Children and Education

Alma Presses Play by Tina Cane ff. Tina Cane, former French teacher at Friends and present poet laureate of the state of Rhode Island, offers a fresh look at what it feels like to be thirteen. Alma is a New York kid living in the East Village; her world begins with her family, a Chinese mother and a Jewish father, and extends outward to her block and to the wider community around her. One half of her belongs to a culture where Lunar New Year is a major holiday and the wok is always in use; the other offers her Jewish humor, bar mitzvas and knishes.

Her Walkman provides the soundtrack of her life, her school presents her with mythology, which she uses just as the ancients did – to try to explain to herself what it’s all about -- and her local sweet shop offers candy for every occasion…

Earth Squad: 50 People who are Saving the Planet by Alexandra Zissu ’92. I can well imagine this book making its way into the curriculum of a place like, well, Friends Seminary. I would love to see every fifth grader (random choice) prepare a Power Point on one of these individuals and figure out how to join ranks and become an Earth Squad warrior. The students would have quite an array to choose from – an electric car expert, an activist chef, a plastics pollution explorer, a hip hop artist/climate protector, or an Amazon rain forest protector, just to name a few. (If anyone does this, please put it online somewhere so I can see it).

This book engages and informs young (and not so young) readers of the lives and accomplishments of 50 carefully selected leaders of the environmental movement, some well-known, like Greta Thunberg, Angela Merkel, and Pet…

The Literacy Coach’s Game Plan, Making Teacher Collaboration, Student learning, and School Improvement a Reality by Gabrielle Nidus early 90’s and Maya Sadder. How well I know that teachers can get their back up when anyone invades the sanctity of their classroom to offer advice. The literacy coach, whose job it is to enhance learning outcomes in a school, faces resistance. Gabrielle and Maya are acutely aware of the delicacy of their role and strategize to create a non-threatening, collaborative climate beneficial to students and teachers alike.

Their predominant approach accentuates the positive, all the while sticking to their guns. They have discovered that the best way to teach literacy is to begin with the students’ own work. By basing lessons on their evaluations of issues found in assignments throughout the course of the year, they tackle real and demonstrable needs. This method, as they convincingly demonstrate, is much…

Courageous Calla & The Clinical Trial by Arya Singh ’18. Still in college, Arya already has a book to her name and one that will be reassuring to children who find themselves participants in clinical trials. The only way we can move forward with treatments and medications is through clinical trials. Adult volunteers can weigh the risks and benefits before joining a test group. But for those conditions that emerge at birth or during early childhood, very young participants, many of whom have seen more than their fair share of doctors and hospitals, are badly needed. Courageous Calla is just what kids need to allay their fears and show them that they are helping not only themselves but many other children. In the book, Calla is a superhero and truly, all the children who take part can hold claim to that title.

Arya takes the ethical principles advanced in the…