Ken has posted a link to a fantastic idea for an afterschool program.
You must go and vote; the winner gets $10,000 seed money.
Bronze Inc
A program like this would have solved soooooo many problems for me. Instead of death-marching my middle school school boy through hours of afterschooling, he could have been zipping through these programs, studying and competing with peers (he's so much more focused studying with a friend), developing great study habits, learning high-quality content, earning points, and playing video games after all this has occurred instead of before.
This summer has been great, precisely because I'm not death-marching my kid through hours of summer math and reading. With his massive summer assignment list from Hogwarts, he has more work to do than I ever dreamed of giving him, and he's doing it cheerfully and happily because somebody else, not me, told him to do it. In 7 weeks he's read A Raisin in the Sun, Fahrenheit 451, Angela's Ashes, Last Days of Summer, Angels and Demons, and Guns, Germs, and Steel while also attending Teenscape, the fantastic program our local rec department puts on for 7th & 8th grade kids.
At this point he's 120 pages ahead of schedule and hasn't broken a sweat.
Afterschooling is a tough row to hoe.
A DI/Core Knowledge afterschool program ----- woo hoo!
Thank you for announcing this on your blog! Your enthusiasm for the idea is a great motivator.
ReplyDeleteEven if I do not win the contest, people can be assured I will try my best to implement this.
Remember to vote!