As college admissions results roll in, here's some good news to consider: For the fourth year in a row, all of the 167 seniors in Chicago's Urban Prep Academies schools have been accepted into four year colleges or universities. The Urban Prep Academy network has expanded since GCP reported their success last year ("And Now For Some Good News [...]
Today's post comes from Rachel Christmas Derrick, a widely published writer and communications consultant specializing in socio-economic development, youth empowerment, and education. Rachel originally posted this piece on The Independent School Diversity Network's website. You may recall that Wendy Van Amson, one of the co-founders of The Independent School Diversity Network (ISDN), was the very first person GCP interviewed [...]
Let me start by stating the obvious: the sexual assault of the inebriated young woman in Steubenville, Ohio by two high school athletes was a heinous act for which punishment is just and proper. This is a tragic case in which everybody lost. A young woman will be haunted by the sexual assault itself, by the knowledge that online [...]
We were delighted to recently learn that a GCP post, "How Do We Talk to Our Children About Newtown?" has been featured on The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School website, which can be found here. The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ), established in 2005 by Harvard Law professor [...]
We are inundated with media coverage of the horrific events in Newtown, Connecticut. A parent's worst nightmare, that a monster is terrorizing and potentially killing their child, has become a reality. We have stared unbelieving at the images of terrified children being led to safety; we have shuddered to try to imagine being one of the parents, one of [...]
By now we imagine you are well aware that Black teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by white Hispanic neighborhood crime watch volunteer George Zimmerman while Martin walked unarmed and alone in a residential neighborhood in Sanford, Florida, and that the Sanford police department has refused to arrest Zimmerman, accepting his claims that he was acting in self-defense [...]
Here are more words of wisdom from Anne Williams-Isom and Jennifer Jones Austin, authors of “How To Choose the Best School for Your Son” (GCP, February 21, 2012). In this post, Anne and Jennifer tackle the sensitive and important subject of what to do when your son’s school alerts you that he is having difficulty with some aspect of [...]
"To Be Black at Stuyvesant High", an article in today's New York Times, found here, focuses on Rudi-Ann Miller, a 17 year old senior at Stuyvesant High School. Stuyvesant is a New York City public high school specializing in math and science whose admission is based entirely on the results of an entrance exam. There are 3,295 students in [...]
Time to tackle a tough subject: how to protect our sons from sexual predators. With this issue so much in the news, it seems our boys are more vulnerable than ever to deviant behavior by trusted adults. GCP recently attended a seminar on child sex offenders offered by child and adolescent psychotherapist Alicia Henderson, Ph.D. to find out more [...]
Blogger LaShaun Williams, writing for the Madame Noire site, raises the provocative issue of whether Black mothers, who can rely on their personal experiences to raise their daughters but do not have such natural instincts with their sons, are not doing as good a job raising their boys. She suggests Black mothers may be coddling their sons through life-- [...]