Word: teachers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...story was a headshaker. Ruth Sherman, a white Brooklyn, N.Y., elementary school teacher, assigned her class a book called Nappy Hair, about a little girl's proud acceptance of her coily mane, in order to bolster the self-esteem of her black and Latino charges. But some parents, after seeing only a few photocopied pages, assumed the book was a racist put-down and essentially ran Sherman out of the school. Most New Yorkers were torn between amazement at the brouhaha and pity for the children, who have lost a good teacher. But for Trevelyn Jones, book-review editor...
Reading, so we're told, is fundamental to a child's education. But trying to get good books--not just the classics but also worthy contemporary works--into young hands is increasingly providing a pit of problems. Spotty teacher training, lack of library assistance (if not lack of libraries themselves) and fear of controversy all help push teachers toward outdated or bland book choices. Those who fight back with verve risk being drummed out of a job or even chased into court. And the old reliable volumes aren't necessarily a refuge either. Such classics as The Grapes of Wrath...
Robert Calfee, dean of the education school at the University of California at Riverside, often carries a satchel filled with contemporary children's books, the kind that win the prestigious Caldecott or Newbery awards. "Less than 10% of teachers are aware of them or buy them," he observes. According to the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance (N.C.B.L.A.), 48 states don't require children's literature training for state certification. What's more, the budget cuts of the 1980s left a quarter of all American schools without libraries and many of those remaining manned by untrained volunteers...
Especially when the price of creativity can be a slap back at the teacher. For the past three years, the San Jose, Calif., school district has had Always Running, a memoir of growing up poor and Hispanic, on an optional list for some college-prep reading. Because of its scenes of drug use, sex and gangs, parents were notified and offered alternative works if need be. But this spring a parent demanded that the book be removed from all schools--ignoring the district's challenge process and taking her case to talk radio. The book survived, but now parents have...
...paid me to be his teaching assistant--Iwould've done it for free just to be near him,"she said. "For someone training to be a younglawyer you couldn't ask for a better teacher...