Is your son in grades K-5 a reluctant reader? David Banks, leader of the Eagle Academy network of all-boy public schools, wants to help him learn to love reading. Frustrated by the dismal national reading stats for African American and Hispanic boys (only 28% African American and 34% Hispanic fourth grade boys are reading at or above proficiency level, [...]
Happy New Year to all from GCP! I'm back from an amazing break and laser focused on what the new year will bring. Hope you all are settling into the new year with #2020vision (couldn't resist). Rather than make any new resolutions for GCP, in 2020 we will double down on goals we have always had: to share and [...]
Happy New Year! The GCP vision for 2020 will be posted shortly, but before we turn to the future I want to focus on a late 2019 special event. Just as the holidays got underway, I had the pleasure of joining RIISE (Resources in Independent School Education) founder Gina Parker Collins for "Lunch with Gina", where we talked about [...]
Merry Christmas to you and yours from GCP!! Hoping you and your family had a great Christmas Day. Be sure to spend some time after the Christmas rush enjoying one another's company!!
In less than a week Christmas will be here! In celebration, today's Thoughtful Thursday brings some of our favorite Christmas poetry. First we have the glorious "Christmas Carol" from Paul Laurence Dunbar, followed by the delightful "[little tree]" by e.e. cummings. We end with the traditional crowd favorite, "Twas the Night Before Christmas", which, depending upon which scholars you [...]
Continuing the conversation about mental health in the Black community: I grew up hearing that our people didn't have time for mental health issues. If you had trouble coping, you had to snap out of it or push through, on your own or with God's help. Therapy was for other folks. I know some of you must heard this [...]
For years many of us have heard (and said) that Black people don't commit suicide. But the data on this reveal an alarmingly different truth, especially about our young people. Over the last 10 years, the suicide rate for Black teens 15-17 has increased drastically, from an overall rate of 3.9 suicides per 100,000 per year in 2007 to [...]
On this Thoughtful Thursday, as temperatures drop below freezing in the North East, our thoughts turn to poems about the chill of winter. And so it is time to revisit an old GCP favorite, "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. While its title and some of its vibrant imagery evoke winter's chill, at the core of the poem is a [...]
Let's face it, unless you happen to be a gamer yourself it is easy to take a fairly hands-off approach to your son's gaming habits. You probably have set limits on screen time, maybe you've banned games that are too violent or otherwise disturbing. But here's why you should pay closer attention to his gaming activity: to keep him [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday features two award-winning African American female poets whose work is new to us, although these poets have been heralded for some time by (better read) poetry fans worldwide. Crystal Williams, a Detroit native, has written four award-winning poetry collections. A graduate of NYU (undergrad) and Cornell University (M.F.A.), Williams has taught at several universities and managed [...]