By Sarah Vander Schaaff A few months ago, I decided that instead of buying workbooks for my kids to look at over the summer, I’d start collecting the homework they brought home and use it as a basis for a personalized binder. I’d add new material, too, of course, and try to find things that…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff Is there a way to talk about young people being “gifted” and not enter a territory fraught with debate? From what I’ve been reading recently, there are not only arguments about how we define “giftedness” but arguments about the arguments. For parents, the identification matters in a practical sense if they…
By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff When children’s book illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky was first starting out, he took a bus from New Haven to New York City to show his work to an editor at The New York Times. The meeting got him his first assignment with the paper. Back in New Haven a few…
By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff Why are these children protesting in front of their school? Oh, wait—their parents are there, too. And their teachers. And their principal? One of them was Brooklyn mother, Jody Alperin. She has a first and fourth grader in PS10, a school that draws students from Park Slope, Windsor Terrace and…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff Imagine for a moment you’re the mother of three-month-old twins. One is developing as your oldest child had. The other will engage in eye contact only when he wants, not when you initiate it. You speak with your pediatrician who refers you to an eye doctor. You have your state’s early…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff Editor’s Note: This was originally written in 2015 and edited by Mindprint staff in 2019. Structured phonics is proven to be the most effective instruction for all students, particularly struggling readers. If your student needs help to learn to read, our learning specialists recommend these reading strategies. Erika Bird was standing in front of a table ready…
By Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff A twitter follower of the On Parenting blog asked: What happens when your kids are in school & have a lack of control (over) what & when they are told about tragedies? Several years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a student discuss how he learned about the attacks on…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff We’ve recently returned to the twenty-first century having spent a few days hanging out with the settlers and revolutionaries of Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg. My kids will be talking about the experience for days and years to come, and certainly testing out the new words they learned during our trip back…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff “I don’t have a chance of winning. I don’t want to do it.” Was this the attitude Google anticipated when it launched this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition? Probably not. On the surface, the competition is simple: children in grades k-12 are invited to submit a doodle version of the Google…
By Sarah Vander Schaaff When Peggy Kaye was first starting out in teaching, a parent asked if there was something she could use for the classroom. “Yes,” she said, “a tape recorder.” The parent got her one, and Kaye recorded herself reading books her students could later listen to on their own. Today, Kaye is…