Community night highlights school-business collaboration

By Kathleen Merryman, McClatchy Newspapers

TACOMA, WASH. — Student Nathan Ortiz stood in front of a cafeteria full of parents, politicians and activists at First Creek Middle School in Tacoma, Wash., and explained what can happen when the school day grows by a few extra hours worth of options.

“You can do all kinds of things like break dancing, which is cool; art class, where they’re making a really big dragon; debate club, which is cool because, instead of yelling at other people, you can do it in a formal way,” he read from his prepared speech.

“You can play outside, like soccer, football and kickball,” he went on. “They help you with homework and give you snacks and check your grades and get on your case and help you until you get...

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Reggio Emilia approach to learning grows: Schools teach creativity, collaboration and critical thinking

By Stacy Downs, McClatchy Newspapers

Five-year-old Kate Lucas stood among a circle of her classmates, holding a picture she had drawn. Black Sharpie lines formed the outline of a modern building. Sections were filled in with purple, yellow and red colored pencils.

“This is Berkley,” the blond girl said, smiling as she talked about the exterior of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education’s Edgar L. and Rheta A. Berkley Child and Family Development Center. The preschool is one of a handful in the Kansas City, Mo., area inspired by Reggio Emilia, an Italian city that Newsweek heralded in 1991 as creating one of the best school systems in the world.

The philosophy is that a classroom’s play inspires a project, promoting creative and...

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Parents on hard high school homework: Carpe diem!

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK — Parents who help with homework think they have it bad with wacky new math in the lower grades. Try the ablative case in the second declension for high school Latin.

Susan Wheeler Sisk is ready with a resounding carpe diem! She enrolled in Latin I online with her 18-year-old senior to get him over the hump.

“This is a brand new subject for me,” said the former preschool teacher in Estes Park, Colo. “It’s online, so there’s no teacher. He said he didn’t want a tutor, but he just needed to get his arms around the subject in a way that seemed like a tutor wouldn’t offer anyway.”

Sisk is grateful he was up for her help. It’s hard enough getting a teen to...

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Schools boost efforts to ID fake student addresses

By KANTELE FRANKO, Associated Press

COLUMBUS — Kelley Williams-Bolar, alarmed after her home was broken into, yanked her two daughters out of their urban Akron, Ohio, schools and enrolled them in her father’s suburban school district nearby, using his address.

That way, said the single mom and teacher’s aide, they could come to a safer home after school.

Her peace of mind proved costly. Officials in the Copley-Fairlawn district challenged the residency of her girls in 2007, when they were 9 and 13 years old. Williams-Bolar was charged and convicted of felony records tampering.

Not only was she jailed last month for nine days, but the conviction threatens her efforts to earn a teacher’s license and could jeopardize her job as a...

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Parent-teacher night tips for middle, high school

By BETH J. HARPAZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK — It’s one of the worst nights of the year if your child is in middle or high school: Parent-teacher night, when you scramble to spend two minutes each with a half-dozen teachers who may not even know your kid’s name.

You stumble down hallways, head up the down staircase, looking for the science lab or drama studio. Or you crowd in the cafeteria or gym with hundreds of other confused moms and dads, mispronouncing unfamiliar teachers’ names as you wait your turn. Some teachers time the sessions, ending them with a digital beep; in other schools, student monitors keep the clock, interrupting your meeting when time’s up.

If your kid’s a straight A student, it probably won’t be...

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Five tips to curb your child’s cheating ways

By Dr. Michael Hartnett, Hybrid Mom

As technology has evolved to provide a vast wealth of information at anytime, anywhere, cheating has never been easier. From classmates receiving completed homework via a mass email to answers popping up on iPhones during a test, cheating has become as simple as text messaging. Here are five ways to prevent your teenagers from falling to such temptation, assuring that they are attending school to learn rather than to learn how to cheat.

1. Check your child’s homework every night. This advice may sound a little intense and age inappropriate by the time your child is in high school, but how else can parents truly know what their teenager are doing at school and what he/she is actually learning? A good sign that a teenager...

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What to do when your child doesn’t like the teacher

By Darah Zeledon, Hybrid Mom

The alarm sounds just before dawn. Sleep-deprived parents everywhere stumble into their kitchens to guzzle coffee and muster up the strength to confront their cranky lethargic lion cubs, deep in slumber. This typical scenario occurs in many households, day after day, and all parents share similar complaints. It’s time to wake up your kid for school and he doesn’t want to go.

A lucky few parents have the type of kid that arises with gusto and full of positive energy ready to embrace the day. Then there’s the kid that remains in a stupor until well after arriving at school. Finally, there’s the child that falls somewhere in between. However, many are also blessed with “the defiant one,” the child that...

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Finding the right time to tackle homework affects how likely it is to be done

By Priscilla J. Dunstan, McClatchy-Tribune

There’s a time and place for everything, including homework. Often, finding the right time to tackle that homework pile effects how likely it is to be done. Not all children are able to come home and study: some need to have some relaxation time, while others will never get it done if it’s not tackled straight away. Your child’s dominant sense will give you great insight into how and when to set the homework schedule.

Tactile children need to move. Don’t expect them to come home from school and get down to homework. They will need to let off steam — by running around or throwing a ball — before they can sit down and concentrate. Let them have a snack and play a bit before guiding them to...

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Mom wants to ease background check rules for school volunteers

ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press Writer

Wendy Cross wants to chaperone field trips and join other parents in supervising activities at her children’s school in Grand Rapids, Mich. But because of some bad checks she wrote a decade ago, that’s out of the question.

Cross, 36, is barred under a school district policy that requires would-be volunteers to undergo criminal background checks and disqualifies anyone with a felony record.

Now Cross is circulating a petition, signed so far by more than 300 other parents and community members, to lift the blanket ban.

“I’m a whole different person, how I used to be then to where I am now,” says Cross, who has four children in the Grand Rapids public school system. “Children...

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Do kids walk to school anymore?

By Kathy Lauer-Williams, The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.)

Last week was a bit of eye opener for me. My son had to make a graph of how children in his class got to school. In his class of 21 children, he was the only child who walked or biked to school. The other 20 took the bus or were dropped off by car.

Do any kids walk or bike to school anymore? I have seen my son’s school at the end of the day. Cars and buses snarl the road in front of the school as the kids are released in groups. But apparently walking to school has become a thing of the past. According to studies, only one in 10 children walks to school.

I grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., and walked (pretty far I might add) to school and my husband, who grew up in Emmaus, Pa., also walked (although...

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