top five of the week

A Real Education by Barry Boyce *****

I ranked number five because not only is this helping kids in High school but you can teach this to children in grade school and have children become aware off focus on their emotions and mindfulness skills. The seed of critical thinking can be planted here and let it be nurture  thru yoga. We know kids at a young age run the risk of depression, anxiety and focus due to distraction. Mindfulness practice is a critical element to help effectively increase attention. Attention is one of the greatest challenges for children, and perhaps only more so in a world offering so much distraction so frequently.

Arizona Bans Chicanos studies program by Deb Aronson ****

I am a little bias on this on since it is about Mexican –Americans learning to read and better educating themselves. But its not only the school district in Tucson, it’s the whole state legislature, that believe that Mexicans-Americans are being taught to take over the US. I am for the MAS program but its only one sided.  That same program would not work for the Washington, Oregon, Idaho or Montana. I do believe as the nation evolves more into a Spanish speaking country that a MAS program could work out for your local school.

Critical Thinking by bell hooks ***

It is sad that most children are taught early on the thinking is dangerous and start fearing that thinking mind. And as they go thru school where independent thinking is not acceptable behavior. By the time they get to college they come to dread thinking. Fortunate some professors are aiming to educate thinking, critical thinking is what matters. Thus embracing joy and power of thinking or engaged pedagogy.. This strategy aims to restore students will to think. Critical thinking is an interactive process that demands participation by teacher and students alike. Critical thinking requires us to use our imagination and seeing things from perspective.  Critical thinking is great but it needs to be taught by all teachers and used and nurture and I don’t see that yet in grade school level yet

Gift of Grip by Jerry Large **

Jerry Large story is very simple show your kids love at an early stage. What parent doesn’t love their child. But in reality most parents are working so the child doesn’t get the attention he deserves or a lot of times its overkill where the kid is smothered  with love and the child doesn’t build grit.

Children, arts and Du bois by Keith Gilyard *

I really didn’t like this. To me it feels like they have a good thing going with kids but because of cut backs they decide to drop the program for STEM initiatives. The fact that we are teaching our students to be strong in these areas so they can go out and be strong in global business and commercial functioning so that the nation’s economy grows. So much is relative to , Alexander Inglis, principles of secondary education, where he comes up with six basic function in order to wire children predictable and harness and manipulate a large labor force.