Monthly Archives: March 2014

Thoughtful Thursday: Poetry To Read Aloud to Our Boys

Today's Thoughtful Thursday poems are to be read aloud and discussed with your sons. "To PJ" by Sonia Sanchez is a sweet little ode to a two year old that is fun to read aloud, and a good example of how poets play with spelling and grammar in their work. "Michael" by Gwendolyn Brooks is a good poem to [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:42:03-04:00March 27th, 2014|Thoughtful Thursday|Comments Off on Thoughtful Thursday: Poetry To Read Aloud to Our Boys

Is Your Sitter Paying More Attention to Her Phone Than To Your Child?

Have you thought about how much time your babysitter spends with your child vs. her device? We all know how tempting it is to have your connection to the world at your fingertips, calling to you with its rings, dings and whooshes every few minutes. How can you be sure your babysitter isn't heeding the calls of her device [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:42:03-04:00March 25th, 2014|Ages 0-5, Ages 5-7, Parents|Comments Off on Is Your Sitter Paying More Attention to Her Phone Than To Your Child?

Thoughtful Thursday: Spring Break

March and April are Spring Break months, and since we at GCP are Spring Breaking as we write, today's Thoughtful Thursday offerings are about vacations. In "Vacation", Rita Dove, who in 1987 became the second African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1993–1995, [...]

By |2014-03-20T19:22:14-04:00March 20th, 2014|Thoughtful Thursday|Comments Off on Thoughtful Thursday: Spring Break

Black Folks Are Missing From Children’s Books

Celebrated children's and young adult book author Walter Dean Myers has a great essay asking "Where Are the People of Color in Children's Books?" in this past Sunday's New York Times. In his essay, found here, Myers responds to a recent report that only 93 of the 3,200 children's books published in 2013 were about African Americans. He describes [...]

By |2014-03-18T18:37:31-04:00March 18th, 2014|Ages 0-5, Ages 5-7, Books, Parents|Comments Off on Black Folks Are Missing From Children’s Books

Thoughtful Thursday: Phenomenal Women

An interesting hodgepodge of poetry for today's Thoughtful Thursday. March being Women's History Month, we at GCP want to pay tribute to women, in all of their facets and all of their glory. So we will start with Maya Angelou's classic "Phenomenal Women", and then move onto poems perhaps not so immediately recognizable, but that pack a punch: "For [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:41:23-04:00March 13th, 2014|Thoughtful Thursday|1 Comment

Black Boys Lose Assumption of Innocence at an Early Age

Black boys as young as 10 years old are more likely than their White peers to be mistaken as older, less innocent, and more appropriate targets for police violence if accused of a crime, according to research conducted by UCLA psychologists. In their study, abstracted here, the researchers examined "whether Black boys are given the protections of childhood equally [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:41:23-04:00March 12th, 2014|Ages 0-5, Ages 5-7, Parents, Saving Our Sons|Comments Off on Black Boys Lose Assumption of Innocence at an Early Age

The New SAT: What to Expect

By now many of you who are focused on high school education have heard that there will be changes in the SAT beginning with the May 2016 test. This will affect ninth graders and below, so those of us with middle schoolers and high school freshmen need to pay special attention. So here's what the new SAT will look [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:41:23-04:00March 8th, 2014|Ages 16-18, College Bound Students, Parents|Comments Off on The New SAT: What to Expect

Thoughtful Thursday: Maya Angelou

Today's Thoughtful Thursday features Maya Angelou, the esteemed poet and author. Here are two of her poems which commemorate memorable occasions. The first, "On the Pulse of Morning", was written for and delivered by Angelou at the 1993 inauguration of Bill Clinton. This is followed by the "The Million Man March" poem which she read to the throngs of [...]

By |2023-05-21T16:41:23-04:00March 7th, 2014|Thoughtful Thursday|2 Comments
Go to Top