Yet another school district has made a fuss over And Tango Makes Three, the book about the chick hatched by two male penguins, and the American Library Association’s Most Challenged Book of 2006. The school superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia, has instructed county elementary schools to take the book out of general circulation and move […]
No, not W., although I do think we need an explanation of how someone who can’t say “nuclear” correctly made it to the Oval Office. How do you explain the president to young children? We’ve been telling our preschooler “The president is the person the people in our country choose to help lead the country.”
I just did a guest post for Teens Today with Vanessa Van Petten, a site for parents of teenagers. Van Petten, 22, wrote You’re Grounded!: How to Stop Fighting and Make the Teenage Years Easier while she was still in high school, basing it on dozens of interviews with teens, parents, and teachers. She continues
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Thursday unanimously upheld the rejection of a suit brought by two couples from Lexington, Massachusetts, who said their school district had no right to include LGBT-related books like King & King in its elementary school curriculum. (See my August post about the case.) The parents
Lots of late-breaking news today, so here are a few items that didn’t make it into my earlier roundup: Opponents of same-sex marriage in Florida managed to collect enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment banning it on the November ballot. A New York appeals court ruled that valid same-sex marriages performed in other states
A few parenting pieces from around the world: Teachers and school administrators in Britain now have new guidance on combating homophobia and reducing anti-gay bullying in schools. LGBT-rights group Stonewall produced the guidance for the government and released it last September, although the official launch was this week. It’s all sensible stuff, like explaining different
Finally, a sensible answer to the question of explaining LGBT families to young children. A reader of the Seattle Times asks: How much information is appropriate to give young children (6-8 years) about gay families? Evidently, my daughter has a gay family in her classroom, and I want her to understand and be tolerant. She
Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper for the U.S. military community overseas, has a fascinating article on the establishment of a Gay-Straight Alliance club at Robert D. Edgren High School, situated at Misawa Air Base in Japan and part of the Department of Defense Dependents Schools-Pacific. Despite some controversy and an investigation of the Department
Today marks the start of No Name-Calling Week, “an annual week of educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.” The event was created four years ago by GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight
My son’s preschool class has been talking about the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. “Martin Luther King was a peacemaker,” my son informed me last week. “And a bad man shotted him.” All things considered, I’m glad he doesn’t say the word “shot” enough to know its proper grammatical usage. I agreed with his assessment
