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Security footage shows assistant principal and student joyfully celebrating their birthdays

"Love is the curriculum."

Courtesy of Arnold Ford/Instagram

Arnold Ford shares a birthday—and birthday joy—with one of his students.

When Arnold Ford went to work on his birthday in February of 2024, he knew he was in for a treat. One of his students, a girl named Cali, has the same birthday as he does, and Ford was ready. As soon as he saw Cali come bounding down the hallway with her arms spread wide, the assistant principal tossed his backpack aside, swooped the girl up, and spun her around in joyful celebration.

Then the two raced down the hallway, arm in arm, so Cali could give him a balloon and a cupcake she had saved for him. All of this was captured on the security cameras at west Philadelphia's Mastery Charter School, Mann Elementary, and the footage has people cheering for amazing educators.

"I’m so grateful to God for allowing me to see another year," Ford wrote when he shared the video on his Instagram page. "I’m even more grateful that LOVE continues to be the centerpiece of my entire life."

"And… as you can see… I’m also grateful that I get to share a birthday with one of my favorite students," he continued. "And yes… she brought me a balloon and a cupcake, and in exchange, I told her she could dress down today. Fair trade if you ask me!"

People are gushing over the exchange in the comments.

"Do y'all teach 25th grade!? I need an elementary school experience do-over!" wrote one person.

"Bro my own parents never been that happy to see me 😭," wrote another.

"Can you imagine marinating in that love on a daily basis? What a gift this man is!" shared another.

Several people pointed out that no one else in the video so much as blinked, which is a testament to the fact that this wasn't out of the ordinary. Clearly, Mr. Ford brings this energy to work every day.

"I think it’s important for us to celebrate WITH our students and families," Ford told Upworthy. "[Cali's] birthday is a big deal to her, and so is mine. We talk about it ALL year. So when that day came, what you saw was just a natural, genuine reaction that we both had. She was excited to be celebrating me, and I was excited to be celebrating her."

celebrate, happy birthday, students, joy, happiness, celebration Students and faculty celebrating one another is pure joy. Giphy

Educators like Ford can make such an enormous difference in children's lives, transforming a school into a place filled with positive interactions where kids know people genuinely care about and enjoy being around them. That's what Ford loves about his job as well.

"It really is the reciprocal nature of the work," he told Upworthy. "We get so much more than we ever put out. Love. Joy. Laughter. The more we sow those things, we see them return exponentially in this work. That’s why when I often say, 'Love is the curriculum,' it’s because I recognize how blessed I am to be able to put positivity and joy at the center of my experience with them. It’s humbling."

love, teaching, school, assistant principal, administrators, educators "Love is the curriculum." - Arnold Ford, Assistant PrincipalCanva

"In other words, I love that I don’t have to wait until Fridays to get paid." he adds.

Educating kids involves so much more than teaching them academics. Here's to Mr. Ford and all of the dedicated, incredible educators out there who pour their love into helping children learn and grow and thrive. They really do deserve all the balloons and cupcakes—and all the pay raises as well.

You can follow Arnold Ford on Instagram.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Mom shares how her first grader's homework on the second day of school broke his spirit

"It's breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school."

Photo credit: Cassi Nelson/Facebook

How much homework is too much homework?

Debates about homework are nothing new, but the ability of parents to find support for homework woes from thousands of other parents is a fairly recent phenomenon. A mom named Cassi Nelson shared a post about her first grader's homework and it quickly went viral. Nelson shared that her son had come home from his second day of school with four pages of homework, which she showed him tearfully working on at their kitchen counter.

"He already doesn’t get home from school until 4pm," she wrote. "Then he had to sit still for another hour plus to complete more work. I had to clear out the kitchen so he could focus. His little legs kept bouncing up and down, he was bursting with so much energy just wanting to go play. Then he broke my heart when he looked up at me with his big teary doe eyes and asked…. 'Mommy when you were little did you get distracted a lot too?!' Yes sweet baby, mommy sure did too! I don’t know how ppl expect little children to sit at school all day long and then ALSO come home to sit and do MORE work too…."

Nelson tells Upworthy that she was "shocked" that kindergarteners and first graders have homework, much less the amount they were expected to do. "We didn't have homework like this when we were in these younger grades."

Expert opinion and research is somewhat mixed on the homework front, but there isn't any conclusive evidence that homework is universally beneficial for students and too much homework can actually be harmful. As a standard, the National Education Association (NEA) and the National Parent Teacher Association (NPTA) support a limit on homework of “10 minutes of homework per grade level."

With that as a guide, a first grader shouldn't have more than 10 minutes of homework on any given school day, but it's not unusual for young kids to have two or three times the recommended limit of homework. That can be stressful for both kids and parents, cutting into valuable family time and limiting kids' time to decompress, play and freely engage in imaginative activity.

As Nelson concluded, "It’s breaking their spirit and it robs them of what little fun and family time they have when they come home after a long day of school."

Most parents and even most teachers in the comments agreed with her that four pages of homework is too much for a first grader, especially on only the second day of school:

"Poor little man. Children below a certain grade should not be given homework! Small children have a hard time sitting still for a long period of time yet alone expected to sit and do hours of homework, for what??? They are SMALL CHILDREN! Let them snack, play, laugh and all the other fun things when they get home. You are only a child once, they don't need that taken away from them. Let them embrace their inner creativity, imagination, recipes, etc."

"This breaks my spirit. Our schools are huge scams. You're exactly right Cassi. Homework is ridiculous. Kids til the age of 10 primarily learn through real life situations and play scenarios."

"I hate that for him! My little one has ADHD and doing homework after sitting in class all day is very stressful to him and makes him hate school. They are in school for 7 hours they shouldn’t have homework. That definitely takes away any kind of family time and that’s why kids never spend time with parents anymore because they have all this homework to do after being gone all day.I feel that if it can’t be done in the 7 hours they have the kids then it should wait until the next school day."

"I don’t make them do homework at home when they are that little. It’s not fair!They are at school allllll day! And it’s already sooooo much for their little bodies and brains! I’ve never had a teacher upset about it either.. and even if I did oh well!"

"That breaks my heart. 4 pages is absolutely ridiculous for young kids. My daughter is going into 2nd grade next month, the 2 years in school it was always 1 page of homework sometimes back and front if it was math. And to read."

This article originally appeared in August"I was in this boat with my son…conversation with the principal and teachers helped dramatically!! It’s too much and we have to advocate for them."

Nelson was blown away by the response to her post, which has been shared on Facebook over 89,000 times. "I NEVER thought me sharing my thoughts openly about how my heart hurt watching my little guy struggle would connect to so many others worldwide going through the same thing," she says.

Many parents shared that excessive homework is one of the reasons they decided to homeschool their children, which Nelson took to heart. The week after sharing her viral homework post, she shared that they had had their first day of homeschooling. It was "A HUGE SUCCESS!!!!" she wrote, with her son getting far more work done in a far shorter amount of time, sitting for classes for just 1 hour and 45 minutes total.

Nelson tells Upworthy she was totally intimidated to try homeschooling. "I seriously thought there was no way," she says. "But I knew I had to set my fear aside and just take the leap for my kids. I told myself I'd figure it out one way or another. And here we are three days in and it's been the easiest and best choice I've ever made."

Homeschooling is not going to the right solution for every family, however, so the question of homework remains an important issue for kids, parents, teachers and schools to work out.


This article originally appeared last year.

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Teacher reveals her 'Roman Empire,' is connection between childhood play and high school academics

Cutting down on recess has long term educational impacts.

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Teacher reveals lack of childhood play leads to poorer high school academics

Nearly everyone has their own version of a "Roman Empire." It's the thing you think about at different points in your day often for no connected reason. You have amassed a lot of information on this random topic and could probably talk about it for hours. Many people's "Roman Empire" is the literal Roman Empire, which is where the phrase came from after someone claimed that a lot of men think about the collapse of the Roman Empire unprompted throughout the week.

A teacher who goes by the moniker of Miss Redacted on social media recently shared about her own "Roman Empire" and it was quite surprising. The teacher teaches high school students and has made an observation about her students' physical development when it comes to fine motor skills and being able to sit in chairs for longer periods of time.

But what sparked the conversation about the importance of play for physical development and subsequent academic success is a video by a preschool teacher, Miss Redacted shares.

gif of Grover from Sesame Street in a cap in gown reading a blackboard that says "School"School Teacher GIF by Sesame StreetGiphy

"They teach preschool and they were talking about how the kids like, literally can't do anything. They can't hold a pencil for long periods of time, they can't play with play dough, they can't color, they can't spray a spritz bottle and my Roman Empire is the connection between physical development through play and academics," the teacher says.

Miss Redacted reveals that she currently teaches U.S. History to eleventh graders but before she started teaching high school, she also worked with Early Headstart, a program geared towards child development for low income families.

"I feel like because that's been my experience, I really view child development from an interesting perspective and I'm able to make a lot of connections between younger kids and older kids and why they are the way they are, and why they do things that they do," she reveals before explaining further that kids have been evaluated heavily using standardized testing which means play is being "ripped out of schools."

gif of kids playing on a playground from "The Simpsons" Playing Season 3 GIF by The SimpsonsGiphy

Miss Redacted explains that this isn't just happening in elementary schools, but preschools as well. In some of the schools she has spoken with, elementary students are only given recess for 20-30 minutes once or twice a week. The rest of the week they are expected to be in class as recess is seen as part of "specials" like library or art. It's not always something students are given on a daily basis as some schools believe it's taking away from valuable educational instruction time.

Of course children play outside of school, but school recess equipment is designed specifically for gross motor development and meets the additional recommendations by the CDC about child activity levels. The Center for Disease Control recommends that children between the ages of 6-17 have moderate to vigorous activity for at least 60 minutes a day with a mixture of aerobic, muscle strengthening, and bone strengthening activities. While some kids may be meeting or exceeding this recommended level of activity with sports outside of school, others may not be due to the increase of screen time in young children.

This teacher sees the difference in her high schoolers when they have not had the proper amount of physical activity as children saying, "When I see my high school students, I can see the impact of that. A lot of my high school students still hold their pencils like this," she says while demonstrating a fist hold on a pencil. "And I want to make it clear, I don't want this to come across as body shaming at all, I do not care what you look like but I've noticed a lot of my high schoolers do not have physical strength and stamina."

Miss Redacted further explains that fine motor strength is built first by having core strength which is built up through play, "So if you were not playing that much as a child, you're either on an iPad or you're doing standardized testing, or like those weird modules they make them do now. If all your time is being spent on technology and not physical play, you're not lifting yourself, you're not pulling things, you're not crawling, you're not building that core strength so then it's also hard for you to build that fine motor strength."

gif of a child climbing a pillar kid childhood GIFGiphy

Before electronics replaced typical childhood play, fine motor skills were refined by playing with small items, whether it was making friendship bracelets, putting puzzles together, playing with Polly Pockets or Play-Doh. Miss Redacted shares that even her AP U.S. History kids have a hard time holding their pencils and sitting upright for longer periods of time without their hands becoming too fatigued for them to even be able to finish their required essays during AP exams.

The teacher laments, "me as a history teacher should not have to do strength training to get you to be able to pass your test but I don't know. It's like so my Roman Empire. I think that, that is one thing that's a really big problem in education, is that people don't realize how much the brain and the body are connected."

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This researcher asked kids what's wrong with U.S. schools. Here are their ideas.

Who knows the most about school? Students.

Image via Amanda Ripley/PopTech.

Map demonstrating scores of the Program for International Student Assessment for each state compared to a country that has similar scores.

This is not news: America does pretty badly when it goes up against other countries academically. This is true even if we take it one state at a time—no single state, no matter how wealthy or small, matches the top scoring countries. And yet, the U.S. spends more per student than many other countries in the world.

In the image at the top, each state is mapped to a country that had similar scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, an international test of mathematical reasoning given to 15-year-olds. The top 15 countries are in purple. No, there isn't any purple on this map.

Reporter Amanda Ripley wanted to figure out why U.S. education outcomes are so mediocre.

She started asking random people what they thought and she followed up on their ideas. The same theories came up over and over: People blamed poverty and diversity for the difference between U.S. students and students everywhere else. But when Ripley dug into the numbers, she discovered that, while those are factors, they don't fully explain the difference.

No adult could give her a satisfactory answer, so she went to the experts: kids.

Kids spend more time in school than anyone. They've got strong opinions about school. They have opinions on what is working.

She talked to the only students who could have firsthand knowledge of the differences between schools in top-performing countries and those in the U.S.: American kids who were exchange students in those countries.

She surveyed hundreds of exchange students and found three major points that they all agreed on.

The students all said that in their host countries:

  1. School is harder. There's less homework but the material is more rigorous. People take education more seriously, from selecting the content to selecting the teachers.
  2. Sports are just a hobby. In the U.S., sports are a huge distraction from the business of school, but that's not the case in other countries.
  3. Kids believe there's something in it for them. The students in other countries deeply believe that what they are doing in school affects how interesting their lives were going to be. Even if they don't like a class, they see their education as a stepping stone to their future.

To hear more from these amazing kids (and a great story about how an education reporter managed to take an international standardized test), check out the video from PopTech below:

This article originally appeared nine years ago.


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