It's Thoughtful Thursday, and boy could we use some poetry to distract us right about now. Poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, asked its membership to suggest poetry to help us cope and give us courage. Four of the many poems suggested are featured below. "Alone", by our beloved Maya Angelou (1928-2014), reminds us that we [...]
Parents, how are you doing in all of this craziness? Are you holding it together, and could you use some help to do so? Today we want to focus on the importance of self-care. You know, put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping others. It is especially important to take care of our physical and mental selves, when [...]
Trying not to overwhelm you all, but we want to send along some more great homeschooling resources: Khan Academy: This free online learning site is taking it's responsibility to help parents and teachers with remote learning very seriously. Starting with the page that asks "How Can Khan Academy Be Used For Remote Learning During School Closures?", the site gives [...]
My mom taught 5th grade and was a reading specialist in NYC public schools for over 30 years. When I was young, we knew that whatever weekend family activity we planned would need to end by Sunday afternoon so Mommy could focus on her lesson plans for the week. When I started teaching my Parenting courses at Hunter last [...]
How is all this family togetherness working out for ya? It's Thoughtful Thursday, and we figured you and your children might need some comic relief. Here are a few wonderfully wicked poems by Shel Silverstein (who authored The Giving Tree). They were included in Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls, a book of poems about ill-mannered boys and girls, compiled [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday brings poetry of hope, strength, and a mother's love. It's (still) National Women's Month, and these three powerful women poets give us some much needed optimism, inspiration, and mothering "realness" to help us cope in these bewildering times. Poet, teacher, saxophonist and vocalist Joy Harjo (b.1951), a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, offers a hopeful [...]
Welp, here we are. Facing the surreality of coping with the domestic outbreak of this coronavirus, with news of more positive cases and more closures and cancellations daily. The World Health Organization has just declared that the spread of COVID-19 across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic. In a couple of days I will be heading to [...]
March is Woman's History Month, and in celebration today's Thoughtful Thursday features two powerful poems by two artistic powerhouses: Toni Morrison and June Jordan. Toni Morrison (1931–2019), while best known for her critically acclaimed and prize winning novels, wrote one volume of poetry, Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002), which features poems alongside illustrations by Kara Walker. The first of these poems, [...]
Alexander Twilight, Middlebury College, Class of 1823 Today, in honor of the last few days of Black History Month, we celebrate the earliest Black graduates from U.S. white colleges. Imagine, almost 200 years ago, young Alexander Twilight was poised to graduate from Middlebury College in 1823, making him the first Black college graduate from a White institution. To [...]
To all you new moms (and friends of new moms ): did you know that 80% of a child's brain growth happens in the first three years of its life? And that there are a few everyday activities that you can do with a child in those first three years to make a big impact on it's learning? You [...]