Grit and the Soul

Grit. Mindfulness. Character Education. Conversations about the importance of cultivating personal “intangibles” and moral agency are all over the edu-sphere these days, particularly... Read More »

School Shootings: Revisited

It’s just over a year since the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. With the killing of over twenty young children and teachers, it seemed that, at last,... Read More »

Surprising Leaders

The December 28th edition of the New York Times carried a fascinating article about how the manner in which President Obama celebrated Christmas this year reflects some of the larger trends to be... Read More »

Invisible No More

The New York Times is running a powerful four-part series called “Invisible Child.” It offers an in-depth profile of Dasani, a middle school girl who lives in a Brooklyn family shelter.... Read More »

Girl Engineers Go Viral

One of the hottest videos flying around Facebook and the twitter-sphere is a two-minute promotional video for a new line of girl-friendly building toys called GoldieBlox. It’s been tweeted by... Read More »

Two Types of Episcopal Identity

In a big move, St. Athanasius School has decided to ask the vestry of the parish to approve a change in the school’s by-laws. It is requesting that the percentage of school board members who... Read More »

The Preschool Crisis

Despite ample evidence of the important role that early language development plays in reading and literacy and numerous calls for a focus on the education of young children, the United States... Read More »

Big Data and the Schoolhouse

A third grade teacher stands next to one of her students and, using a microphone attached to a tablet, listens to the child read. The software program on the tablet immediately notes how many words... Read More »

The Trophied Life

This past week the New York Times carried a fascinating editorial piece about the number of awards that children receive, both in and out of school. The writer, Ashley Merryman, wrote of how... Read More »

Narrowing the “Gaps”

When I was a kid, a “gap” was something between my teeth, or next to the railway platform, or a way to get over the mountains. Today, we have other kinds of gaps: the ‘achievement... Read More »