Just a quick posting of two thought-provoking articles: In "Teaching My Son to Love Himself", found here, author Faye McCray wonders about the extent to which her son struggles with issues of identity when he finds a white girl is prettier than a Black one. A white father of an African-American son shares "What I Learned About Stop-and-Frisk From [...]
Have you thought about how much time your babysitter spends with your child vs. her device? We all know how tempting it is to have your connection to the world at your fingertips, calling to you with its rings, dings and whooshes every few minutes. How can you be sure your babysitter isn't heeding the calls of her device [...]
Celebrated children's and young adult book author Walter Dean Myers has a great essay asking "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?" in this past Sunday's New York Times. In his essay, found here, Myers responds to a recent report that only 93 of the 3,200 children's books published in 2013 were about African Americans. He describes [...]
Black boys as young as 10 years old are more likely than their White peers to be mistaken as older, less innocent, and more appropriate targets for police violence if accused of a crime, according to research conducted by UCLA psychologists. In their study, abstracted here, the researchers examined "whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally [...]
By now many of you who are focused on high school education have heard that there will be changes in the SAT beginning with the May 2016 test. This will affect ninth graders and below, so those of us with middle schoolers and high school freshmen need to pay special attention. So here's what the new SAT will look [...]
This afternoon President Obama will announce the launch of an initiative to provide greater opportunities to African-American and Hispanic young men of color. His "My Brother's Keeper" initiative has already received a $150 million commitment from a group of foundations and businesses who have pledged an additional $200 million towards this effort. The White House initiative seeks to intervene [...]
Hard to imagine as frigid temperatures and snow continue to plague us on the East Coast and elsewhere around the nation, but now is the time to focus on Summer Camps. If you are interested in finding out about summer camp options, don't wait any longer to start your research, as Summer Camp research and sign-up season is well [...]
Ted Wells’ report to the NFL on the Jonathan Martin/Miami Dolphins harassment case presents Martin as an NFL rookie who was tormented both by his teammates and his own inability to fight back. As New York Times columnist Bill Rhoden notes in his column about the report, found here, “The question that repeatedly came to my mind as I [...]
This past weekend GCP Mom Gwendolyn Adolph hosted the very first GCP live event. She gathered a wonderful group of moms and invited me to talk with them about some of the issues we focus on in the blog. One of the key things that came out of our discussion is how much parent groups can help moms (and [...]
As the new year begins, it is a great time to focus on being involved at your children's school. Here at GCP we can't say enough about the importance of parental involvement in schools. See, for example, our earlier posts "Back to School for Parents", September 13, 2011 and "Parents Resolve to Get More Involved in 2012", January 2, [...]