Read & Engage: Step Right Up
It is hard to know where to begin with describing this award-winning non-fiction picture book. Every part of the story of William “Doc” Key and his horse Jim Key is astonishing. That Doc raised the colt Jim to recognize letters, then to read, write, add, and subtract is more than compelling. That formerly enslaved Doc Key used his stage show to teach post-war American lessons of kindness is doubly so. Performing from Broadway stages to Spelling Bees in schools, Doc and Jim showed that with kindness and education anything was possible. In the years following the enslavement of...
Read MoreParent Starts ‘Local Love Brigade’ in VT
From the article “‘Local Love Brigade’ aims to console targets of hate” article by Kevin O’Connor in VTDigger. Ann Braden, founder of the advocacy group Gun Sense Vermont, can erase hateful emails with a tap of her computer’s delete key. But the Brattleboro mother couldn’t so easily dismiss news of a recent anonymous letter telling the Islamic Society of Vermont it wasn’t welcome in the state. Such words can’t be papered over, she thought. Or can they? Braden, aiming to supplement Valentine’s Day with year-round social action, has formed the Local...
Read MorePediatricians on Teaching Kindness
Excerpted from the article for “Are Your Children Learning? If You Teach Kindness Like MLK, They Pick It Up” (Salon.com) by Nia Heard-Garris, Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at University of Michigan Medical School and Danielle Erkoboni, National Clinician Scholar and General Pediatrician. “Children are listening.” Children are listening to the unkind political and public rhetoric and absorbing the messages whether you want them to or not. Dr. Heard-Garris and Dr. Erkoboni suggest four ways to “scaffold the messages our children...
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