This is an email from BRIGHT Magazine.
What we’re reading today
Hello, Bright-siders! I‘m full of “what if” questions this muggy July morning. What if the best therapists were sitting right under our noses, wagging their tails and licking our ankles? What if teenagers were extraordinarily capable of seeing inequality in the world of coding — and had the skills and wherewithal to do something about it? What if every detention I sat through in high school was somehow worse than a waste of time?
As always, I would love for you to help answer some of these questions. Education needs a diverse slew of new voices, including yours! You’re welcome to build on any conversation by clicking “Write a response” (either on your computer or phone). Here are a few stories, both from Bright and around the web, that may encourage you to do just that:
What If Schools Hired Dogs As Therapists?
By Antonia Malchik in Bright/Medium
A beautifully illustrated (including with children’s letters!) story of the difference a dog named Sejera has made in a San Diego school — and the power dogs have to heal children everywhere.
The Big Lie That Helped Justify America’s War in Afghanistan
By Azmat Khan in Buzzfeed News
Wow. Necessary, sobering reading for anyone who believes in the US spending money on international education. “Over and over, the United States has touted education — for which it has spent more than $1 billion — as one of its premier successes in Afghanistan, a signature achievement that helped win over ordinary Afghans and dissuade a future generation of Taliban recruits.
“But a BuzzFeed News investigation…has found those claims to be massively exaggerated, riddled with ghost schools, teachers, and students that exist only on paper. The American effort to educate Afghanistan’s children was hollowed out by corruption and by short-term political and military goals that, time and again, took precedence over building a viable school system. And the U.S. government has known for years that it has been peddling hype.”
What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis in Mother Jones
Many people have been talking about “restorative justice” for a long time, or training teachers to calm angry kids instead of directly punish them. Lewis does a commendable job here of tying in some classroom evidence with psychology research. “The [Collaborative and Proactive Solutions] method hinges on training school (or prison or psych clinic) staff to nurture strong relationships — especially with the most disruptive kids — and to give kids a central role in solving their own problems. For instance, a teacher might see a challenging child dawdling on a worksheet and assume he’s being defiant, when in fact the kid is just hungry. A snack solves the problem.”
A Teacher Like You
This is a new website that shares the stories of real-life educators, including their motivations for teaching and memorable moments. Worth checking out. Here’s a particularly moving quote from a teacher named Tanesha Dixon:
“It is hard to combat that narrative of failure. The messages our kids are getting, even from the schools, is that they’ve gone to a failing school. So they think, if I go to a failing school, does that make me a failure? I want to be a change agent and create a new narrative for my students, which says that they can and will be who they want to be. I ask, ‘What are your wildest dreams?’ And that’s where we start, right?
I Spent Spring Break Teaching Girls to Code
By Christina Li in Bright/Medium
This story, written by a 16-year-old in Michigan, is pure inspiration. She learned to code when she was 14. It quickly changed her young life. Instead of keeping her gifts to herself, she decided to design a weeklong intensive spring break program to teach middle school girls the skills she so recently learned herself.
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Reach out to me on Twitter (@sarika008) with any thoughts or questions! Otherwise, catch you on the Bright side.
