Obama Critic Apologizes Now That She Has Cancer It’s a hard way to learn a lesson about administration policy, but for one California woman, the experience has literally been lifesaving. In a letter to the L.A. Times, California mother and artist Spike Dolomite Ward apologized to President Barack Obama, admitting that during his time in office she had gone quickly from supporter to opponent, believing that the president had done nothing to help the country since being elected. But like many Americans, especially the self-employed, Ward and her family eventually found themselves in a personal budget crunch where they could either pay their mortgage or pay their health insurance premiums, but not both. The choice at the time seemed obvious — keep their home. Then she found out she had cancer. Ward was able to use the Obama health care reform laws to get access to affordable insurance without being turned down because of her condition.
Inquiry-Based Tasks in Social Studies Many schools, both nationally and internationally, are adopting the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. Some states, districts, and schools adopt the full framework and standards, and others adopt the general framework, but modify or create their own grade-level standards. An important element of the framework either way is something called the Inquiry Arc. The Inquiry Arc comprises four dimensions: “one focused on questioning and inquiry; another on disciplinary knowledge and concepts relating to civics, economics, geography, and history; another on evaluating and using evidence; and a final one on communicating and taking action.” The basic idea is that students ask or are given compelling questions and then investigate those questions, evaluate and find evidence to answer them, and communicate their answers. For example, middle school students might be given the question “Can disease change the world?” The Inquiry Design Model for Tasks
Frustration with Congress Could Hurt Republican Incumbents GOP Base Critical of Party's Washington Leadership Overview Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next year’s elections could be stark. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 – the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids – the most in any election since 1948. The Republican Party is taking more of the blame than the Democrats for a do-nothing Congress. To be sure, neither party’s leadership is viewed positively right now. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 7-11, 2011 among 1,521 adults, finds that Republicans are as eager to see big changes in Congress as they were two years ago. Yet independents have few positive things to say about the Democratic Party either. the summer.
The Cardigan Papers – American history and news literacy meet in the school library, Time magazine reveals Person of the Year 2011 - Today Celebrates 2011 Time magazine revealed the 2011 choice for its iconic Person of the Year cover live on TODAY Wednesday. The Protester is this year’s choice, managing editor Rick Stengel told Matt Lauer and Ann Curry. “There was a lot of consensus among our people,” Stengel told the TODAY anchors as he revealed the magazine’s cover. As it has for the past 84 years, the weekly newsmagazine selected the person (or sometimes group, or thing) that its editors deemed had the single greatest impact during the past year, for better or for worse. Time’s Person of the Year has been a perennial topic of year-end debate ever since aviator Charles Lindbergh was chosen the first Man of the Year back in 1927 (the title was amended to Person of the Year in 1999). Slideshow: Time Persons of the Year 1999-2013 (on this page) Other candidates Polled online earlier this week, hundreds of TODAY.com readers came up with many other nominees for 2011, including late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Rep.
5 Ways to Process Your Emotions Through Writing For many of us actually feeling our feelings is not something we have much experience with. Maybe we’ve dismissed our disappointment, our sadness, our anger, our anxiety, our grief for years. And that’s OK. Because it’s something you can work on. Don’t worry if you don’t think of yourself as a writer (even though you are). Write about experiencing the feelingin third person. Start with the exercise that feels easiest (or most interesting) to you. I know this can be hard, especially when we’re dealing with painful emotions. For more, check out this piece on creativeways to cope with painful emotions; and this pieceonmore techniques for using creativity to explore your emotions. Photo by MindJournal.
Mitt Romney: Nuclear Iran Would Be Consequence Of Obama Re-Election SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Unsparing in their criticism of President Barack Obama, Republican presidential hopefuls disagreed in campaign debate Saturday night about the right course in Afghanistan, the use of waterboarding and the wisdom of a pre-emptive military strike to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," vowed the former Massachusetts governor. On waterboarding, Herman Cain and Rep. As for the war in Afghanistan, former Utah Gov. While the Republicans were talking about foreign policy, Obama was on the world stage, as America's diplomat in chief. After meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Hawaii, he said the two men intend to "shape a common response" to new allegations that Iran has been covertly trying to build a nuclear bomb. If the presidential trip gave the Republicans pause, they didn't show it in a 90-minute debate. Former Sen.
The Authentic Person's Guide To Self-Branding If you use the Internet, you have a brand. Whether you like it or not, people are Googling you and their impression of you is shaped by the content they find: your LinkedIn profile, your Facebook page, your public tweets, that random op-ed you wrote for your college paper. And yet many people are uncomfortable with the idea of cultivating a personal brand. "When people think of self-branding, they immediately think of people in the entertainment industry who are in the business of shameless self-promotion," says Selena Soo, founder of S2 Groupe, a personal branding consultancy. "Celebrities can come across as arrogant, egotistical, or flamboyant, and people don’t want to be like that." But Soo insists that managing your public persona won't make an over-the-top Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian out of you. Soo argues that self-branding is not just about you, but also about the people you are trying to help through your work. So how do you begin to build your brand? Your Big Idea
Bra that turns into a gas mask finally on sale everywhere The Emergency Bra, a brassiere that can turn into two life-saving gas masks for victims of biological warfare won the 2009 Ig Nobel Public Health Prize. It just went on sale via this website, which describes the invention as "an "Emergency Bra, Nursing Bra, Two Face Masks [and] Strapless bra." The bra, available in sizes 32B to 40C, came as a result of Chernobyl. Seriously. [Dr. Elena] Bodnar studied the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and found that, as Fox News reports, "if people had had cheap, readily available gas masks in the first hours after the disaster ... they may have avoided breathing in Iodine-131, which causes radiation." You may recall my write-up of another Ig Nobel winner on Scanner: the MRI sex tape.
It’s a matter of trust When Billy Joel wrote the lyrics to It’s a Matter of Trust, he probably wasn’t thinking about the Finnish education system. Yet the more I read the literature on high performing systems, I am convinced that trust is at the core of the cultural change needed to reshape schooling. It’s not new nor is it rocket science. Michael Fullan says that you build trust through behaviour. As noble a calling as teaching is, the profession has been tarnished by a lack of trust, suspicion of teachers’ work and a top down approach to school improvement. What differentiates high performing systems from others is trust. I know Finland is the system du jour and some may be tiring of hearing about the Finnish way but I read a superb reflection in February’s Phi Delta Kappan magazine by its editor in chief, Joan Richardson. The rationale behind Finland’s competitive teacher education program is quite simple: there are no mentoring or teacher evaluation programs and that’s the way they want it.