I can marginally recall what my time was spent like in third grade and of course, from my now adult perspective, I don’t remember the third grade being as emotionally charged and dramatic as it really is. I would now like to take this time to personally apologize to Mrs. Messenger for any stress and headaches I caused her during my third grade tenure. I have an immense amount of respect for the teacher (as well as all educators) I worked with. Every day she came to work, ready to teach 20 students and deal with everything from the perpetual “I’m not feeling well” to “doesn’t want to be my friend anymore.” I can only imagine what it is like to be a parent and constantly deal with the pre-pubescent emotions and concerns on a 24/7 basis. So in addition to teachers, I have just as much respect for mothers and fathers

I give even more credit to the children I spent each day with. Some of them trekked over 200 blocks or from outer boroughs (in other words, a 45-60 min trip) each morning (to avoid going to an unsafe school) and they always wore a smiling face. I would eat lunch with the students and some of them could barely afford their meal. As she ate her lunch consisting of a sole sandwich, one girl told me “it’s all her family had” and went back to eating and talking about Justin Bieber with her classmates. They never let at-home drama get in the way of learning and having fun. What I discovered is that children think and process just like an adult, but to the extent that their knowledge and life experience allows them. They want to understand and articulate. Even when they got frustrated with work or playground issues, the kids would always try to resolve the problem (though sometimes it involved tears and chest puffing).

The most important bit of knowledge I left with from my experience with America Reads is that education is KEY. I cannot stress this enough. And by education, I’m not just limiting it to only classroom work. Exposure to new things and personal differences, I believe, is the best way to promote tolerance, interests, and understanding.  For example, one lunch period, I brought carrots to eat and a girl had never eaten them before. In fact, she said she didn’t like vegetables. I gave her her first carrot and she loved it, prompting her to try other greens (from what she told me). Being a Caucasian (a pale one for that matter) teaching at a predominantly Hispanic school located in a lower-income neighborhood, race was a major topic of discussion. Each day I dealt with questions and comments about my skin color and physical experience. While blunt in their delivery, these racial inquiries were not out of malice, just out of curiosity. These kids loved me (as I loved them) unconditionally. They didn’t know any better. They wanted to know more about me and the world I grew up in. From food to race to science fair experiments and everything in between, children want to learn. It is paramount that we help them as much as we can. I‘m grateful that I helped, in some small way, in the education of some of our country’s future leaders.

Before the invention of the printing press in 1440, reading was limited to religious peoples and upper class society. Books were handwritten and oftentimes embellished with elaborate illustrations, making the value of the book rise as a piece of literature as well as a piece of art. Surely, Johannes Gutenberg must be rolling in his grave to think of all the ways we can read books today. From mass produced paperbacks to audiobooks to digital copies on our Kindles or iPads and now to the start of enhanced video books, like those featured on Speakaboos. The sheer wealth of reading materials available to us is astounding. Not only can we read classic books like Frankenstein, but we have an ever-growing list of contemporary titles to choose from. There could not be a more exciting time to read than right now, based purely on the amount of access we have to books.

School Library Journal reminds us that in New York City, at least one million residents cannot read about the elementary school level. Such a number reflects only this massive metropolis, but can serve as a warning to the rest of the United States (and the world). Perhaps the best way to prevent such numbers from growing is to remind our children and students of the importance of reading in and out of the classroom.

Here are some great ways to spark your child’s interest in reading and reinforce early literacy development:

• Take a field trip to your local library for their story time hour.
• Look for any interactive storybook videos, either as cellphone apps or on your computer
• For every birthday or holiday, purchase your child at least one new book
• If a movie comes out that’s based on a book, read the book before seeing the movie. Then you can discuss the differences!
• Make reading a part of the bedtime routine. Children who are read to at an early age develop better listening skills and find a love for literature earlier on.
• Don’t use reading as punishment. If you take away television or video games, leave the books be.
• Rent a few audiobooks – let your children listen to their books while in the car.
• Using subtitles with DVDs can be really helpful. Hearing AND seeing the words can help reinforce vocabulary.
• Plan a family game night with games like Scrabble or Pictionary. While Scrabble helps with spelling, Pictionary helps expand their vocabulary.

Have any other suggestions? What routines or activities do you do with your kids to encourage them to read or make them fall in love with books all over again?

“Those who get anxious think that education is like a race and you’ve got to get running fast, and if you don’t you’re going to fall behind and then you’re going to lose the race. That’s not the right way to look at education.”

It seems private schools are worried about putting too much pressure on kindergartners. Yet many educational experts stress the importance of early reading in mental growth.

This educational technique comes to light just as Professor Ronald Ferguson, founder of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard University,  extolled the importance of early reading — and continued reading — as a key factor in intellectual expansion and the narrowing of America’s racial achievement gap:

In a wealthy suburb he surveyed, 40 percent of blacks owned 100 or more books, compared with 80 percent of whites. In first grade, the percentage of black and white parents reading to their children daily was about the same; by fifth grade, 60 percent to 70 percent of whites still read daily to their children, compared with 30 percent to 40 percent of blacks.

The average Manhattan private school may not be interested in the narrowing achievement gap. But are private educators doing children a disservice by delaying reading until first grade? What do you think?

“During the baby visits, the children sit around the baby and mother (sometimes it’s a father) on a green blanket (which represents new life and nature) and they try to understand the baby’s feelings. The instructor helps by labeling them…Children learn strategies for comforting a crying baby. They learn that one must never shake a baby. They discover that everyone comes into the world with a different temperament, including themselves and their classmates. They see how hard it can be to be a parent, which helps them empathize with their own mothers and fathers. And they marvel at how capacity develops. Each month, the baby does something that it couldn’t do during its last visit: roll over, crawl, sit up, maybe even begin walking. Witnessing the baby’s triumphs – even something as small as picking up a rattle for the first time — the children will often cheer.”

The goal of Roots is to  increase human biological capabilities for compassion by helping to teach kindness. “…We are beginning to understand how to nurture this biological potential. It seems that it’s not only possible to make people kinder, it’s possible to do it systematically at scale – at least with school children,” says Bornstein. He has observed Roots’ work in several Toronto schools and has seen first hand how bringing a baby into the classroom setting changes social dynamics,”What I find most fascinating is how the baby actually changes the children’s behavior. Teachers have confirmed my impressions: tough kids smile, disruptive kids focus, shy kids open up. In a seventh grade class, I found 12-year-olds unabashedly singing nursery rhymes.”