Excitement is in the air!! The Cubs win the World Series! America will soon elect a new president! All the goings on this week has led today's Thoughtful Thursday to be a bit of a hodge-podge, but with a bit of brain-wracking we have come up with a unifying theme for the quotes and poems of the week: perseverance. [...]
Today's NYTimes features an article by Topher Sanders, a Black dad who, while watching his four year old son play in the playground, overheard a little girl tell his son "only white people can play" where he was playing. As his son happily ignores the girl and continues to play, the father struggles with balancing his instinctive angry reaction [...]
"Tell us about your first relative to come to the United States. Where did he or she come from?" A third grader had this question for homework the other day. His dad called me in a panic: "We haven't told him about slavery yet--he's too young. How is he supposed to answer this?" After commiserating with the dad about [...]
Common Sense Media, that great website for all things kids and tech, is encouraging families to join their latest campaign: Device Free Dinners. It is a simple concept: families commit to spending time at the dinner table focused upon each other rather than their devices. As Common Sense founder and CEO James P. Steyer explains, "Everything from better grades [...]
We at GCP were so excited to see poetry included in the opening ceremonies of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, we just had to make this the subject of this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Oprah Winfrey (who funded the museum's auditorium) and Will Smith gifted us with some mighty thoughts in a poetry battle. You can [...]
Here's disturbing news from researchers at Yale University: Teachers may be more inclined to expect bad behavior from black preschoolers--especially black boys--than from white preschoolers. As reported recently in a Washington Post article found here, in a recent study over 130 preschool teachers were asked to view video clips of young children in classrooms and were told to look [...]
The National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington D.C. opened its doors to the public this weekend, and the celebration was glorious. Presidents Obama along with President George W. Bush (who signed the bill authorizing funds to build the museum thirteen years ago) spoke eloquently about the importance of this museum and its place in American history. [...]
If your son is a senior in high school, you know too well that this is the college application season. No doubt, it can be a time fraught with tension as your son negotiates the maze of determining where he wants to go and where he has a shot at getting in, all the while trying to keep up [...]
Just took a look at the list of finalists for the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and was delighted to find these books on the list. They are great books to consider for your middle school sons! "Booked" by Kwame Alexander (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt): This novel-in-verse tells the story of 12 year old Nick, a soccer-loving middle [...]
After stepping away from regular GCP blogging for a while to begin work on a parenting book, I am returning to posting regularly--GCP is back! While the posts will still primarily focus on raising boys, many posts already on the site can be helpful for parenting girls as well. A lovely young friend with twins (a boy and a girl) recently told [...]