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Strollerderby
It’s no secret that our schools, in general, are not doing the best they could be at educating our children. Some blame the teachers, saying they are slackers who only teach because they aren’t qualified to do anything else. Others put the blame on parents who don’t take time to emphasize the importance of education at home and who can’t — or won’t — support teachers by working with their children to reinforce what they have learned in class. In reality, it’s probably some of both. There are certainly a lot of hard-working, dedicated teachers out there, but some are more effective than others — what if we could make every teacher as good as the best teachers? Some researchers think they have the means to do that.
It used to be that all kids needed when they headed off to school was a few pencils, some paper and a readiness to learn. But these days, with school budgets stretched to their limits, parents are often asked to pick up the tab for a lot more than basic classroom supplies. In fact, at a school in Ireland, parents are being asked to provide something that hardly qualifies as a school supply at all: Toilet paper. Continue reading »
Your child’s teacher will tell you a lot of things: What last night’s homework was, that your child talks too much in class, or that little Suzy seems to finally mastering her multiplication tables.
But besides being professional educators, teachers are also human. And there’s often a lot more they’d like to say, but don’t. Unless, of course, they’re allowed to be completely anonymous.
When Reader’s Digest interviewed teachers from all over the country, they came up with the real list of things your child’s teacher wished you knew. A sampling:
The U.S. Department of Education recently awarded a major grant to help fund teachers’ training in contemplative practices such as meditation. Known as Cultivating Awareness and Resiliency in Education (CARE), the program that received the grant uses mindfulness meditation to help teachers recognize emotional patterns–both their own and their students’–so that they can more skillfully respond to classroom social problems like bullying. Continue reading »
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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