Today's Thoughtful Thursday pays tribute to the renowned poet Sonia Sanchez, who recently was awarded the 2018 Wallace Stevens Award by the Academy of American Poets. The award is given annually to one poet to recognize his or her outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry, and carries a stipend of $100,000. Poet, playwright, and children’s book [...]
The new Nike ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick has everyone talking, and we should be talking to our children about it. As you probably know, Nike has made Kaepernick the face of its 30th anniversary campaign. Kaepernick announced this a few days ago by tweeting a close up of his face, with the message "Believe in something. Even if [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday honors the Queen of Soul as the world mourns her passing with a "Poem for Aretha" which Nikki Giovanni wrote in 1971. Here Giovanni celebrates Aretha Franklin's amazing talent and implores us all to remember that although she has the voice of an angel, she is actually a working mother with a brutal work schedule who [...]
GCP co-hosted the Back-to-School #ReadinessCheck Chat last Wednesday, along with @BeALearningHero, @GreatSchools, @NationalPTA and other education advocates. This lively session offered a lot of great suggestions as to how parents can best help their children to be ready for a strong start to the school year. Here are some of the highlights: How to Prep For the New School [...]
On June 14, 2017, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden (one of the subjects of last week's Thoughtful Thursday) appointed Tracy K. Smith as the twenty-second United States Poet Laureate. In case you were wondering, the U.S. Poet Laureate serves as the official poet of the United States, and seeks to promote a greater national appreciation of the reading and [...]
Tomorrow afternoon at 2 PM (Eastern Standard Time), please join Ground Control Parenting, Learning Heroes, GreatSchools and National PTA for a Twitter chat discussion on how parents can help children succeed in the upcoming school year. We will be sharing ideas and resources, using the hashtag #ReadinessCheck. We at GCP are so excited to join this national conversation about [...]
Don't you just love a good public library? Those of us born in the pre-internet world fondly remember wandering up and down the isles of the local public library, looking for the next great read or the critical info for that paper due too soon. Public libraries today have adapted to the new digital world and are still going [...]
GCP parents, it's time to get focused on helping our sons and daughters get ready for their best school year yet. Here are some helpful resources: Readiness Check: You know what grades your kids got last year, but how much of the material do they confidently understand? Does a C in math for the semester mean that your child [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday (actually, "Thoughtful The Day after Thursday" this week) shines the spotlight on the amazing Kevin Young, aka "One of the Hardest Working men in Poetbiz". Young was born in 1970 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He received his BA from Harvard University in 1992 and his MFA in creative writing from Brown University in 1996. Young’s awards and [...]
Yesterday GCP and Independent School Diversity Network (ISDN) hosted an "Insider’s View of the College Admissions Process" on Martha's Vineyard, featuring key admissions representatives from Columbia, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania discussing the admissions process. Once a year GCP and ISDN fill a living room with kids of color and give them the opportunity to meet with the [...]