Press Release for Panel Discussion March 23
All Work and No (Child’s) Play? Teach to Learn . . . Not to the Test.
Tips & Tactics from Experts, Innovators, and Educators at Robert C. Parker School
North Greenbush, NY – The Robert C. Parker School (www.parkerschool.org) will gather a national panel of experts to talk about how parent’s can help their children bloom by encouraging creativity, through innovative and collaborative teaching, rather than by stressing out about test scores and college entrance exams.
The panel discussion, which is free and open to the public, will take place Wednesday March 23, at 7 p.m. on the Robert C. Parker campus (4254 Route 43, North Greenbush, NY). On-site childcare is available by calling 518-286-3449.
Susan Engle, New York Times contributor, and nationally recognized child development expert will headline the panel. Engle’s critically acclaimed new book, Red Flags or Red Herrings, Predicting Who Your Child Will Become (Simon & Schuster, 2011), was recently featured on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Engle, a professor of education and psychology at Williams College, who embraces a more holistic way of nurturing a child’s intelligence, wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed that:
“Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.”
To read an excerpt from Engel’s book, go to http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/book-excerpt-red-flags-red-herrings-predicting-child/story?id=12874392. She will be signing books after the event.
The panel, moderated by Karen Hitchcock, former President of the University at Albany and Queens College and host of WAMC’s “The Best of Our Knowledge” will feature:
Innovation guru Boris Pluskowski; Trudy Hall, head of The Emma Willard School and girls’ education futurist; and gaming trailblazer Dan Wallace of Vicarious Visions.
Together, they will share breakthrough thinking and insights on how to educate children for today that will equip them for a successful tomorrow. Engel says:
“Our success depends on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing, computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration — a curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.”
About Robert C. Parker School
Robert C. Parker School is a preschool through eighth grade independent co-educational school on 77 acres in North Greenbush, 10 minutes from downtown Albany. A Parker education embraces an integrated, project-based approach to learning that leverages students’ natural tendencies and instills independence, critical thinking, perseverance and integrity.
For more information go to: parkerschool.org.