Sitting Down With a Former Baltimore Police Officer
Ed Mattson saw Baltimore’s 1968 riots in person, and he watched the recent Freddie Gray riots on TV. He’s still struggling to understand both.
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Veterans’ new fight: reviving inner-city America
How some veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are helping turn around a drug-infested neighborhood of Baltimore – and themselves.
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9/11 hijacking victim’s family expanded, even without him
The Mladenik family has adopted two children since 9/11. Even they miss their dad, who died in the hijacking of American Airlines flight 11 before they arrived.
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Fleeing is Believing
Refugees moving to America hear wild, improbable rumors about this country before they get here. Some of which turn out to be true.
What it’s like to be a refugee in America
Global conflict and recession chip away at America’s ability to protect the huddled masses it has rescued. Some go homeless, some even return to war zones to make a living.
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Charter schools’ biggest crisis: A place to call home
By Mary Wiltenburg. This article originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, March 9, 2009 The school is bursting at the seams. Desks are packed so tightly in trailer classrooms that a fourth-grader at the International Community School (ICS) can scarcely slip out for a drink of water without knocking into someone. Fifth- and sixth-graders are on a separate campus, seven miles from their siblings in kindergarten through fourth. Some … Continue reading Charter schools’ biggest crisis: A place to call home
Tackling the three Rs in a second or third language
By Mary Wiltenburg. This article originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, February 12, 2009 Stolen shopping carts collect behind Indian Creek Apartment Homes. In good weather, Nyo Nyo spends hours pushing her 2-year-old around the parking lot in one, her skirt flapping, his head high, like a prince surveying his realm. His mother is less at home in the country that took her family in four years ago, when they … Continue reading Tackling the three Rs in a second or third language
Who’s failing – the student or the test?
By Mary Wiltenburg. This article originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, February 11, 2009 It’s hard to get jazzed about four-digit subtraction. As noon approaches on this freezing January day, the kids in teacher Gianna Amsberry’s third-grade math class have been shut inside all morning. They’re ricocheting off the furniture, trying to impress their crushes, seizing any opportunity to think about something besides carrying … Continue reading Who’s failing – the student or the test?
Third-grade math: a teacher’s calculus
By Mary Wiltenburg. This article originally appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, February 10, 2009 Some of her kids can multiply dozens; some are still adding on their fingers. Some, by Georgia standards, are failing third grade math. But today, whatever Ann Griffith’s students know about division, they’re fired up about it. A dozen 8-to-10-year-olds sit cross-legged on the carpet of her trailer classroom, around … Continue reading Third-grade math: a teacher’s calculus
Doctor on Duty
A Boston-trained Army surgeon finds satisfaction overseas patching up some of the war’s most severely wounded troops.
Mary Wiltenburg 