Denise Fawcett Facey

What’s the best way to prepare students to compete in a global economy? Increasingly, the answer among educators across the U.S. is engineering, and they’re teaching it as early as kindergarten. In fact, teachers have come up with some very original ideas for doing it. (more…)

Nowadays, with parents so actively involved in every detail of children’s lives, play dates have taken the place of children just simply playing outside with whomever happens to be around and parents orchestrate the details of their children’s social lives. Now, schools have entered the mix. In addition to school counselors mediating such situations as when a parent complains about an “unkind” text message received by his or her child, schools also are now actively discouraging “best” friends. (more…)

While incidences of cheating may not actually be more numerous than in times past, the means by which students do it are. Indeed, with technology offering so many new ways to cheat, teachers have had to become much more savvy in discerning this activity. For example, despite the prohibition against the use of cell phones in most schools, we know that students still bring them to school. But I recently read about at least one student who used his cell to cheat by taking photos of answer sheets inadvertently left on the teacher’s desk. Other students have used the internet (once again via cell phone) to get answers to test questions. And still others text message answers to friends. (more…)

When you combine the current economy, summertime and kids, this summer looks rather dismal. With the recession refusing to release its stranglehold on our economy, many school districts have decided to forego summer school and other summer programs, in the interest of budget cuts. So, I’m very enthusiastic about San Francisco’s solution to the problem of how to occupy children’s time this summer: summer camps and much more. (more…)