Author: tourist_yp6g7u

Harlem Bespoke:  One of the most impressive corner townhouses in all of Manhattan went up on the market last May for $5.875 $5.49 million, went into contract later in the year and records reveal that the notable address sold in January $5.145 million for according to Streeteasy.  Number 329 West 112th Street is located right on Manhattan Avenue with views of Morningside Park and the renovated 2-family home is currently being inhabited solely by the owner.  There is even an elevator indoors to make things easier and all of the infrastructure has been updated in the past decade or so.  The Frederick Douglass Boulevard commercial corridor is only a block east and Central Park is also only two blocks away.  More details and photos can be found on Streeteasy: LINK

* This article was originally published here

* This article was originally published here

Harlem Bespoke: Calling emerging artists of African and Latin American descent! Did you know that artist Kehinde Wiley started out in Harlem with a Studio Museum residency before taking the art world by storm?  The Studio Museum continues this legacy and is currently receiving applications for the 2023-24 Artist-in-Residence program. This eleven-month studio residency will be offered to three emerging artists working in any media and the application deadline is by May 22nd, 2023.  More details and online application can be found on the Studio Museum site: LINK

HarlemBespoke.com 2023

* This article was originally published here

Monday, April 24th, 7:00PM, Black Swan, United Palace at  4150 Broadway by 175th Street.  Monthly movies have returned to United Palace for the new season and more classics return to uptown’s historic theater.The 2010 psychological roller coaster BLACK SWAN kicks off the return of MOVIES AT THE UNITED PALACE on April 24, the first of the season’s six films set in New York City and selected by the United Palace’s good friend, patron, and neighbor, Lin-Manuel Miranda. Immediately following the screening, attendees will be treated to a special conversation between Miranda and Darren Aronofsky, who directed BLACK SWAN, THE WRESTLER, and, most recently, THE WHALE, which featured Brendan Fraser’s Oscar-winning best actor performance. Tickets available at the official United Palace site: LINK

* This article was originally published here

Harlem Bespoke:   Some might be wondering what the hours for Teranga at Africa Center are all about these days since the location is mainly closed for most of the week.  The January update is that the Harlem location will be open on weekends starting at noon and so that is definitely the time to drop by for some fantastic African offerings.  Uptown has a lot of African restaurants especially in Central Harlem but Teranga by 110th Street on Fifth Avenue has had critics raving all over Manhattan since opening in the beginning of the year.   Chef Pierre Thiam has a big reputation as far as West African cuisine is concerned and the new casual dining spot with views of Central Park makes everything really accessible in a museum like setting.  More on Teranga can be found in our past post: LINK

HarlemBespoke.com 2023

* This article was originally published here

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin says his doctors have concluded that a hit to the chest caused his heart to stop after a tackle during a game in Cincinnati in early January.

The rare condition — called commotio cordis — occurs when a severe blow to the chest causes the heart to quiver and stop pumping blood efficiently, leading to sudden cardiac arrest.

Hamlin, 25, was administered CPR on the field and hospitalized for more than a week. On Tuesday, Bills general manager Brandon Beane said Hamlin was cleared to play after meeting with a third and final specialist last week. Hamlin told reporters later that the doctors all agreed his cardiac arrest was due to commotio cordis. None of his doctors were present to speak to the media.

It’s an extremely rare consequence of a blow of the right type and intensity “at exactly the wrong time in the heartbeat,” said Dr. Gordon F. Tomaselli, dean of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

“These are several extraordinary things that must all happen at exactly the same, wrong time in a 20-40 millisecond window,” as the lower chambers of the heart are preparing to contract, the former president of the American Heart Association said in a statement released by the group on Tuesday. “Collapse occurs within seconds.”

The condition occurs mostly in boys and young men playing sports, and usually involves a blow to the left chest with a hard round object, like a baseball or a hockey puck, according to the heart group.

Hamlin’s collapse was seen by a national television audience during a Monday night game in Cincinnati on Jan. 2.

“If there is some greater good that can come from his commotio cordis event, it is that as many people as possible are now aware of how important it is to provide urgent care for all cardiac emergencies,” Nancy Brown, CEO of the heart group, said in the statement.

More than 365,000 people in the U.S. have sudden cardiac arrests outside of the hospital each year, according to group. Survival depends on quick CPR and shocking the heart back into a normal rhythm.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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* This article was originally published here

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama State University is partnering on a new project to make free mental health resources more widely available to students at historically Black colleges and universities.

The “She Care Wellness Pods” will give students access to therapy sessions, workshops, yoga and quiet spaces. Actress Taraji P. Henson’s Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation is partnering with the Kate Spade Foundation to place the pods on HBCU campuses. Alabama State is the first to participate in the program.

Henson visited Montgomery on Friday for the opening of the pods. She said she grew when “women were expected to store the pain and struggles of inequities and disparities.”

“We believed that mental health was a commodity for the rich and those who didn’t look like us,” Henson said. “We are grateful for this partnership with Kate Spade New York. Together, we are changing the narrative and charting a new course for women who are experiencing the ‘Strong Black Woman Syndrome.’”

Henson said the foundations are trying to make resources more available and eradicate the stigma around mental health issues in the Black community. She said mental health challenges are a significant factor in why students drop out of college.

Henson told WAKA-TV that her foundation grew out of her desire to give back and her own family’s struggles.

The She Care Wellness Pods program aims to reach more than 25,000 Black women on HBCU campuses. The program plans to also offer wellness pods for men and members of the LBGTQ+ community.

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* This article was originally published here

Move over “Dick and Jane.” A different approach to teaching kids how to read is on the rise.

For decades, two schools of thought have clashed on how to best teach children to read, with passionate backers on each side of the so-called reading wars. The battle has reached into homes via commercials for Hooked on Phonics materials and through shoebox dioramas assigned by teachers seeking to instill a love of literature.

But momentum has shifted lately in favor of the “science of reading.” The term refers to decades of research in fields including brain science that point to effective strategies for teaching kids to read.

The science of reading is especially crucial for struggling readers, but school curricula and programs that train teachers have been slow to embrace it. The approach began to catch on before schools went online in spring 2020. But a push to teach all students this way has intensified as schools look for ways to regain ground lost during the pandemic — and as parents of kids who can’t read demand swift change.

OK, CLASS. TIME FOR A HISTORY LESSON.

One historical approach to teaching reading was known as “whole language.” (Close cousins of this approach are “whole word” and “look-say.”) It focused on learning entire words, placing the emphasis on meaning. A famous example is the “Dick and Jane” series, which, like many modern-day books for early readers, repeated words frequently so students could memorize them.

The other approach involved phonics, with supporters arguing students need detailed instruction on the building blocks of reading. That meant lots of time on letter sounds and how to combine them into words.

In 2000, a government-formed National Reading Panel released the findings of its exhaustive examination of the research. It declared phonics instruction was crucial to teaching young readers, along with several related concepts.

Whole language had lost.

What emerged, though, was an informal truce that came to be known as “balanced literacy” and borrowed from both approaches. The goal: Get kids into books they found enjoyable as quickly as possible.

But in practice, phonics elements often got short shrift, said Michael Kamil, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

“It wasn’t a true compromise,” said Kamil, who had sat on the national reading panel. The approach often led to students learning how to guess words, instead of how to sound them out.

Now, as schools look to address low reading scores, phonics and other elements of the science of reading are getting fresh attention, fueled in part by a series of stories and podcasts by APM Reports. Textbook makers are adding more phonics, and schools have dumped some popular programs that lacked that approach.

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE OF READING?

While the phrase doesn’t have a universal definition, it refers broadly to research in a variety of fields that relates to how a child’s brain learns to read. Neuroscientists, for instance, have used MRIs to study the brains of struggling readers.

In practice, this science calls for schools to focus on the building blocks of words. Kindergartners might play rhyming games and clap out the individual syllables in a word to learn to manipulate sounds. Experts call this phonemic awareness.

Students later will learn explicitly how to make letter sounds and blend letters. To make sure students aren’t just guessing at words, teachers might ask them to sound out so-called nonsense words, like “nant” or “zim.”

Gone is rote memorization of word spellings. Instead, students learn the elements that make up a word. In a lesson using the word “unhappy,” students would learn how the prefix “un-” changed the meaning of the base word.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

For some kids, reading happens almost magically. Bedtime stories and perhaps a little “Sesame Street” are enough.

But 30% to 40% of kids will need the more explicit instruction that is part of the science of reading, said Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Other kids fall somewhere in between. “They’re going to learn to read,” said Shanahan, also one of the members of the 2000 panel and the former director of reading for Chicago Public Schools. “They’re just not going to read as well as they could be or should be.”

Complicating the situation, colleges of education often have stuck with balanced literacy despite concerns about its effectiveness. That means teachers graduate with little background on research-backed instructional methods.

The upshot: Parents often pick up the slack, paying for tutors or workbooks when their children struggle, Shanahan said. Extra help can be costly, contributing to racial and income-based disparities.

As a result, a growing number of NAACP chapters are pushing for wider adoption of the science of reading, describing literacy as a civil rights issue.

WHAT IS DYSLEXIA’S ROLE IN THE READING DEBATE?

Parents of children with dyslexia have led the push to use the science of reading. For them, the issue has special urgency. Kids with dyslexia can learn to read, but they need systematic instruction. When the wrong approach is used, they often flounder.

“I can’t even tell you how many screaming fits we had,” recalled Sheila Salmond, whose youngest child has dyslexia. “My daughter would come home and say, ‘Mom, I’m not learning.’ And then it became, ‘Mom, I’m stupid.’”

Salmond found herself testifying before Missouri lawmakers, taking a graduate class so she could tutor her daughter and eventually moving her from a suburban Kansas City district to a parochial school. She now is making progress.

WHAT IS CHANGING?

Just a decade ago, it was rare for a state to have laws that mentioned dyslexia or the science of reading.

Now every state has passed some form of legislation. The laws variously define what dyslexia is, require that students are screened for reading problems and mandate that teachers are trained in the most effective strategies, said Mary Wennersten, of the International Dyslexia Association.

States often look to duplicate what has happened in Mississippi, which has credited reading gains to a curriculum revamp that started a decade ago. The multi-million dollar effort includes training teachers on the science of reading.

The changes have put some curriculum programs in the crosshairs.

Some Colorado districts, for instance, have ditched instructional materials that didn’t pass muster under a state law that requires schools to use scientifically based reading programs. New York City, whose mayor often talks about his personal struggle with dyslexia, is making changes in its schools as well.

WHAT DOES THE SCIENCE OF READING MEAN FOR PARENTS?

Should they be researching the tenets of the science of reading? Do they need to help their children form letters out of Play-Doh? What about drilling their kids on nonsense words? Flashcards?

Only if they want to, said Amelia Malone, director of research and innovation at the National Center for Learning Disabilities.

What parents must do, she said, is read to their kids. Otherwise, she recommends helping teachers when they ask for it and pushing for evidence-based practices in their children’s schools.

“Parents can be part of the solution,” she said, “if we educate them on why this is kind of the movement we need.”

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The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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* This article was originally published here