Parent Resources

We will be updating this page regularly once the school year is in full swing. We look forward to sharing the educational literature that teachers are reading, as well as other resources that they and our students are using throughout the year.

We Recommend
For an orientation to Bridges in Mathematics, the program used in grades K-5, go to the parent orientation section of the Bridges website.

Reaching Boys, co-authored by Dr. Michael Reichert, executive director, Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives

"Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?"
By Paul Tough, New York Times (from September 25, 2009)
According to Tough, “Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.”

Online
http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/articles/proged.html
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/progressivetranscript.htm
http://ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/digests/1995/lkmag95.html
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/119/1/182

Recommended Books and Journals
"The Constructivist Classroom," Educational Leadership, November 1999, vol. 57, no. 3.
Cowley, Geoffrey and Ann Underwood, "Memory," Newsweek, U.S. Edition: Lifestyle, June 15, 1998.
Darling-Hammond, Linda, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.
Dewey, John, Democracy and Education. New York: Free Press, 1966 [1916].
Dewey, John, School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 [1899]. The Eight-Year Study Revisited: Lessons from the Past for the Present, National Middle School Association.Gardner, Howard, "Stick to Testing the Basics," New York Times, Op Ed, April 21, 2001
Feiner, Robert et al, "The Impact of School Reform for the Middle Grades: A Longitudinal Study of a Network Engaged in Turning Points-based Comprehensive School Transformation," in Ruby Takahashi & David A. Hamburg, Preparing Adolescents for the Twenty-First Century, New York: Cambridge UP, 1997.
Gardner, Howard, The Disciplined Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
"How the Brain Learns," Educational Leadership, November 1998, vol. 56, no. 3.
Kohn, Alfie, The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools, Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000.
Kohn, Alfie, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards." Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Kohn, Alfie, What Does it Mean to Be Well Educated? And More Essays on Standards, Grading and Other Follies. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004.
"Looking Collaboratively at Student Work: An Essential Toolkit," Horace, November 1996, vol. 13, no. 2.
Olson, Lynn, "Dewey: The Progressive Era’s Misunderstood Giant," Education Week, April 21, 1999, Vol. 18. No. 32, p. 29.
Orrill, Robert, Education and Democracy: Re-imagining Liberal Learning in America. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1997.
Popham, J.W., "Why Standardized Tests Don’t Measure Educational Quality," Educational Leadership, March 1999, vol. 56, no. 6, pp. 8-15.