Carol Adair, the spouse of U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan and a venerated teacher at the College of Marin, died of cancer on January 3rd, 2009, at the age of 66. She is survived by Ryan, two daughters, four grandchildren, her mother, and four siblings. Her death was first announced in the Marin Independent Journal
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) has just launched Cultivating Respect, a program to address anti-LGBT sentiment in the nation’s schools. The program includes “training seminars for local parents and allies, empowering PFLAG supporters at the local level to work directly with their community leaders and school administrators to protect LGBT students.”
How can one evaluate who will be a great teacher? That’s the question posed by journalist Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point) in the current issue of The New Yorker. He says, in part: Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half
It’s time for another collection of news and fun stuff for LGBT parents: Put on your flak jackets. “It is same-sex parenting that is heating up as the next skirmish in the nation’s culture wars,” asserts the Chicago Tribune. Nancy Polikoff points out just how scary are the proposed Bush rules that would allow healthcare
The guinea pigs have had the spotlight this year, as picture book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding has faced several attempted challenges from library patrons who wanted to remove or reshelve it. The penguins of And Tango Makes Three are not out of danger yet, however, as a school board meeting in Ankeny, Iowa made clear. Cindy
(Originally published in Bay Windows, November 20, 2008. This has less to do with parenting than most of my pieces, but may be of interest to those of you who have children in college, were/are involved in collegiate LGBT groups yourselves, or are lawyers.) OutLaw, the LGBT student group at Boston University School of Law,
Paige Schilt at Bilerico today reflects on what she calls “my latest obsession: insinuating gay marriage into the kindergarten curriculum.” It’s a wonderful tale about her son’s first foray into a classroom, and a great example of something I’ve been saying for some time (most recently at 365gay.com), that curriculum or no, children will learn
(Originally published in Bay Windows, October 16, 2008.) When Peg Tyre wrote an article titled “The Trouble with Boys” for Newsweek in 2006, outlining what she saw as a national trend of boys struggling at school, it caused a firestorm of controversy. Some feminists accused her of ignoring the age-old and still ongoing struggles of
I have a new piece up at 365gay.com, “Teaching Children about Gays and Lesbians.” I talk about Prop 8 and how those who want to ban discussion of same-sex couples in school curricula are ignoring the fact that the only real way to eliminate this topic from the classroom is to expel the children who
I blogged Monday about a San Francisco first-grade class who surprised their lesbian teacher by showing up at her wedding. A parent suggested the field trip and school administrators agreed it was a “teachable moment.” While I admired the thought behind the trip, I was very concerned about the far-right running with the story. Well,
