I cannot stress enough the importance of making your voice heard before the crisis. One goal of education is even more important than teaching the three R's, said Rabbi Harold Kushner, who addressed a General Session at ASCD's 56th Annual Conference. It is to teach children what it means to be a decent person. As I read some of the accounts of Santee and Columbine, the common thread is that before the classroom became physically dangerous, it became emotionally dangerous. Schools, he said, have an obligation to tell bullies that certain behaviors will not be tolerated on school grounds.
Every child has something unique.
Finally, schools must teach students to cope with success and failure. So long as there is something that they do well, it will not destroy them to learn that there are some things that some people do better than they do. Science - Mae Jemison Students say science is one of their favorite subjects, regardless of how well they do in it, said Mae Jemison at the Closing General Session. It's the ability to be creative, to do experiments - not to sit and memorize the periodic table. Science education should be hands-on, said Jemison, a former NASA astronaut who is now a professor at Dartmouth College and head of the Jemison Group, a scientific consulting firm.