Because the people who constantly post the NYP are largely trump supporters lol

New York Cares. Take a 10 min online video orientation and then search through tons of opportunities. It’s a great way to volunteer

Also check out Futures and Options which helps lower income kids interested in finance and tech discover opportunities and get mentoring.

Check out r/asknyc and also there is a site called leasebreak that often has sublets (and you can filter for those with landlord approval to avoid issues)

Well said- Could not agree more. The detrimental effects of eliminating phonics have been passed upward to elementary, high school and now even college educators to fix but until the root cause is admitted and methodology adjusted these educators are fighting an uphill battle. They deserve support, not criticism.

I read the Post to keep an eye on what narrative is being pushed. Sometimes they do have a salient point or two but I feel like it’s a broken clock situation and even then, most often those points are already being addressed and reported on elsewhere.

Regarding open schools, she advocated for the same policies recommended by the WHO and in Europe and Asia (not to mention most of the US outside of big cities, and private schools everywhere). Big city schools, specifically here in NYC, were absolutely closed for too long and even Dems, including Hochul, have stated it was a mistake. She also was more measured and far less obnoxious than the majority of open schools crowd. She’s not anti-vax.

I cited her as a source as a literary advocate, and she is only one source off the top of my head. The move away from Balanced Literacy (originally implemented under GWB, if I recall correctly) is a National and non-partisan effort. So even if she had “expert syndrome” on COVID dangers in school, she is not wrong on her actual expertise and there are plenty of corroborating studies and other advocates and organizations that support the return to phonics based early reading instruction.

This issue is not being ignored, reading methodology is a hot topic in academia and has been covered by multiple reputable papers of record across the country. They’re actually pretty late to the game on this one and no mention of how methodologies and textbooks are often dictated by big business or conservative ideology (TX is a big influencer of textbooks).

I read the Post too, but it’s important to actively google the topic and read other sources, especially when an article evokes anger and is very light on context, background analysis and balanced perspective.

I agree re the post but the article is easily able to be criticized. Banning the post just gives their platform no pushback. If people read this crap and bring it here, engagement and sharing critical analysis is really the best way to de-polarize our current climate and encourage people to seek alternative sources instead of taking this propaganda at face value.

ETA: lol downvote all you want but I find it ironic that this assignment the NYP is reporting on is scaffolding for The Scarlet Letter, which of course is the book on which Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is based. That play, you likely remember, was a critical metaphor of and pushback against McCarthyism - the right wing attempt to uncover and silence an ideology (in that case, communism officially but which targeted any socialist or ordinary left wing advocates).

Free society means we don’t ban books or the press- full stop. Censorship is burying your head in the sand- lazy and does nothing to combat bad ideas, and leads to the pendulum swinging too far the other way until we are again on the receiving end.

To expand on the above, and as noted by a professional educator in the comments (someone with likely a masters degree and years of experience), children’s stories are often used as scaffolding, especially when teaching kids critical thinking and bias. Why? Because most kids know them well and don’t by nature critically examine them, and are generally issue-neutral/ non-controversial on their face (as opposed to jumping into a long form article on SCOTUS or Breonna Taylor).

Who what when where and why are obvious at first but dig deeper. Who is writing the story? The Bear Post or the Bear Villiage Times? Why is a child breaking into Bear houses? Is it an isolated incident or part of a larger trend? If a study was done, who funded it- Bear Rights Org or Big Bear Security Co.? Is she a colonizer, barging into their habitat, utilizing what suits her and discarding the rest, pushing them further to Bear Reservation? Or are the bears developers who ate her mom, took her home, renovated it, jacked up the price and she’s reclaiming it as protest? Is she acting alone or is this some grassroots (or astroturfed) larger movement? Is it a boarding house, and Baby Bear’s things are “just right”- is this class solidarity, do she and baby Bear have common goals/class struggles against landlords despite their differences? Is the story pushing an agenda and could it be made more neutral, or could details be added or removed to bias the reader to one side or the other?

The assignment worksheet shown clearly demonstrates the class discussion was about a civil rights case in Chicago and the story was designed to teach structure.

EDIT: THAT SAID, I agree the assignment is more like 6th grade level, tops, and multiple students reported being unchallenged and bored, and other NYC teachers were critical. To my point in the earlier comment, the administration’s comment is dismissive and demonstrates an unwillingness (or inability) to justify what’s happening here.

This I think demonstrates a failure due to removal of tracking and lack of proper early reading instructions and disinclination to continually use increasingly challenging materials. The Scarlet Letter is not that challenging of a text and reading a summary instead of the book is likely due to students not reading at grade level and the school essentially teaching cliff’s notes, which is indeed problematic. Though elsewhere ITT it notes this might have been a special education section of a general class - wasn’t noted by the admin but wouldn’t put it past the NYP to omit that detail.

You’re welcome. This is an area that is very important to me. You can check out her work at her site.

TLDR the post article is lazy trash but this is an actual problem being considered by serious people and many teachers have issue with our curriculum.

There is a serious problem with how reading is taught most places in the US. When most of us learned, we learned phonics - learning what sounds the letters made and how to blend them together to “sound out” a word. They literally don’t do that anymore.

A while back there was a push by grifters to change to something called “balanced literacy” which is complete garbage. It involves learning “sight words” and literally guessing at words by context. This method encourages students not be challenged but to be assigned to “read on grade level” with the theory that giving students challenging material will discourage them from reading. This works while books are simple and illustrated but every study shows student reading progress largely cratering after grade 3.

There have been articles about this change lately in many reputable (ahem- think NYT, not NYP) papers challenging this new pedagogy because it has absolutely DESTROYED kids’ ability to read. It’s now widely been discredited and there is a push to fully eliminate its use, but the cities are the most resistant to return to “traditional” methods. In TN, where it was scrapped a few years ago and replaced by phonics and other older reading methods, scores have improved dramatically over any other area, which continue to see declines.

Students can’t write because they are taught that spelling, punctuation and grammar are (I am not making this up) if not outright racist, systemically unfair to POC due to either large amounts of ESL or AAVE. Thus their work isn’t marked for this (these mistakes aren’t corrected and certainly cost no points from the grade).

This is, I think, the real reason for the push to eliminate standardized testing, from middle school to LSATS. Kids in high school who were subject to this now can’t read and the decision makers and for profit education materials company lobbyists are covering their asses on this.

There is a serious problem with high level union and administrators falling for this type of stuff to justify their inflated salaries and own ego. More power needs to be given to teachers to run their classrooms and engage children without new, difficult and untested methods.

I think teaching is a very noble profession and it is high time we start letting teachers have serious and meaningful input on methodology (for all subjects but especially early learning) and policy (including disciplinary) without then having to worry about “wrongspeak” or we will continue to use them as a human shield while big business and unelected bureaucrats line their pockets at the expense of children.

Source: have daughter, realized while the pandemic why she couldn’t read and taught her phonics, now she attends Catholic school after a lottery fiasco and is a total bookworm whose writing, spelling, vocabulary and grammar are dramatically improved.

I could say “not my problem” but… Education IS the great equalizer and there is a reason a public education is a right. I can afford private school but many can’t. Failure to change course on this will result in more kids being unprepared for college or even struggling in non-degree requiring occupations. Is is a national emergency IMO and we should be sounding the alarm as loudly as possible that we are setting kids- especially poor and ESL kids- up for failure.

So, I volunteer at a family literacy clinic where families, often immigrants whose parents’ English reading skills are rudimentary, come for reading and math help. A group works with parents and another with kids (5-13, with most around 10) on reading and math skills. Many of us (some, frustrated teachers) are elder millennials or young GenX and teach using phonics. The kids make a ton of progress and parents have thanked us for teaching them how to sound things out because halfway through elementary school their kids had not been taught this.

I lean a bit more conservative than this sub (I’m center-left, so my extended suburban family thinks I’m a card carrying full communist) but in reality I’m just a parent who did very well largely because of my love of reading, and wants my and all kids in the city to have the same advantage. The NYP is right here for the wrong reason- no context, no background- utter laziness. But if you are interested check out Karen Vaites on twitter who is a literacy advocate here in NY who is pushing for change from within the left.

Write your congressional reps and tell them you support public access to Beneficial Ownership Secure System (BOSS), the database currently being created to house that information under the new regulations implementing the Corporate Transparency Act.

Go to Instagram and search for locations tagged on the highline. You might find one on your own

Search r/asknyc

This is not a situation I’d trust to the advice of strangers on Reddit.

Fork over the consultation fee and ask a lawyer. Perhaps call the bar association for a referral.

It is absolutely bonkers that we are so critical of other states and yet have closed primaries and early registration cutoffs.

Yay! Where was he?