By Sarah Vander Schaaff The Educated Mom blog launched a year ago this month. And because we have some new readers and because I love year-end lists, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back on some of the themes we’ve covered. Perhaps the blog topics reveal a bit about what’s it…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff “It’s a really, really, chill place. Every tutoring session involves tea latte and some candles.” That’s what Vanessa Vakharia told me on the phone a few weeks ago when I asked her about her math tutoring studio in Toronto, The Math Guru. Vanessa personifies the name. She’s on a mission to…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff What does it take to get into college? For that matter, preschool? Two recent stories in The New York Times address changes in the admissions process for some schools and both look at efforts to take the focus off standardized tests. First, there was the attention-grabbing headline: “Private Schools are Expected…
The documentary film, “Race to Nowhere” is described on the film’s website as, “Featuring the heartbreaking stories of students across the country who have been pushed to the brink by over-scheduling, over-testing and the relentless pressure to achieve…” It was nearly three years ago that the film came to the Princeton-area community, thanks in large…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff Friday is the first day of summer, officially, but around here, some of us have been out for weeks while others are still making up “snow” days. Still, we will continue our summer series on pertinent questions with one aimed at what do when the final school bell rings. What’s the…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff This week, I’m sharing a blog I wrote a few years ago with a math teacher who has “seen it all.” And by that I mean, she’s seen what happens when the students she taught all year show up the following fall. Some have kept their skills sharp or even advanced them, and others,…
Summer Reading: Why It Matters Thanks to a few tips from the National Summer Learning Association summer reading can be a bit less stressful and a lot more effective. If there is one tip I inferred from looking at their 2009 Research Brief, “How to Make Summer Reading Effective” it is this. If you want to increase…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff I fell asleep twenty years ago and awoke to find that numbers are added together in a whole new way. It’s called partial sum addition and if you’re the parent of a seven-year-old you might know what I’m talking about. Some schools send home a study guide or handbook to help…