looking back, I realize that the single most important thing anyone said to me back then was, “What’s so great about knowing how to read when you’re three!” This article echoes with the conflicts parents go through when trying to do what’s right for their children and get them educated too. These conflicts get more and more pronounced as children get older, the stakes get higher, and our culture of testing frenzy becomes louder and more pervasive.
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(Click here to read our previous post: The Test Chinese Schools Still Fail!)
Amy Chua is a Wimp
David Brooks takes a uniquely balanced look at Amy Chua’s controversial comparison of American and traditional Chinese parenting. Chua’s recent Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior”, rapidly made its way across the country striking fear in the hearts of Americans. Brooks takes a different view: “I have the opposite problem with Chua. I believe she’s coddling her children. She’s protecting them from the most intellectually demanding activities because she doesn’t understand what’s cognitively difficult and what isn’t.” How can this be?
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Want to get your kids into college? Let them play
Wow! Stop the presses! This headline says it all. Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis are Masters of one of Harvard’s residential houses. They see a distinct difference between students with a play-based preschool and early childhood background and those from “drill and kill” schools. Not only do they feel play is critical to the development of young children, they “wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people — giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.”
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Talking Numbers Counts For Kids’ Math Skills
This article/interview from NPR may be talking about preschoolers, but at it’s heart, it’s a great endorsement of experience-based education. When children learn by rote memorization, they are not learning the deeper meanings and qualities of the material – whether it’s numbers or ABC’s. They may learn to read, for example, but without making connections to their own lives and the world around them their ability to really understand what they are reading is deeply limited.
University of Chicago psychology professor Susan Levine finds that “for children to develop the math skills they’ll need later on in school, it is essential that parents spend time teaching their children the value of numbers by using concrete examples — instead of just repeating them out loud.”
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Gunn High School Sings Away Hate Group
Here is a beautiful example of experiential education. The students of Gunn High School were confronted with a hate group that was targeting their school because of its’ practice of tolerance. This video shows how the school prepares the children for what’s coming as well as supports them in crafting a value-based response.
“The highest result of education, is tolerance.” -Helen Keller
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Playing to Learn
The New York Times’ Susan Engel envisions a world where children learn by doing and are given ample time to master the critical skills they need through activities that are relevant. Engel asks us to: “Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.”
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Building a Better Teacher
I’m a little late posting this so you’ll need to register with the NY Times to read it, but it’s free, and – trust me – it’s worth it! This article reports on the work that is being done to identify what great teachers actually do in the classroom and how to pass this information along to other teachers. It’s a long article, so here’s a question you can try to answer as you read: What should a teacher do when a kid starts the class by saying, “I was just thinking about six,” Sean began. “I’m just thinking, it can be an odd number, too.” … Sean went on, speaking faster. “Cause there could be two, four, six, and two — three twos, that’d make six!”
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School Adds Weeding to Reading and Writing
As with all educational topics, school gardens have been the subject of hot debate lately. This article by Kim Severson in the New York Times Dining section, outlines the debate and details the plans for the latest Edible Schoolyard backed by California’s Alice Waters. For those who don’t know, Alice Waters has been a huge champion of the idea that fresh, good food is a right, not a privilege. In many circles she is credited with the increased availability of organic foods in our local markets. The school garden at P.S. 216 in Brooklyn will be the sixth backed by Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation.
“Teachers will use the garden to give students — 460 children from prekindergarten to the fifth grade — lessons in subjects like art, math, history and science. Administrators hope the school will eventually become a center for the study of the environment and agriculture.”
The playtime’s the thing
Now there is more evidence that a play-based approach to preschool and early childhood education is the way to go. We know from the first post in this blog that imaginative and open-ended play supports language development, cognition, and the development of self-control and self-regulation in a social setting. (Self-regulation is strongly correlated with success later in life.) This article from the Washington Post’s Emma Brown finds that early, play-based education also sustains and strengthens children in their emotional growth.
“Research has shown that by 23, people who attended play-based preschools were eight times less likely to need treatment for emotional disturbances than those who went to preschools where direct instruction prevailed. Graduates of the play-based preschools were three times less likely to be arrested for committing a felony.”
How a Pirate Supply Store Improved Public Education
To learn more about what the spirit of volunteerism can do, check out this video of Dave Eggers. He tells us all about the founding of 826 Valencia Street, a tutoring facility he started, dedicated to nurturing the written word, democracy, and the local public school. Don’t get me wrong this is 20 entertaining minutes of listening to Mr. Eggers discuss his unique idea and the impact it has had on the public schools in the community. Here’s a quote: “It’s been proven that 35 to 40 hours a year with one-on-one attention, a student can get one grade level higher.”
Once you click to view the video, click the box in the upper right hand corner to view the video full screen.
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