Essential Teaching and Learning

                                                                                                       (c) 2022 Scott B. Freiberger By Scott B. Freiberger With cerulean, carmine, and chalky holiday lights sparking sensations of splendor rife with family life and frolicking friends, November is a terrific time to reflect and rejoice.   With resolve and ingenuity flowing freely from fresh autumn air, now would be a propitious time to provide students with a voice to articulate appreciation for the scholarship, seasonal sentiments, and magic-like merriment that they experience.   Advancing an attitude of gratitude is also particularly poignant to model for young minds.   ...

(C) 2021 Scott Freiberger. Design by @KimARichardson.  By Scott B. Freiberger In the emotive, making-of-the-mammal Disney movie “Zootopia,” protagonist and officer extraordinaire Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) endures bad badgering, abundant bullying, and beastly berating while aspiring to become the city’s first crowned cottontail cop.   Yet despite uncivil circumstances and a series of exhausting encounters with furtive fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), she perennially persists, prods, and pushes on.   Ultimately, our flocculent, furry friend finds collaborators in questionable quarters and encounters rapport and responsiveness in virtuous vertebrate.   At its core, the moving movie is a celebration of inclusion and resolution, and teaches that appearances may not only be ambiguous, but also absolutely inaccurate.   The noble notion of employing empathy, kindling kindness, and trying tenderness to focus forward could also be acutely accentuated now in educati...

By Scott B. Freiberger  Rachel’s Roses is a surprising, timeless gem of a chapter book, in which versatile author Ferida Wolff provides readers an honest glimpse into first and second-generation immigrant life in New York City during the turn of the 20th century through the eyes of a primary schoolgirl.  Endlessly frustrated and seemingly forever frazzled by a tag-along younger sibling, Rachel becomes determined to purchase a trio of ethereal-like, rose-imbued buttons for a revamped edition of a non-singular skirt to distinguish herself from her bothersome sister.  How will Rachel purchase the delicate, deluxe decorations, especially now that her mother no longer has steady employment?   Transcending religious and cultural boundaries, this terrific holiday tale aimed at younger readers, but perfect for all ages, tugs at heartstrings and brings both humility and humanity to the life of ordinary American citizens.  At its core, Rachel’s Roses taps into the qu...