GCP recently attended a seminar on "Texting, Sexting, Facebook and Cyberbullying" conducted by New Jersey Police Detective Sergeant Thomas Rich. Sgt. Rich has worked on the issues of Internet safety for over ten years, and through his company, "Always Connected", advises law enforcement, educators, parents and children of all ages how to utilize technology in a positive way. Here [...]
GCP is always on the lookout for ways to help our sons (and daughters) learn and excel. Here is a great one: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History offers Saturday Academies of American History, which provide free elective courses for high school and middle school students on Saturday mornings. Gilder Lehrman Saturday Academies are held in eighteen schools [...]
A professor at a Pennsylvania university recently set out to determine how college student's grades are impacted by their Facebook usage. Today's New York Times reveals his study's surprising conclusions, in an article found here. The study found that while spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook is related to negative outcomes, just checking Facebook for a few [...]
Today’s New York Times features an article, found here, which details how little today’s schools teach about the history of the Civil Rights movement and how little today’s students know about basic civil rights history. Julian Bond, the former civil rights activist who began teaching the history of the civil rights movement twenty years ago, speaks of having students [...]
Today's New York Times Magazine includes a very interesting article, found here, about how the heads of a Manhattan private school and a national charter school program are working to help their students develop good character traits as well as good study habits. The private school head feared that his school's focus on testing at every juncture and encouraging [...]
Now that our sons are back in school, it’s time for parents to focus on our Back to School To Do List. Here are a few things you can do to help your son start the school year well: •Review your son’s schedule. Find out what you can about the teachers from your son, other parents and whatever adult [...]
Cyberbullying is a huge issue for children and parents in this digital age. Common Sense Media, a non profit organization devoted to helping families navigate the world of media and technology, has developed a "Cyberbullying Tool Kit" to help educators and parents deal with this problem. The toolkit, which can be found here, includes parent tip sheets on cyberbullying [...]
A generation ago, when I was a kid being bused into a predominantly white school in Brooklyn, I faced daily taunting and intimidation on the school bus from other Black students, who accused me of “acting white,” and “thinking I was cute” for the crime of being the only Black kid picked to be in the class for high [...]
This week National Public Radio is featuring a series called "School"s Out: America's Dropout Crisis" in which it looks at the dropout crisis through the stories of five people, three of whom have already dropped out and two who are at risk. The series overview can be found here. Today's broadcast features the story of Patrick Lundvick, a Black [...]
A study recently conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina concluded that the death rate was lower for Black men in prison than for those outside it. Take a look at theroot.com's reporting of this study here. This kind of news gives us another good reason to make sure our sons flourish in school: so that they [...]