What about those poor black kid?

 

 According to, Forbes, By now, nearly all of the internet has ripped into Gene Marks, my fellow Forbes contributor.* And rightfully so. His now famous post digs into so potent an issue—race and the achievement gap—with such little evidence, rationality and tact that it only invites scorn. When I first read it, the sociology graduate in me had a reflexive rebuttal: White men, like Marks and I, no matter how noble our intentions, simply cannot begin a sentence or thought with “If I were a black…” Our empathy just won’t stretch that way.
But I’ll avoid piling on. (Kashmire Hill drives the point home and gathers up some of the best responses.)
I don’t find Marks’ post malicious. Dense, yes. But the thrust of his argument is not too dissimilar from that of his Mayor, when he admonished black teens to “pull your pants up and buy a belt.” And, like Hill, I do believe there’s a kernel of truth in Marks’ piece, beyond its title: African-Americans are, in many ways, structurally mismatched with the jobs in the emerging economy, particularly the tech sector. Toppling this mismatch is a key way to escape poverty. For years, cities have thrown a litany of policies at this problem. And businesses, eager to hire qualified candidates of color—and tap into consumers in a population that is extraordinarily underemployed—are invested in pushing African-Americans to jump this hurdle too, as Marks awkwardly explains. To Read more visit #http://onforb.es/rAdZec

Reformer Speaks in Buffalo

  According to, Mike Desmond, One of America's leading educational reformers is in town, speaking to the area's first Power of Education summit in the Adam's Mark.

Seven-hundred people are slated to hear Harlem Children's Zone founder Geoffrey Canada. Canada's program mixes education, health care and social care in a 100-block section of that Manhattan neighborhood with ten-thousand school children.

Friday's summit is sponsored by the Community Action Organization of Erie County, which is working with several community agencies to create a children's zone here, focusing on a relationship between neighborhoods and a new network of neighborhood schools.

C-A-O President and C-E-O Nathan Hare says education of Buffalo kids must be be improved.

"If we bring these schools back into a structure where the majority of kids are walking distance to the school you can then begin to build neighborhood structures where there's a lot of loyalty within the neighborhood to the school and the school to the neighborhood," he said.

Hare is praising the efforts of Buffalo's District Parent Coordinating Council to get parents involved to the point there is a parent for each of the city's 13-hundred public school classrooms helping.
To read more visit #http://bit.ly/sswXi2

Better Education vital for Latinos

According to, Fox News, Young Hispanics in Chicago are destined for the same kind of low-paying jobs held by their immigrant parents without an improvement in the quality of education, a new study from DePaul University says.

Looking at 2010 Census data, the report concludes that half of the - overwhelmingly Mexican - Hispanic workforce in the six counties of the metropolitan area are employed in food service, construction and manufacturing jobs.
Forty percent of the U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants find themselves in similar positions, according to the research, which was carried out by DePaul as part of the New Journalism on Latino Children project.
Only 1 percent of Mexican-Americans in the Chicago area are work in fields such as science, technology and engineering.
Latinos accounted for three of every five new workers in the metro area between 2000 and 2010, the study found. And while the vast majority of those workers are U.S. citizens, they stand "at or near the bottom of Chicago's education and wage hierarchies."
Among the city's working Hispanic men, those born in Mexico earn a median annual income of $28,000, compared with $47,000 for U.S.-born Mexicans, and non-Latino white males make $65,000 a year. To read more visit # http://bit.ly/tSTVBp

Sexual Education

 

 According to, Dave McGinn Children still not in their teens are turning to pornography to learn about sex because education in schools rarely includes any positive aspects of the experience, a new study reveals.

Australian researchers Maree Crabbe and David Corlett interviewed dozens of students and teachers, the London Telegraph reports. They discovered, among other things, that the average age at which a child first watches porn is 11.

In a recent New York Times story on sex education, the vice-president of education for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America said, “There is abstinence-only sex education, and there’s abstinence-based sex ed. There’s almost nothing else left in public schools.”

Providing kids with the full picture of sex – it’s biology, potential dangers and pleasures – is obviously tricky territory, but one could make a pretty solid argument that there’s much more cause for concern in a teenage kid thinking anything that happens in porn is “normal.” To read more visit #http://bit.ly/uBQ66u

Funds

According to, Katherine Long who is a Seattle Times staff reporter,
Washington has won a major federal education competition and will receive up to $60 million during the next four years to improve private preschool programs across the state.
The money is part of the Obama administration's education initiative, Race to the Top.
The goal of the competition was to get more children from birth to age 5 ready for kindergarten. Thirty-five states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, applied for the chance to win between about $50 million to $100 million each — $500 million in all. Only nine states received the award.
In Washington, the money will go to support two initiatives: free training for preschool providers, and a standardized assessment that kindergarten teachers will use at the beginning of the school year to determine the skill level of the incoming class.
Private child-care providers and day-care centers provide most of the early childhood education in Washington, although the state also gets federal money for Head Start and funds a state Head Start-like program for low-income children called ECEAP, for Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program. To read more of this visit #http://bit.ly/vVdZFa

Autistic Kids

As future teachers it is our duty to be informed of the possibility of one of us or all of us having an Autistic kid in our class. The signs of these childen give off may be that they are very figity, they do not like to be touched , it is hard for them to communicate, and they are most of the time mentally retarted. In some cases though it has been proven that Autistic children can be talented in systematic enviroments. They tend to not like change so this is good for them if they are placed in an area that operates in an routine manner.Most dont speak or walk until 5 yrs old. Some very rare cases Austitic kids can be sevants. Which means they are very brilliant in one specific area. Some of those areas may include, great memory with numbers, photographic memories that can be put into art, and musical talents that are un heard of. I hope by reading this you learned someting you didnt know about Autistic kids.

Being an Educator

My, name is Gaberiel Ecby and I strive each and everyday to hopefully be one of the best educators ever. I want to be able to reach the students as a friend , mentor, and most importantly teacher. Being a teacher is more than just ging through the motions, and setting up leson plans. To be a teacher you must understand childern. Children must be understood in a way that is clear to the instructor so that he or she is able to assist them. Also with being a teacher sometimes some children are going to heave special needs, and the teacher must clearly know those needs so that the child can learn. I hope to reach every child, and also potential staff, and faculty that I will work with in a positive way. I also want to make a giant impact in that young man's life that seems cloudy, and let them know that there is a brighter day, and that his education is the most important thing you can obtain to prosper in life.