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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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
Click here to see the video.
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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Let’s Take a Poetry Break
Please check out these 2 exceptional poems written and performed by Sayda Morales a graduate of the first Kipp Charter School in the Bronx. Listen for her tribute to Kipp, “I am from a team and a family helping me climb the mountain to college”. It is our wish that Valley Charter School will be that team, that community, for the young people we are entrusted to teach.
Click Here for “I Am From”
Click Here for “Para Ti, Mi Hija” (“For you, my daughter”)
Emotional Training Helps Kids Fight Depression
Evidence is building around the importance of supporting the emotional development of school age children. Check out this NPR piece by Allison Aubrey. In it she explores resilience training in the Middle School years. It appears that helping kids stay positive and focused in an emotionally charged moment not only improves coping skills, it diminishes their chances of becoming depressed by about 50%.
“If a person tends to see small disappointments as catastrophes or failures, they can become depressed or anxious. It’s a common trick our minds can play on us, as children and as adults. But once thoughts are more aligned with reality, emotional responses can change for the better.”
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