Dorothy Rich, founder and president of the nonprofit Home and School Institute, Megaskills Education Center reflects on her experiences as a child during World War II— and what she sees as the very different experience today's children are having of growing up in wartime.

It's the ultimate back-to-school story: about 80 middle-aged Virginians are heading back to the classroom--more than four decades after their educations were derailed by the state's "massive resistance" campaign, which led some Virginia communities to shut down their public schools rather than integrate them. Connect for Kids Editor Susan Phillips spoke to recipients of Virginia's new Brown v. Board of Education scholarships.

The newest, and presumably last, museum to win space on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. opens this week with much expected fanfare. Once the celebration is over, museum leaders hope to get down to the serious business of overcoming stereotypes and teaching kids about the American Indian past, present and future.

The 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court school desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education has produced an outpouring of reminiscence and evaluation. Today, amid national attention to the issues of school reform, school choice, and student achievement, Connect for Kids editor Susan Phillips asks what's next for our public schools.

The emergence of the school nurse a century ago in the New York City Schools is part of the evolution of children's health care in this country. As part of our ongoing project Kids in America: 500 Years of Change Connect for Kids highlights some of the critical moments in that evolution.

As the field of school nursing enters its second century, changes in law and society have transformed the profession: school nurses now supervise children on complicated meds, help kids manage chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes, and look for signs of depression, drug or alcohol abuse. Nevertheless, reports Rob Capriccioso, they are a frequent target of school budget cuts.

Connect for Kids launched a special project intended to bring a sense of the past to our understanding of the present. We hope it will demonstrate connections; for example, between Benjamin Syms—1634 bequest of eight cows and 200 acres of land to establish a free school in Virginia, to today's hot political issues of school vouchers and national educational standards. Jan Richter explains the roots of "Kids

From the admonitions of George Washington to his young relatives, to words of encouragement from Richard M. Nixon to the son of a political rival, the letters of U.S. Presidents to children and young people offer a glimpse at the evolving relationship between our political leaders and their youngest constituents. As President's Day approaches, Connect for Kids offers a selection of some of these letters from the book Dear Young Friend, edited by Stanley and Rodelle Weintraub.

Connect for Kids is all about making things happen for children—and about celebrating the people who put kids first. For this Fifth Anniversary edition, we thought we would revisit the subjects of some of our stories, and see where they are today.

Are teens today more violent and less reverent than ever before? Not according to Errol Lincoln Uys' book, Riding the Rails: Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression. In this review, Grace Palladino tells the stories of "box car boys and girls" who searched for jobs and adventure during the Great Depression, before anyone ever heard of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.