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What MLK Jr. Teaches us about Servant Leadership

By @GwynethJones – The Daring Librarian  As an educator I was touched today by this article from Mr. James Perry, former candidate for the Mayor of New Orleans: “Among the most important lessons I’ve learned from Dr. King is the example of servant leadership. A servant leader is one who offers an inclusive vision; listens carefully to others; persuades through reason; and heals divisions while building community. It is easy to spot servant leaders. In a room where others are jockeying for attention, they are the ones listening to someone others might consider unimportant. When faced with a problem, they look for solutions …

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There’s more than practice to becoming a world-class expert

D. Zachary Hambrick, Michigan State University and Fredrik Ullén, Karolinska Institute Some people are dramatically better at activities like sports, music and chess than other people. Take the basketball great Stephen Curry. This past season, breaking the record he set last year by over 40 percent, Curry made an astonishing 402 three-point shots – 126 more than his closest challenger. What explains this sort of exceptional performance? Are experts “born,“ endowed with a genetic advantage? Are they entirely “made” through training? Or is there some of both? What earlier studies show This question is the subject of a long-running debate …

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Kindergartners get little time to play. Why does it matter?

Christopher Brown, University of Texas at Austin Being a kindergartner today is very different from being a kindergartner 20 years ago. In fact it is more like first grade. Researchers have demonstrated that five-year-olds are spending more time engaged in teacher-led academic learning activities than play-based learning opportunities that facilitate child-initiated investigations and foster social development among peers. As a former kindergarten teacher, a father of three girls who’ve recently gone through kindergarten, and as researcher and teacher-educator in early childhood education, I have had kindergarten as a part of my adult life for almost 20 years. As a parent, …

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Black Boys in Crisis: How to Solve the Black Boy-Special Education Problem

In this series, appropriately titled “Black Boys in Crisis,” I highlight the problems facing black boys in education today, as well as provide clear steps that will lead us out of the crisis. The statistics on high numbers of black and Latino boys in special education programs is more than an interesting tidbit – it’s a call to action. What can we do to identify true learning delays and isolated behavior problems and disseminate them from disabilities? Early intervention. Here we are again, using the word intervention to identify an actionable step to improve academic success for black boys. There’s …

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Decriminalizing the Classroom: School climate Bill of Rights

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.** A guest post by Beth Ellor “I believe the purpose of public schools is to educate not exclude children and to help identify and meet child needs, not make children serve adult convenience, self interest, and systems.” So begins the article published in the 9/26/14 Newsletter of the Children’s Defense Fund, written by Marian Wright Edelman. Please …

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4 Troubling Truths About Black Boys and the U.S. Educational System

Most people like to think that American K-12 schools, workplaces and courthouses are pillars of fairness, but statistic after statistic all point to a crisis among the young, Black men of the nation. This crisis begins in homes, stretches to K-12 educational experiences, and leads straight to the cycle of incarceration in increasingly high numbers. In America’s prison systems, black citizens are incarcerated at six times the rates of white ones – and the NAACP predicts that one in three of this generation of Black men will spend some time locked up. Decreasing the rates of incarceration for black men …

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Ask An Expert: Disrupting the School-to-Prison Cycle

Question: Dr. Lynch, I am a youth counselor in Philadelphia, PA. Everyday I witness the public school system fail our children. The end result is that many of them drop out and end up in prison. What can activists like myself do to end the school to prison pipeline? Nate T. Answer: Nate, thank you for sending this question my way. Though all people are genetically predisposed, it is ultimately the environment that encompasses the formative years that shapes lives. Some of that comes from home environments, and the rest from society. Our nation’s public schools play an integral role …

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Projecting False Truths: The 4.0 GPA at an HBCU vs. a PWI

Note: Today’s op ed comes to you courtesy of George M. Johnson, an advocate for change in Higher Education.  He is the Former Director of Student Accounts at Virginia Union University and counsels students properly preparing for college.  He has been published in HBCUDigest.com and blogs at iamgmjohnson.com.  Follow him on twitter @iamgmjohnson Yesterday, a tweet from @Med_School12 took Social Media by storm that stated “A 4.0 at a HBCU is not equivalent to a 4.0 at a rigorous PWI.  Sorry, but it’s the truth”.  Immediately twitter swarmed this tweet as the thousands of retweets with comments ranged from a …

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Black Boys in Crisis: Why Are So Many of Them in Special Education?

In this series, appropriately titled “Black Boys in Crisis,” I highlight the problems facing black boys in education today, as well as provide clear steps that will lead us out of the crisis. Special education classes have changed drastically in the past 20 years. Namely, the students who take advantage of these adapted learning classrooms have changed. Contemporary public school education recognizes that there are degrees of disabilities that may impact student learning and the rise of conditions like autism has fueled the need for more special education intervention. As a result, the mental image that even today’s youngest educators …

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Culturally Responsive Training: Exploring Cultural and Student Backgrounds

Once an educator has thoroughly examined their own cultural beliefs, values, and biases, she is ready to begin learning about other cultures.  Researchers have theorized that diverse cultures demonstrate common patterns of thought and community behavior.  In order to explore these cognitive and behavioral patterns, an educator must be willing to spend a great deal of time reading about and observing the standards and practices of various cultural groups that they will be dealing with in the classroom. Attaining a thorough base of knowledge is among the most critical steps that a teacher must take in order to educate students …

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