The Wall Street Journal recently revealed news which should gladden the hearts of parents of teenagers everywhere: "cognitive empathy", the wiring in children's brains that enables them to understand and care about how others think, only begins to develop at age 13. So when your sweet middle schooler disappears and is replaced by an eye-rolling, door slamming "who is [...]
When is it good to help our boys, and when is it better to let them fail? In yesterday's New York Times Motherlode Blog, found here, a mother writes passionately of her need to help her middle school son with his schoolwork despite hearing from his teachers that she shouldn't because "we want to see what your child can [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are a series of four poems about young men by Black poets of several generations. Enjoy! Young Soul first feel, then feel, then read. or read, then feel, then fall, or stand, where you already are, think of your self, and the other selves...think of your parents, your mothers and sisters, then feel, or fall, [...]
Yesterday's post focused on talking to babies; today we are talking about what happens when these babies grow up into young adults: college opportunities. African American economist Carolyn Hoxby, a Stanford economist in residency at Stanford's Hoover Institute, is focused on helping students expand their opportunities to attend college. She recently presented her research at a "master class" at [...]
Did you know that the number of words a child is exposed to between ages 0-3 is significantly related to that child’s ultimate intellectual and academic success? Studies have shown that the more parents talk to their children, the faster children’s vocabularies grow and the higher the children’s IQ test scores are at age three and later. These studies have [...]
GCP spent the last two days at NBC's Education Nation Summit 2013, which was held at the New York Public Library's main branch. This summit, produced by NBC News, gathered more than 300 of the country’s top thought leaders and influencers in education, government, business, philanthropy, and media to discuss ways to improve our nation's educational system. The [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are two classics from Langston Hughes, courtesy of two special guest GCP contributors. To my delight, when I asked my two sons (independently) to tell me their favorite poems, they chose the following two Hughes poems about dreams. These poems are among my favorites as well. Enjoy! Harlem What happens to a dream deferred? Does [...]
Does your teenaged son have an interest in a tech, coding or gaming career? All Star Code wants to help him pursue that interest. All Star Code is a new non-profit initiative that seeks to attract, prepare, and place high-potential, qualified young black men in the tech-career pipeline and help them achieve full-time employment at technology companies early in [...]
Greetings GCP'ers! Today we focus on several opportunities to examine and explore the impact of race on our sons' education. American Promise: We hope by now you have heard about "American Promise", the Sundance Grand Jury prize winning documentary which follows the journeys of two African-American boys and their families from kindergarten through high school graduation. (Check out our [...]
Much of the recent news about the fate of young black men and women in Chicago has been dismal. The FBI released crime statistics earlier this week which showed that Chicago, with 500 murders in 2012, had officially become the "murder capital of America". Seventy seven percent of the 2012 homicide victims were Black, and the median age of [...]