The International Community School’s struggle for space is part of a nationwide crisis for charter schools. Obama plans to increase federal funding, but lack of facilities will keep dozens from opening this year – and alter, or close, many more.
Continue reading “Charter schools’ biggest crisis: A place to call home”
Kids with access to US public education are often the bridge to cultural and linguistic fluency for their families. But how best to teach kids who don’t speak English as a first language? And what can be expected of students working to learn it as a second, third, or fourth language even as they learn to read and multiply?
Continue reading “Tackling the three Rs in a second or third language”
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?
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
Mary Wiltenburg 