Works by
Jonathan G. Silin
(Writer)

The Early Childhood Educator's Knowledge Base: A Reconsideration (1986)

Sex, Death, and the Education of Children: Our Passion for Ignorance in the Age of AIDS (1995)

Children Talk About AIDS (1999,  Video) with Charissa M. Sgouros
Although K-12 HIV/AIDS education is mandated in most states, implementation is often limited in early childhood and elementary settings. This break-through video goes into the classroom presenting children (ages 4-8) trying to make sense of this very difficult topic.

Focusing on what young children already know about HIV/AIDS and the questions they have, this practical video demonstrates:
 

• How to begin conversations with young children about HIV/AIDS

• What effect the developmental process has on a child’s understanding of this topic

• How children try to make sense of a difficult topic

• What sorts of information and misinformation children of various ages already have acquired about HIV/AIDS

• How it is possible for difficult but important topics (such as, but not limited to HIV/AIDS) to be handled sensitively in the classroom.

Putting the Children First (2003) with Carol Lippman
Putting the Children First chronicles the educational struggle that took place in the city of Newark amidst years of political upheaval and economic neglect. It is a story of inspiration and hope as we come to understand what happened when educators, parents, and community members pulled together to turn education around in one of the most historically troubled cities in America.

This volume tells the remarkable story of Project New Beginnings, a 7-year collaboration between the Newark Public Schools and Bank Street College to restructure early childhood education. Reporting from the front lines of urban schools, this important volume: * Gives voice to the variety of people involved in effective school reform--teachers, principals, staff developers, superintendents, and foundation executives. * Illustrates how one school-change project kept its focus on the needs of individual teachers and classrooms while negotiating the many demands in contemporary urban schools. * Confronts the difficult constraints and many hurdles the Project overcame to emerge as a model for school-university collaboration.

My Father's Keeper: The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents (2006)  -- Finalist 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Biography (Gay Male)
My Father’s Keeper is the moving story of Jonathan Silin, a gay man in midlife who learned to care for his elderly parents as a series of life-threatening illnesses forced them to make the difficult transition from being independent to being reliant on their son. Their new needs and unrelenting demands brought parents and child into intimate daily contact and radically transformed what had been a distant and emotionally fraught relationship.

My Father’s Keeper chronicles the ways in which the ideas and skills Silin acquired as an early childhood educator, a specialist in life span development, and a compassionate witness to the devastation of the HIV/AIDS crisis came together with his interest in human psychology to deeply inform his thinking about the dramatic changes in his family’s life and increasingly influence his role as his father’s (and mother’s) keeper.