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The Most Important Year
- Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
An eye-opening look inside pre-K in America and what it will take to give all children the best start in school possible.
At the heart of this groundbreaking book are two urgent questions: What do our young children need in the earliest years of school, and how do we ensure that they all get it? Cutting-edge research has proven that early childhood education is crucial for all children to gain the academic and emotional skills they need to succeed later in life. Children who attend quality pre-K programs have a host of positive outcomes including better language, literacy, problem solving, and math skills down the line, and they have a leg up on what appears to be the most essential skill to develop at age four: strong self-control. But even with this overwhelming evidence, early childhood education is at a crossroads in America. We know that children can and do benefit, but we also know that too many of our littlest learners don't get that chance - millions of parents can't find spots for their children, or their preschoolers end up in poor quality programs.
With engrossing storytelling, journalist Suzanne Bouffard takes us inside some of the country's best pre-K classrooms to reveal the sometimes surprising ingredients that make them work - and to understand why some programs are doing the opposite of what is best for children. It also chronicles the stories of families and teachers from many backgrounds as they struggle to give their children a good start in school. This book is a call to arms when we are at a crucial moment and perhaps on the verge of a missed opportunity: We now have the means and the will to have universal pre-kindergarten, but we are also in grave danger of not getting it right.
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Critic reviews
"Bouffard's interviews with educators and administrators give insight into the landscape of the pre-K debate and support her call for universal pre-K.” (The New York Times)
“Suzanne Bouffard's new book, The Most Important Year, may be just what parents of preschoolers have been waiting for; a guide to what a quality pre-K program should look like.” (NPR)
“Something amazing is happening in America: We are building a new public education system, nearly from scratch - to serve 3 and 4 year olds. The grand 'pre-K' experiment has consequences for our economy, our democracy, and, of course, the little children who will one day lead us all. Suzanne Bouffard is the tour guide we need to understand what is happening and what we can all do to make the experiment a success." (Elizabeth Green, author of Building a Better Teacher)
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In The Formula: Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children, Harvard economist Ronald Ferguson, named in a New York Times profile as the foremost expert on the US educational "achievement gap," along with award-winning journalist Tatsha Robertson, reveal an intriguing blueprint for helping children from all types of backgrounds become successful adults.
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would recommend
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The Smartest Kids in the World
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How do other countries create "smarter" kids? In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they've never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words, and to thrive in the modern economy.What is it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers? In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time magazine journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year.
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a Wanna-be fiction writer avoids the subject
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Now You See It
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When Duke University gave free iPods to the freshman class in 2003, critics said they were wasting their money. Yet when the students in practically every discipline invented academic uses for the music players, suddenly the idea could be seen in a new light - as an innovative way to turn learning on its head. Using cutting-edge research on the brain, Cathy N. Davidson show how attention blindness has produced one of our society's greatest challenges.
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3 Reasons to Read
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Letters to a Young Teacher
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- Unabridged
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In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.
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A must read for new teachers
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By: Jonathan Kozol
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Creative Schools
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Ken Robinson is one of the world's most influential voices in education, and his 2006 TED Talk on the subject is the most viewed in the organization's history. Now, the internationally recognized leader on creativity and human potential focuses on one of the most critical issues of our time: how to transform the nation's troubled educational system.
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The Answer to Why Students Stop Trying
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Radical
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Part memoir, part manifesto, Radical is this fearless advocate's incisive, intensely personal call-to-arms. Rhee combines the story of her own extraordinary experience with dozens of compelling examples from schools she's worked in and studied-from students from unspeakable home lives who have thrived in the classroom to teachers whose radical methods have produced unprecedented leaps in achievement. Radical chronicles Rhee's awakening to the potential of every child, her rage at the special interests blocking badly-needed change, and her recognition that it will take a grassroots movement to create outstanding public schools.
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Good read after seeing Waiting for Superman
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Many of us know we're putting too much pressure on our kids - and on ourselves - but how do we get off this crazy train? We want our children to succeed, to be their best, and to do their best, but what if they are not on board? A few years ago, Ned Johnson and Bill Stixrud started noticing the same problem from different angles: even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking any real motivation. Many complained that they had no real control over their lives.
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Practical, wise, and well researched
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Best-selling author Rafe Esquith, the only teacher to receive the National Medal of Arts, has garnered the American Teacher Award and numerous other honors. Still teaching fifth graders in a small, leaky classroom in downtown Los Angeles, Esquith fosters a wholesome climate where character, humility, and diligence matter and support is unconditional. For his mostly poor and Hispanic students, Esquith models two maxims: Be nice and work hard, and There are no shortcuts. And his students thrive!
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Inspiring even if not what it claims to be
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It's OK to Go up the Slide
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Heather Shumaker has sparked much discussion with her "renegade rules for raising competent and compassionate kids". In this follow-up book, she takes on new hot-button issues like banning homework, technology use, and skipping kindergarten. Shumaker offers broader guidance on how parents can control their own anger and move from an overscheduled life to one of more free play.
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Amazing resource for parents and teachers
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Troublemakers
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In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young "troublemakers", challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small.
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Interesting and disturbing
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What Teachers Make
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Former middle school teacher and teachers' advocate Taylor Mali struck a chord with his passionate response to a man at a dinner party who asked him what kind of salary teachers make - a poetic rant that has been seen and forwarded millions of times on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Based on the poem that inspired a movement, What Teachers Make is Mali's sharp, funny, reflective, critical call to arms about the joys of teaching and why teachers are so vital to America today.
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Loved it!!
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The Prize
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When Mark Zuckerberg announced in front of a cheering Oprah audience his $100 million pledge to transform the Newark Schools - and to solve the education crisis in every city in America - it looked like a huge win for then-mayor Cory Booker and governor Chris Christie. But their plans soon ran into a constituency not so easily moved - Newark's key education players, fiercely protective of their billion-dollar-per-annum system.
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Well-researched - Provides Good Answers
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What listeners say about The Most Important Year
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- PSM
- 10-27-23
Early Educator Opinion
I work in early education and advocacy and found this to be extremely true of our experiences. A great reminder that we all have an important role in building and bridging our future. A wonderful read for anyone looking for systems change in early Ed. Our state is in the building process and I found this to be a well articulated view of the most important early years.
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- Mikey G
- 01-01-23
A good overview of Pre K but lacking
Disclaimer: I am not an educator nor do I consider myself very knowledgeable about the problems facing public education.
I am however a concerned parent who listened to this trying to prepare my young children for school and find that this wasn’t very helpful in that regard. At the very least it stoked fear about the current state of affairs in our schools. Which I suppose can effect change to some degree. But I just didn’t think it outlined any real solutions. Seemed mostly anecdotal.
The writer obviously cares deeply about the quality of early education and laying a solid foundation. And at the root of this she seems to advocate for teachers. But I’m struggling to identify what exactly she’s advocating for. It could be that I missed it but maybe that’s not my fault? It seems if you’re going to write a book about systemic problems that affect early education, you would clearly and plainly lay out potential solutions. In some sense she helps the reader identify things to be mindful of when looking for a healthy and vibrant learning environment. But I think her intended audience is also educators? I think you miss the mark if you’re not saying step one: step two: kinda thing.
Look, I get that it’s a complicated problem and if it was easy we wouldn’t have to worry about it, nothing to fix. But I feel that if you invest the time in writing about it, there has to be a final chapter restating the problem(s), contributing factors, root cause. These are some recommended courses of action. Then I will feel more like my time and money vested in listening is worth it.
Hope this comes off in a constructive or helpful way and not in a way dissuading people from checking it out. Overall I did enjoy it, there is value in it. Just left me feeling more deflated than energized and prepared.
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- Carrigers
- 08-09-22
Blah
I feel like I wasted my time overall while listening to this book. Sure it gave me a good overview of preschool classrooms, but overall gave me hardly anything I can take with me to my own preschool classroom. What annoyed me most was the author’s leftist biases. Not what I came here for.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-22-23
Book about nothing
There is nothing good or bad about that book...provides no information to parents.....complete waste of money and my time.
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1 person found this helpful