Learning from Wonderful Lives - N. V. K. Baylis Learning to hit a lick | Cover Story This is the first in a two-part series. For the second part, click here. Falicia stretched out on the floor of the apartment and, finally feeling ready for anything, pulled from her purse a .32-caliber Sauer & Son pistol [1]. They'd kept it to tequila and weed for the most part, some ecstasy and blow for later. She herself was easy to do business with. But not today. When she and Pumpkin showed up at Ray's, around 2 p.m., he'd examined the goods and offered them a drink. That's when Mike first called. "What you doing?" "Fine," Falicia told him. "Go on and stay there until you get about $500 from him. "We're at SunTrust." "Mmmm. "I'll call you back on that" [5]. After Ray and the girls went back to his apartment, it didn't take long for him to figure something was up. "What's wrong with you?" She accepted, and downed the tequila with salt and a lemon. Mike called again. Falicia took a third shot of tequila, then a fourth. "Do you love me?" "No, Mike.
5 Things It Turns Out You Were Right to Hate About School For many of you, school was 12 or more years of teachers and administrators deciding what was best for you, dictating exactly how you spent every minute of every day -- the result being that you absolutely hated each and every one of those minutes. But as you reached adulthood, you probably came to the realization that it was all for the best. You were just a stupid kid, after all, and your elders did things a certain way for a reason. That reason being that they were full of shit. Science is just now taking a closer look at these centuries-old school practices, and they're finding out that ... #5. Jack Hollingsworth/Photodisc/Getty Images Assuming you weren't some kind of freak prodigy, you probably looked to final exam season with a deep sense of dread. Saban Entertainment"And then the Pink Ranger's all like, 'Hey, Green Ranger, I can play the flute a different way ...' But You Were Right ... Hey, you know who has done away with final exams as a concept? Digital Vision. #4. Ahh, recess.
VIEWPOINT: A Partial Defense Of Invisible Children's Kony2012 Campaign By Guest Contributor on March 8, 2012 at 1:30 pm "VIEWPOINT: A Partial Defense Of Invisible Children’s Kony2012 Campaign" By Sarah Margon Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony Over the last few days, the Twittersphere has gone off the rails criticizing Invisible Children’s Kony2012 campaign — a 29 minute video about how Washington needs to continue prioritizing its work to end the brutal rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, or the LRA. While #Kony2012 is trending on Twitter, the exploitative campaign video has also generated a steady stream of scathing comments from the wonkier among us. Additionally, a cringe inducing photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with automatic weapons in South Sudan indicates a worrisome propensity for juvenile antics instead of serious policy. To be clear, factual ambiguity, exaggeration or oversimplification is an unacceptable practice.
Listening to music in the classroom Apr [display_podcast] I think I can safely say that we know from personal experience that music affects our bodies and our minds. Listening to music relaxes us, energizes us, comfort us, keeps us company, help us celebrated and even helps marks special occasions. I think I can also safely say that we know the music we like to listen to at any given time varies from person to person and situation to situation. Sometimes I like to listen to Jazz, sometimes I like to listen to The Blues and other times want to to listen to Baroque or even Country Music. I thought I could safely say that listening to music in the classroom helps students be more productive, so I did say that in several posts that I wrote here, some dating back to September 23, 2006. I’ve gotten lots of feedback, and I’d like to thank people for that. Ok, back to the research. Music plays with your state of mind as the electrical energy generated by firing neurons creates brain waves. share Mar [display_podcast] Feb Sep 1. 2. 3.
Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things) Click here to see photos of the evolution of the LRA. Thanks to an incredibly effective social media effort, #StopKony is trending on Twitter today. The campaign coincides with a new awareness-raising documentary by the group Invisible Children. Former FP intern Michael Wilkerson, now a freelance journalist and grad student at Oxford -- who has lived and reported from Uganda -- contributed this guest post on the campaign. -JK By Michael Wilkerson: "Joseph Kony is basically Adolf Hitler. Have you seen something like that fly across your Twitter or Facebook feed today? "#TweetToSave the Invisible Children of Uganda! "Kony 2012," a video posted by advocacy group Invisible Children to raise awareness about the pernicious evil of Lord's Risistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony, has already been viewed over 8 million times on Vimeo and more than 9 million times on YouTube (and surely more by the time you read this) since its release this week. It would be great to get rid of Kony.
Doodling Is Good For Your Noodle Doodling is often frowned upon in meetings and classrooms, but now scientists say it might help you remember details in an otherwise boring presentation. The back-of-the-envelope speculation as to why? Doodlers don't daydream as much. Forty test subjects — all rather smart folks (they are members of the research panel of the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge) — were made to listen to a dull phone message. The half who were asked to doodle during the message had 29 percent better recall than the non-doodlers. Beforehand, they were all told to listen for names of people going to a party. "If someone is doing a boring task, like listening to a dull telephone conversation, they may start to daydream," said University of Plymouth psychology professor Jackie Andrade. The findings are detailed in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. Good News: 5 Ways to Beef Up Your Brain Bad News: Value of Brain Exercises Questioned More Brain News
"The Loving Story": How an Interracial Couple Changed a Nation Mildred and Richard Loving in 1965Grey Villet/courtesy HBO The most striking thing about Mildred and Richard Loving is that they never wanted to be known. They didn't want to change history or face down racism. They just wanted to come home to Virginia to be near their families. When the The Loving Story makes its national debut on HBO on Valentine's Day, it will be the first time many Americans have met this couple. Even as they changed America, the Lovings were never a household name. Just over a month after the Lovings' homecoming, police raided their place at 2 a.m., arrested the couple, and threw them in jail. Bazile agreed to suspend their one-year prison sentences if they would leave the state. In 1963, after five years of sneaking back and forth to visit their families, Mildred wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy asking for help. Asked by his lawyer whether he he had anything to say to the Supreme Court, Richard replied: "Tell the court I love my wife."
My 6th Grade Science Teacher Hated My Guts -- Study Shows Yours Probably Did, Too Yesterday, I came across this study, which found that more teachers than you’d think let their personal feelings impact the way they graded their students. For me it was more than just the actual grading. Instead, my fledgling sense of perspective was brutally body-checked by my science teacher’s decision that he just wasn’t down with my killer vests, gap-toothed, quiet self. (I dressed up as a dog. In middle School. MY SELF-ESTEEM WAS SOARING. I was, admittedly, not a straight-A student in my middle school years. The social drama unrolled at a Melrose-Place-type rate. Science and math have always presented me with challenges, and middle school was no exception. Mr. On my end of year report card, with the knowledge he’d never have to see me again, he wrote, “Rebecca is a loud, volatile, rude distraction. My parents confronted me with the report card and I was speechless. Sure, there are good teachers and bad teachers -- because teachers are people and thus, human. *Not his real name.
Meghalaya, India: Where women rule, and men are suffragettes 19 January 2012Last updated at 15:26 By Timothy Allen Meghalaya, India In the small hilly Indian state of Meghalaya, a matrilineal system operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son - but some men are campaigning for change. When early European settlers first arrived here they nicknamed it "the Scotland of the East" on account of its evocative rolling hills. Coincidentally, today the bustling market in the state capital, Shillong, is awash with tartan in the form of the traditional handloom shawls worn ubiquitously since the autumn chill arrived. Not far from here the village of Cherrapunji once measured an astonishing 26.5m (87ft) of rain in one year, a fact still acknowledged by the Guinness book as a world record. But the rainy season is over for the time being and it is Meghalaya's other major claim to fame that I am here to investigate. Tartan, and pipes, are popular in Shillong "The same is true of many of the nouns in our language.
The secret to fixing school discipline problems? Change the behavior of adults « ACEs Too High Godwin Higa, principal, Cherokee Point Elementary School Two kindergarteners at Cherokee Point Elementary School in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood get into a fight on the playground. Their teacher sends them to the principal’s office. Instead of suspending or expelling the six-year-olds, as happens in many schools, Principal Godwin Higa ushers them to his side of the desk. He sits down so that he can talk with them eye-to-eye and quietly asks: “What happened?” In this school, a fight turns into a teachable moment on how to resolve conflict. Establish what happened. Have them accept responsibility. Have them tell each other how they felt about having their shirt grabbed and being pushed down. Have them apologize and agree that they won’t do it again. Higa keeps talking. “Congratulations!” “And what do you do when you’ve worked something out?” They wrap their arms around each other and squeeze tight. Fifteen minutes later, they knock on his door and peek in, all smiles. Dr. 1. 2.
By the Numbers: Dropping Out of High School | Dropout Nation | FRONTLINE How costly is the decision to drop out of high school? Consider a few figures about life without a diploma: The average dropout can expect to earn an annual income of $20,241, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (PDF). Of course, simply finding a job is also much more of a challenge for dropouts. The challenges hardly end there, particularly among young dropouts. Among dropouts between the ages of 16 and 24, incarceration rates were a whopping 63 times higher than among college graduates, according to a study (PDF) by researchers at Northeastern University. The same study (PDF) found that as a result — when compared to the typical high school graduate — a dropout will end up costing taxpayers an average of $292,000 over a lifetime due to the price tag associated with incarceration and other factors such as how much less they pay in taxes. Those are the numbers. Watch a preview here: