Hang in there, homeschooling parents, more help is on the way! Common Sense Media has just launched its Wide Open School platform, a free collection of high quality online learning experiences for families and educators. Common Sense Media recognizes that our education system is not prepared for this abrupt transition to remote learning, and that while some schools are [...]
Trying not to overwhelm you all, but we want to send along some more great homeschooling resources: Khan Academy: This free online learning site is taking it's responsibility to help parents and teachers with remote learning very seriously. Starting with the page that asks "How Can Khan Academy Be Used For Remote Learning During School Closures?", the site gives [...]
My mom taught 5th grade and was a reading specialist in NYC public schools for over 30 years. When I was young, we knew that whatever weekend family activity we planned would need to end by Sunday afternoon so Mommy could focus on her lesson plans for the week. When I started teaching my Parenting courses at Hunter last [...]
How is all this family togetherness working out for ya? It's Thoughtful Thursday, and we figured you and your children might need some comic relief. Here are a few wonderfully wicked poems by Shel Silverstein (who authored The Giving Tree). They were included in Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls, a book of poems about ill-mannered boys and girls, compiled [...]
Remote Learning, Homeschooling, it's a new day, and we need to try to get up to speed on all of this pretty quickly. Here's a list of online learning resources for you and your children to help you navigate this brave new world: Getting Organized: sites to help you get started Seven Strategies to Plan, Prioritize and...Plan?!!: tips for [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday brings poetry of hope, strength, and a mother's love. It's (still) National Women's Month, and these three powerful women poets give us some much needed optimism, inspiration, and mothering "realness" to help us cope in these bewildering times. Poet, teacher, saxophonist and vocalist Joy Harjo (b.1951), a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, offers a hopeful [...]
Welp, here we are. Facing the surreality of coping with the domestic outbreak of this coronavirus, with news of more positive cases and more closures and cancellations daily. The World Health Organization has just declared that the spread of COVID-19 across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic. In a couple of days I will be heading to [...]
March is Woman's History Month, and in celebration today's Thoughtful Thursday features two powerful poems by two artistic powerhouses: Toni Morrison and June Jordan. Toni Morrison (1931–2019), while best known for her critically acclaimed and prize winning novels, wrote one volume of poetry, Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002), which features poems alongside illustrations by Kara Walker. The first of these poems, [...]
Today is Presidents' Day, (which happened to land this year on George Washington's actual birthday), and Friday was Valentine's Day, so we are offering a two-for-one Thoughtful Thursday this Monday. Yep. You're welcome! For our Presidents' Day offering, here are two wonderful poems composed for Presidential inaugurations: "On the Pulse of Morning" which Maya Angelou (1928-2014) delivered at President [...]
It is Black History Month! We all know what this means: Lots of tributes to Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and a host of other Black civil rights leaders, entertainers and athletes will be floating around our children at school this month. While we at GCP believe our sons and daughters and their classmates should know about these [...]
