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!)
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”)
Years Of Schooling Leaves Some Students Illiterate
Check out this NPR interview with author Beth Fertig. Are you sitting down? Fertig “says that as many as 20 percent of American adults may be functionally illiterate. They may recognize letters and words, but can’t read directions on a bus sign or a medicine bottle, read or write a letter, or hold most any job. Her new book, Why cant U teach me 2 read, follows three young New Yorkers who legally challenged the New York City public schools for failing to teach them how to read — and won. Host Scott Simon talks to Fertig about her book.”
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