Working Together to Raise a Whole Child
By Anping Shen
My son, Jason, was born with abundant energy and a flexible body. This combination was too much for his Chinese nursery teachers to handle before he came to the United States. During our first conference with his preschool classroom teacher at a community nursery school, my wife and I tentatively inquired about how our son was doing compared with other class kids. The teacher smiled and simply remarked that "we do not compare kids and every child is different." We were pleasantly surprised, but still couldn't help wondering "how the school was able to educate kids without comparing them?" In retrospect, it was our first lesson on the American child-centered educational philosophy.
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