NYC disbands literacy coaches amid reading curriculum overhaul
Hundreds of literacy coaches hired under a program to help improve literacy instruction need to find new roles, even as many elementary schools are working to adopt new reading programs. The literacy coaches, originally part of the city’s Universal Literacy Program, must apply for other jobs, according to education department officials familiar with the city’s […]
10 ‘Mean Girls’ quotes to celebrate October 3
Happy Mean Girls Day … Just be sure to celebrate without becoming a mean girl today! #WHYCOUNSELING? Because it’s all about showing up for the kids who sat at the “Cool Kids Table” even though they didn’t feel like they belonged there … It’s all about reassuring people and affirming that they’re indeed good enough. […]
NYC special education recovery services program to be scaled back this fall
In response to pandemic disruptions, New York City officials required every school to offer special education services last year outside regular hours to any family who wanted them. But that won’t be the case this coming school year, education officials said. Instead, the education department is vowing to determine what extra instruction or therapies children […]
As fewer kids enroll, big cities face a small schools crisis
On a recent morning inside Chalmers School of Excellence on Chicago’s West Side, five preschool and kindergarten students finished up drawings. Four staffers, including a teacher and a tutor, chatted with them about colors and shapes. The summer program offers the kind of one-on-one support parents love. But behind the scenes, Principal Romian Crockett worries […]
With Banks and Adams, NYC school integration advocates see an uphill fight
At a town hall meeting in southeast Queens this spring, a parent leader asked David Banks, the newly minted schools chancellor: Will you fight to integrate our segregated schools? “I think diversity, when it’s done well, provides a level of enrichment for education that you cannot beat,” Banks responded. “But I also think that it […]
To help my students who struggle with reading, I had to do some serious soul-searching
To help my students who struggle with reading, I had to do some serious soul-searching Growing up, I was an A student. My grandfather skipped a grade; so did my mother. With the baton handed to me, I made the honor roll, joined honor societies, played instruments, sang, and took part in a range of […]
NYC teachers get little to no training on lockdown drills
When Mohammad Jehad Ahmad began teaching almost six years ago, he wasn’t familiar with lockdown drills. “I was under the impression that a lockdown drill just meant to lock the door,” the Bronx high school math teacher said. “So in my first year doing it, I would lock the door and keep teaching.” It wasn’t […]
To expand NYC’s ‘gifted’ programs, one nonprofit turns to after school
To expand NYC’s ‘gifted’ programs, one nonprofit turns to after school Kelly didn’t think of herself as particularly smart when a teacher told the rising sixth grader that she would be joining the Excellence Project, an after-school program at P.S. 189 in the Bronx for “gifted” students. But she started attending the daily sessions, where […]
