Nearly every Wednesday of the semester, The Mossavar-Rahmini Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies invites a scholar to speak on their area of study. Topics relate to Iran and the Persian Gulf area while employing an interdisciplinary lens. To view the details of upcoming seminar topics, please visit iran.princeton.edu/upcoming-events.

The SVC Board will be hosting an event about the "now what" after the election, trying to spread hope and get students involved in community resilience building.

Exhibition co-curated by Princeton professor Deana Lawson and Michael Famighetti, editor-in-chief of Aperture magazine. Featuring work by 23 artists who explore the poetics of photography, its instability, and its latent potential. Hurley Gallery open daily 10 AM - 8 PM. Gallery closed 11/28-12/1 for Thanksgiving; reopens 12/2-5.

Zosha Di Castri, a Canadian “composer of riotously inventive works” (The New Yorker), currently lives in New York. Her music has been performed across Canada, the United States, South America, Asia, and Europe and extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance that encourage audiences to feel “compelled to return for repeated doses” (The Arts Desk). She is currently the Francis Goelet Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University and a 2023 American Academy of Arts and Letters Goddard Lieberson fellow. Zosha’s current projects include a large chamber work commissioned by the LA Phil and conducted by John Adams, receiving its premiere in spring 2024; a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress for percussionist Steve Schick and ensemble, and upcoming collaborations with the Bozzini Quartet and Ensemble Paramirabo/Totem. Zosha recently curated an event showcasing her work as part of the New York Philharmonic’s 2023 Nightcap series. Her 2022 work, In the Half-Light, a song cycle for soprano Barbara Hannigan, with libretto by Tash Aw, was premiered by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and will be performed again this season by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. Other recent projects include We live the opposite daring for six voices written for Ekmeles, time>>T. - - I. - - M.(time) - - E, a commission for largechamber ensemble premiered by the Grossman Ensemble in Chicago; Hypha, a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano/keyboard commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; and Pentimento, a short piece for orchestra commissioned by the WDR Sinfonieorchester for its 75th anniversary. In July 2019, Zosha’s Long Is the Journey, Short Is the Memory for orchestra and chorus opened the first night of the BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, conducted by Karina Canellakis with the BBC Symphony and BBC Singers. Other large-scale projects include a 25-minute piece for soprano, recorded narrator and orchestra entitled Dear Life, based on a short-story by Alice Munro, and an evening-length new music theater piece, Phonobellow, co-written with David Adamcyk for the International Contemporary Ensemble with performances in New York and Montreal. Phonobellow features five musicians, a large kinetic sound sculpture, electronics, and video in a reflection on the influence of photography and phonography on human perception. Zosha’s orchestral compositions have been commissioned by John Adams, the Toronto Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, Esprit Orchestra, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, and the BBC, and have been featured by the the New York Philharmonic, Tokyo Symphony, Amazonas Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, among others. She has made appearances with the Chicago Symphony, the LA Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players in their chamber music series, and has worked with many leading new music groups, including Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, Ekmeles, Yarn/Wire, the NEM, Ensemble Cairn, and JACK and Parker Quartets. Other recent projects include a commission titled Hunger for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal with improvised drummer, designed to accompany Peter Foldes’ 1973 eponymous silent film; a string quartet for the Banff International String Quartet Competition; a piece for Yarn/Wire for two pianists, two percussionists, and electronics premiered at Zosha’s Miller Theatre Composer Portrait concert; a solo piano work for Julia Den Boer commissioned by the Yvar Mikhashoff Trust Fund, and a string octet premiered by JACK Quartet and Parker Quartet at the Banff Centre. She was the recipient of the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music for her work Cortège in 2012, and participated in Ircam’s Manifeste Festival in Paris, writing an interactive electronic work for Thomas Hauert’s dance company, ZOO. Zosha’s debut album Tachitipo was released on New Focus Recordings in November 2019 to critical acclaim, and the title track was nominated for The JUNO Awards’ 2021 Classical Composition of the Year. Tachitipo was named in Best of 2019 lists by The New Yorker, I Care if You Listen, AnEarful, Sequenza21, and New York Music Daily, and praised as “a formidable statement. It is so comprehensively realized, institutionally ratified, and sensitive to the creative exigencies of the 21st century that one wants to send a copy of it to the publishers of textbooks for music history survey courses in the hope that it will be included in a last chapter or two.” (I Care if You Listen) Zosha is a recipient of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship and was an inaugural fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris in 2018-19. She completed her Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance and Composition at McGill University, and her DMA in Composition at Columbia University. Born in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada, Zosha currently lives with her family in New York City.

Here are the honorable mentions from the 2024 Student Podcast Challenge. Congratulations!

College students often use posters to help spruce up their dorm. At the University of Chicago, they get a chance to borrow works by prominent artists for a year.

After-school activities will still be suspended Monday and Tuesday.

The absolute number of Black men enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is the lowest it's been since 1976.

The number of Black men enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is the lowest it’s been since 1976.

Kids at a tribal school in Arizona are preparing for their own election to determine their favorite school lunch: pizza or chicken nuggets? And they're learning about democracy along the way.

In Louisiana, more than 100,000 students are using an AI tutor that is helping to raise reading scores.

At an Arizona tribal school, it's a fierce campaign to pick the top school lunch, as students learn about making their voice count

An NPR listener is graduating soon with her MBA. She wants to know if it's OK celebrate her achievement by asking loved ones to buy her gifts from a registry, similar to what people do for weddings.

With Donald Trump's re-election, millions of federal student loan borrowers are left to wonder if this is the end of the road for President Biden's promises of loan relief.

Illustrator, writer, and filmmaker Mordicai Gerstein died earlier this month. He leaves behind an amazing body of work which is sure to be read and appreciated; several have already been anointed as modern classics.

Kevin McCloskey delivers fascinating information in digestible, user-friendly formats, which appeal to not only young readers but experienced ones as well.

We hear a lot about diversity and inclusion these days, often as it relates to books for young readers. Just as publishing for children and teens has evolved over the years, so has adults’ perception of youth and what is appropriate for them.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I have a feeling I’m not alone. My cabin fever is getting worse the longer I’m staying home. The only thing keeping me sane is a pile of books that stimulate lots of ideas and inspire various activities. I’ve just gone through some recent books for kids and thought I’d share a few thoughts about how books can encourage creativity and help build a sense of community, right there at home.  

The world lost an incredible talent with the death of Tomie dePaola. 

It’s difficult to encapsulate the impact of Andrea Davis Pinkney on readers and in publishing for young readers. She is an award-winning author, accomplished editor, visionary publisher, and now the co-curator of a museum exhibition.

Sports are important to young people on many levels. When participating, they experience teamwork, self-discipline, following rules, and just plain fun. Often, children see role models in professional athletes. But professional sports can provide an introduction to history, depicting the times in which they are played. Also like the world we live in, games have evolved over time to respond to events and social changes.

War is back in daily headlines. It’s devastating to think about the impact on children here and where the actual fighting is taking place.

Lulu Delacre’s recent book, Cool Green (Candlewick) takes readers on a trip around the world, led by a grandfather with his granddaughter, introducing readers to a range of trees in lyrical text punctuated by fascinating information accompanied by informative and varied illustration. It’s a gorgeous book and Lulu has answered questions that I posed to her.

With so few words, most of them kid-friendly, it should be a piece of cake. But it depends on who’s holding the whisk. Translator Daniel Hahn say,"I believe my job as a translator is to preserve all the dimensions of a book, not just one of them. When I find complexity, my job is to keep complexity, or more accurately to reconstruct it. And some of the most complex books I’ve reconstructed have been children’s picture books."

Author, poet, aviator and adventurer par excellence, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is one of the most well-known French writers in contemporary history. This year marks the 80th anniversary of his most famous publication, Le petit prince (The Little Prince) published in 1943. Le petit prince is translated into over 250 languages with adaptations into radio plays, films, ballets, operas, musicals, children’s board books, and even an animated film. You can find a copy in Yiddish or the Burundian language of Kirundi.

With school on break, along with all the homework, tests and early start times that come with it, parents often assume that young people’s stress and anxiety will take a pause as well. However, that’s not always the case, especially as the novelty of summer dwindles. Without the daily structure of school and extracurricular activities, kids may struggle with boredom or restlessness. Maintaining a routine during the summer can be a powerful tool for supporting children’s mental health, and parents can play a crucial role in establishing and reinforcing this structure.

Teachers can use evidence-based strategies for delivering vocabulary instruction to improve reading comprehension and vice versa by integrating literacy across content areas. These should engage students in active processing, which is essential to student learning and retention.

Teachers can assess young students’ literacy skills and knowledge by encouraging them to produce books based on animal facts.

A new children's book transforms a sad, scared and anxious little boy into a superhero. The book is called "Cape," in honor of the bright-red cape the little boy wears and finds comfort in following the death of his father. "Cape" is Kevin Johnson's debut picture book, and it's vividly illustrated by artist Kitt Thomas.

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies. The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions. But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags.

Most classroom walls display rules about arriving on time or raising hands to speak. Tim Smyth’s has a sign reminding students: “You’re Not Allowed to Ask Which is Better, Marvel or DC.” Even as he sidesteps fervent debates about which comic book publisher is superior, Smyth leans into comics and graphic novels in his 10th and 11th grade social studies classes at Wissahickon High School in Ambler, Pa. He believes they can offer students an engaging entry point into history and world cultures.

While many teachers are embracing generative artificial intelligence—the technology behind powerful new tools that analyze huge amounts of online data and then use it to create unique text and images from basic prompts—others are still wary of the technology and even feel overwhelmed by it. For that latter group, Kristen Brooks, a technology specialist in Cherokee County schools outside of Atlanta, has three simple strategies for teachers to get their feet wet.

Engaging in storytelling gives students an opportunity to connect with each other and understand classroom expectations. Teacher Matthew James Friday says, "I tell a story every day for the first two or three weeks. I also suggest that the students can become storytellers themselves. All they need to do is write a story at home. After a few weeks of my telling stories, something magical always happens: A student brings in a story."

Every year, educators worry about “summer slide,” the potential for learning loss when children are not in school. This issue is more pronounced among low-income families who don’t have access to summer camps or other enrichment activities. One way to battle summer slide is through reading for fun, which is associated with many academic and health benefits, including strengthening the brain, increasing ability to empathize, reducing stress and building vocabulary.

Pandemic academic recovery in both reading and math is lagging notably behind pre-COVID achievement trends for students in grades 4-8 during the 2022-23 school year, according to a new report by NWEA analyzing MAP Growth test scores of 6.7 million students across 20,000 public schools. Third-graders were the only group who saw improvements, and they were slight, according to NWEA, an educational research organization recently acquired by learning technology company HMH.

A few tips for ensuring that students—particularly those with disabilities and English learners—and their families get the year off to a good start.

Philadelphia and other cities are quietly building installations like the “Urban Thinkscape” to layer on learning where families already spend time. On a tiny triangular lot in the city’s Belmont neighborhood, kids waiting with their parents for the No. 40 bus can also work on their executive functioning skills, playing a hopscotch variation designed to train their brains. In Chicago, a wooden game mounted on the wall of a laundromat teaches children, in two languages, how to find color patterns in a lineup of detergent bottle tops.

Parents of kids with ADHD often say their kids miss social cues, such as when peers are bored, hurt or offended, according to Amori Mikami, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. “It can lead to a lot of outbursts or temper tantrums or whining and complaining or arguing with the friend,” she said. Mikami researches peer relationships, specifically focusing on children with ADHD. Additionally, she developed a parental friendship coaching (PFC) model where parents of elementary school-age kids can learn to support their child in making friends.

The science of reading, while typically villainized for solely advocating phonics, is misrepresented as a phonics program, while really, it is a body of research that informs the most effective way to teach decoding and language comprehension. The definition of the science of reading, provided by The Reading League, is “the vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.” The term “science of reading” does not equate to phonics. That term does not equate to comprehension.

A new FutureEd report, The Reading Revolution: How States Are Scaling Literacy Reform, tells the story of how Mississippi, Tennessee and other states at the vanguard of the reading revolution have redesigned reading instruction and raised student achievement in thousands of public schools through bold, state-level leadership. These states have addressed every aspect of early literacy, from how teachers and prospective teachers are trained to the curriculum they use, how students are assessed and whether children are retained rather than promoted to the next grade.

Billions of dollars were funneled to school districts across the U.S. to help them make up for learning loss from the pandemic. But new research shows that even with that extra money, school districts are still struggling to close the gaps in reading, writing and math. Stephanie Sy discussed the findings with Karyn Lewis of the Center for School and Student Progress and a lead researcher at NWEA.

I’m writing this for all the parents out there: Don’t leave your child’s reading success to chance. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I was one of those parents. Sure, my wife and I read to our son every night, and we had plenty of books, newspapers and magazines around the house. Our local public school spent a lot of time on literacy too, but I cringe now as I look back on how they did it. They taught kids to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words using pictures, the first letter or other context clues.

Folk tales are meant to be flexible things, open-source stories infinitely moldable to the needs of teller and era. That’s the wonder of them — and of “The Skull,” an old Tyrolean yarn distilled to its droll essentials and marvelously reimagined by the Caldecott medalist (and national treasure) Jon Klassen. Klassen’s version, accompanied by a generous helping of his odd and beautiful illustrations, follows a young girl named Otilla who, one snowy night, “finally” runs away from home. She becomes hopelessly lost in a deep, dark forest.

Texts classified according to guided reading levels (GRL) are ubiquitous in U.S. beginning reading classrooms. This study examined features of texts across three grade bands (kindergarten, early first grade, final first grade) and the 10 GRLs within these bands. The 510 texts came from three programs with different functions in beginning reading instruction: core, intervention, and content areas.

Teacher question: I understand your claims that teaching students with grade-level texts instead of instructional level texts increases children’s opportunities to learn. However, what about children’s emotional needs, self-esteem, motivation, and self-starting skills when text is challenging. Children who struggle with sight words or sounding out words who are given a hard piece of text will shut down and refuse to try or will act out in the classroom.

When we’re asked to switch to explicit, systematic instruction, many teachers worry that we’ll no longer be able to tailor our teaching to the students in front of us. Calls for whole-class phonics instruction lasting 30-45 minutes, for example, summon fears that our  students will be bored by concepts they already know or aren’t yet ready for.

I’m writing this blog because of the disarray I see over the topic of context instruction and the poor instructional practice that it seems to manifest. One confusion is already well recognized, but merits some mention here. The other befuddlement usually goes without remark, and yet it, too, has unfortunate consequences for young readers.

Teacher question: One of my colleagues told us that we should not be teaching guided reading lessons or comprehension skills or strategies. We’re using a core reading program that includes those kinds of things. He says that the science of reading proves that we would get higher reading achievement by teaching more social studies and science (he’s our science teacher) and dropping the comprehension instruction that we are providing. He’s really vocal about this. Can you help us shut him up? Shanahan’s response

Teacher question: Can you provide clarification on how to promote shared reading in the structured literacy era and how that differs from shared reading in the balanced literacy era. I would think a teacher could certainly initially read the text aloud to students to model fluency and expression, but then must ensure students can get the words off the page and reread by decoding the words, rather than parroting the teacher or memorizing the shared reading text that may be a rhyme/song that is catchy. Shanahan's response:

As discussion of Emily Hanford’s new podcast builds, teachers are questioning stories we were sold by people we trusted. For some teachers, this is the first time they’ve doubted instructional materials that are ubiquitous in elementary and reading intervention classrooms. When we question the tenets of Balanced Literacy, teachers can unearth a trove of information. But how to make sense of it all?