1. marked by extreme intensity of emotions or convictions; felt deeply; fervid
2. characterized by great force or energy
_________
The word vehement has appeared in 60 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 5 in “Burna Boy Has the Whole World Listening” by Jon Pareles:
On the album’s most vehement song, Burna Boy, with Chris Martin of Coldplay arriving on choruses, turns to stark, echoey roots reggae in “The Monsters You Made,” an indictment of miseducation, historical injustice and systemic racism, delivered in clear English with mounting fury. “When they’ve been working like slaves/To get some minimum wage,” he sings, “You turn around and you blame/Them for their anger and rage.”
It’s the rare Burna Boy song where he lets coolness fall away. “That song comes from a lot of anger and pain, and me having to witness firsthand what my people go through and how my people see themselves,” he said. “I see how many people are deceived and confused. I just try to blend all of that in and make it understood that we’re all going through the same problems. We just speak different languages.”
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word vehement in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how vehement can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
“Music and Clowns” is an eight-minute animated film that touches on themes of family, disability and love. In the Op-Doc, the filmmaker, Alex Widdowson, searches for insights into his brother Jaime, who has Down syndrome and is close to nonverbal, uncovering his “charisma, a sharp sense of humor, and emotional sensitivity” as well as the profound impact he has had on his family.
Why do you think the filmmaker chose to animate the majority of the film? What other artistic elements help to effectively create this rich and nuanced family portrait? What do you learn about Jamie, and the complexities of family and storytelling?
Students
1. Watch the short film above. While you watch, you might take notes using our Film Club Double-Entry Journal (PDF) to help you remember specific moments.
2. After watching, think about these questions:
What questions do you still have?
What connections can you make between this film and your own life or experience? Why? Does this film remind you of anything else you’ve read or seen? If so, how and why?
3. An additional challenge | Respond to the essential question at the top of this post: A filmmaker searches to better understand his brother who has Down syndrome: What can we learn from his rich and nuanced family portrait?
4. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
My brother, Jamie, has a profound learning disability. Despite being close to nonverbal, he demonstrates charisma, a sharp sense of humor and emotional sensitivity. In the Op-Doc above, “Music and Clowns,” I team up with my parents to discuss what it is like caring for someone with Down syndrome. We piece together fragments of insight to gain a sense of his inner life, but our differing perspectives reveal as much about our own subjectivity as they do Jamie’s.
We rarely see portrayals of the diverse, ordinary lives of people who have Down syndrome (unless we are connected to someone who has it). Much of what we hear instead is based on a medical narrative. As prenatal screening tests improve, the birthrate of people with Down has fallen. I believe people should be able to base life-changing decisions on accurate information. But I also feel that a diagnosis does not reflect my brother’s human worth. This film attempts to complement the medical narrative with firsthand stories of what it is like to have someone with Down syndrome in your family. Jamie has enriched our lives, and I believe a society can be measured by its capacity to nurture those who are most vulnerable.
• Read our list of practical teaching ideas, along with responses from students and teachers, for how you can use these documentaries in the classroom.
In our “What’s Going On in This Graph?” feature, we recently asked students to make observations about “Diversity in Professional Sports.” Spend a few minutes looking closely at this graph, reproduced below — or found here in a larger size.
Then ask yourself the questions we pose in this feature every week:
You can share your answers with your class, or you can read the “Reveal” at the bottom of the post that gives more information about the graph. You will use what you observed as you read the featured article.
1. Read the first two paragraphs of the piece. Then look back at what you noticed and wondered about the graph above. How does the graph support Kurt Streeter’s assessment of the current situation?
2. According to this column, what power do athletes have when they can get a seat at the table of a team boardroom? Are there other advantages athletes might gain when they have this voice and power?
3. How are LeBron James’s goals and actions as an owner different from those of Mario Lemieux or Michael Jordan?
4. What is your reaction to Renee Montgomery’s activism on the court, and eventual partial ownership of her former team? What other stories similar to hers does this column describe? Have you heard of still more? Explain.
5. What are some of the possibilities and strengths of grass-roots activism led by athletes? What are some of the limitations of this kind of social change?
6. This piece is a column, not a news article. In columns, writers share their opinion in their own voice. How can you tell this is a column rather than a news article simply reporting facts? What is your opinion of what this columnist concludes?
Navigate to the section of the article with the subheading “99 people own professional baseball, basketball and football teams” and read the paragraph and view the photos.
In your journal or with your classmates, consider the following questions:
What is your reaction to what you discovered? How does it change or deepen your understanding of the featured article?
What possibilities and advantages can you imagine for athletes owning teams? What are the potential downsides or concerns?
How do you think things like racial and gender diversity in sports leadership could change the way that leagues operate?
How do you feel about the use of the term “owner” given the racial differences between team leadership and many players? Do you think this term should be changed given its association with slavery? Why or why not?
In the featured article, Kurt Streeter uses the term “owner-activists” in reference to LeBron James and Renee Montgomery. How do you feel about this term? Does it excite you about the opportunities for players or former players? Or do you feel that athletes, current or former, should stay out of social and political issues?
Personal Connection
Next, think about your own community and the possibilities for activism or change for your local sports. What power do you think young people can have to make change in the sports that they are part of? For instance, consider a middle or high school sports team you’ve been involved with. Have you or your peers ever organized an action in solidarity with a social or political movement? If so, which ones? If not, are there any actions a professional sports team has taken that you would like to see your team echo? Which and why?
About Lesson of the Day
• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column. • Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.
1. After looking closely at the image above (or at the full-size image), think about these three questions:
2. Next, join the conversation by clicking on the comment button and posting in the box that opens on the right. (Students 13 and older are invited to comment, although teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students have to say.)
3. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
Each Monday, our collaborator, Visual Thinking Strategies, will facilitate a discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time by paraphrasing comments and linking to responses to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
4. On Thursday afternoons, we will reveal at the bottom of this post more information about the photo. How does reading the caption and learning its back story help you see the image differently?
“The pandemic is not just making many of us sick, it is making virtually all of us lonelier, according to a Harvard report based on a national survey of 950 Americans issued in February,” Richard Schiffman writes. But while young adults and older people have been especially isolated in the pandemic, efforts are underway to help connect them.
In this lesson, you will learn how both young and old have suffered from loneliness during the pandemic and how interaction between them might be the best medicine for each. In Going Further activities, we invite you to write about an important relationship with an elder and, if inspired, to reach out and connect with an older person.
Warm Up
Have you felt lonely and isolated during the pandemic? Have you reached out to an older person for connection or solace during this time?
Take a few minutes to write about your experiences of isolation and of connection during the pandemic, using the following prompts:
How has the pandemic affected your life — physically, socially and emotionally? Have you experienced increased loneliness since the outbreak of the pandemic?
How have you coped with feelings of isolation and loneliness? Whom, if anyone, do you reach out to when you need support, comfort and perspective? Has anyone in the past few weeks taken more than a few minutes to ask how you are doing in a way that seems genuinely caring? Do you ever feel like you need more support than you are getting?
Do you have older people in your life? If so, have you maintained connections with them during the pandemic? How have each of you benefited from these interactions during these difficult times? What life lessons have you learned from older adults? From your experience, has the pandemic widened generational divides or helped bridge them?
1. How and why have young adults and older people been the two loneliest groups during the pandemic, according to the article? In the Warm Up section above, we asked you whether you had experienced increased loneliness during this time and whether anyone in the past few weeks had taken more than a few minutes to ask how you are doing in a way that seems genuinely caring. How did your answers compare to those in the Harvard study cited in the article?
2. Why does Richard Weissbourd, a psychologist who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a lead researcher on the study, believe that the young and the old would feel a lot less isolated if they had more contact with one another?
3. Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University, says that elders are experts in how to thrive during hard times. Give two examples of older people’s wisdom described in the article. What do you think of advice like “relishing the small things in life” even during a pandemic?
4. Marc Freedman, the founder of Encore.org, says that “we started the 20th century as one of the most age-integrated societies in the world and ended it as the most age-segregated.” Why are multigenerational homes no longer the norm? What do you think we are losing as a society when generations are “divided into self-selected silos of their own peers”?
5. How have young people like Ella Gardner, age 18, and Sam Cozolino, 14, taken advantage of the pandemic to get to know older people better? How did they benefit and grow from these opportunities?
6. Why did Laurinda Bedingfield, 67, who was matched with a young person by a home-sharing service, doubt that her desire for friendship would be reciprocated? What did she discover instead? What other misconceptions and obstacles do you think might get in the way of old and young people bonding and learning from one another?
7. What is your reaction to the article and its description of efforts to bring young and older people together during the pandemic? What examples or quotes were most memorable, surprising or moving? Do you think young people and society as a whole could benefit from more cross-generational experiences — even when the pandemic is over? Does it make you wish you had more connections with older people?
Going Further
Option 1: Share your reactions.
Choose one or more of the following writing prompts:
While Ella Gardner admits that “I’ve always been scared about growing old,” the article notes that increased contact with older people has made her more comfortable about the prospect of aging, which she now sees as “a natural part of life.” Do you look forward to old age? What do you think you might learn from more interaction with elders? Like the young people profiled in the article, how might you benefit?
Dr. Weissbourd says, “Young people have so much to share with the elderly about a rapidly changing world — not just technology, but new and important ways of thinking about race and racism, justice, sexuality and gender and other critical issues.” Do you agree? What specific experiences and perspectives do you think you could bring to older people? What would you want to share?
Write about an important relationship or experience with an older person. Use detailed and vivid language to describe the person, how you know or met the person and what makes that person special. Is there a memorable story or a memory of when you learned something valuable, interesting or funny from an older person? How have older people made a difference in your life? What lessons, wisdom or perspective did you gain?
Do you think schools should create more cross-generational experiences as part of the curriculum? Why or why not?
Option 2: Reach out and connect to an elder.
If inspired by the article, find some way — big or small — to connect with an older person, whether in your family or your community. Ella volunteered to shop and do chores for elders who had become housebound during the pandemic. Sam Cozolino researched his ancestral history, connecting with long-lost relatives in Italy, with the aim of creating a family tree. Rain Shanks, 26 has weekly Zoom sessions with elders through The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project.
What would you want to do? Volunteer? Create a family tree? Conduct an interview? Chat on Zoom? Write a letter of thanks or gratitude? Or perhaps simply pick up a phone to say hello?
Need more ideas? Here are some resources to help you connect with older people:
Whatever activity you choose, consider keeping a journal to record your thoughts and feelings. Afterward, share your experiences with the class: What did you do? How did it affect both you and the elder? What did you learn?
About Lesson of the Day
• Find all our Lessons of the Day in this column. • Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this illustration — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this image makes you think of.
Post it in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.
Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
Humans err, of course: We overlook or glaze past the flaws in these systems, all too quick to trust that computers are hyper-rational, objective, always right. Studies have shown that, in situations where humans and computers must cooperate to make a decision — to identify fingerprints or human faces — people consistently made the wrong identification when a computer nudged them to do so. In the early days of dashboard GPS systems, drivers famously followed the devices’ directions to a fault, sending cars into lakes, off cliffs and into trees.
Is this humility or hubris? Do we place too little value in human intelligence — or do we overrate it, assuming we are so smart that we can create things smarter still?
Daily Word Challenge
Can you correctly use the word hubris in a sentence?
Based on the definition and example provided, write a sentence using today’s Word of the Day and share it as a comment on this article. It is most important that your sentence makes sense and demonstrates that you understand the word’s definition, but we also encourage you to be creative and have fun.
Then, read some of the other sentences students have submitted and use the “Recommend” button to vote for two original sentences that stand out to you.
If you want a better idea of how hubris can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.
If you enjoy this daily challenge, try using multiple Words of the Day in a 50-word story that you submit to our Monthly Vocabulary Challenge.
Students ages 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, can comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff.
Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed over the past two weeks. Do you know what it shows? At the bottom of this quiz, you’ll find the answer.
Have you been paying attention to the news recently? See how many of these 10 questions you can get right.
Collaborative coding leads to better code. Whether it’s tackling problems, building solutions, or sharing knowledge, learning to code with others is increasingly essential. That’s why we’re excited to roll out Career Path groups — a new curriculum feature designed to help you gain confidence and learn the collaborative coding skills you need to succeed in your new career.
Now, when you enroll in a Career Path, you’ll be introduced to your peers who are also starting out on the same Career Path at the same time. Think of them as your fellow classmates! They are people you can reach out to for code reviews, pair programming, and group projects as you progress through your learning journey.
“Much of our curriculum is self-paced learning, but it doesn’t mean you need to learn alone. Your peers are the people that you can learn with,” says Alyssa, a Community Manager here at Codecademy.
Once we introduce you to your fellow learners, and the next step is up to you — message each other in the Forums, chat on Discord, or join a Chapter to meet over video call and practice collaborative coding with one another. The best way to get started is reaching out to your fellow learners and taking that first step!
Below, we’ll take a look at the collaborative coding skills you’ll need to know. If you’re looking to start a career, it’s important to get practice in these collaborative coding techniques — they are skills you’ll be using on the job, whether it’s with co-workers or if you’re working on a team.
Code reviews
Code reviews involve other programmers looking over your code and providing feedback. They will review the code for things like logic, functionality, and readability, or based on any specific questions you might have. Code reviews also involve looking over someone else’s code and providing clear feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Code reviews are a great way to practice giving and receiving code feedback. The process involves formatting and commenting your code so that others can read it. And it’s a best practice for checking whether a program runs as intended, spotting inefficiencies, and making sure code is consistently formatted. Code reviews are terrific for discussing and sharing ideas with fellow developers.
Pair programming consists of two programmers working together on at the same terminal, at the same time. One person writes the code (the driver), while the other checks the code being written and figures out where to go next (the navigator). They can switch roles frequently over the course of a session.
Pair programming is a useful technique to learn and experience. You’ll gain exposure to different ways of tackling the same challenge. You’ll also get to experience the unique dynamics of working alongside another developer in real-time. It’s an efficient way to work through tough problems by applying two brains instead of one. And it’s a great method for sharing knowledge and cementing your learnings as a new developer.
Group projects bring together diverse skill sets to take on large technical challenges. Unique to the project and its goals, these skills sets can include UI, UX, front- and back-end, data analysis, and more.
Working in a group means being able to tackle more complex challenges than you could on your own. And it’s great for exploring solutions from different perspectives. You’ll be able to work with your peers toward a shared goal — leaning on each other to get through tough problems, and celebrating the successes that you have along the way. Learn more about group projects by checking out our guide on tackling a group project.
Get started with collaborative coding
Career Path Groups are friendly spaces for getting to know your peers who are also at the same stage in their learning journey. Once you’ve introduced yourself, the possibilities are in your hands! Continue meeting in the Forums, find one another on Discord, or create a Chapter to meet regularly over video call and support one another to Career Path completion, and beyond.
To enroll in a Career Path, check out the list below and click through to learn more:
Time for classic stripes! With this download, we bring you six versions of seamless striped pattern backgrounds. They are great to use for any digital and printable projects, so make sure to add them to your collection.
The download contains striped pattern backgrounds in 6 different colors available as Photoshop patterns file. For those of you who don’t have Photoshop, the package also includes a .jpg file of each background ready for you to upload and use.
Download Seamless Striped Pattern
FOR PERSONAL USE ONLY.
There are almost no limits on using these seamless striped patterns! Use them to decorate your blog, for printables, or any digital project you are currently working on.
Remember that they are for personal use only which means you can’t sell them or use them in any work you intend to sell.
For more Freebies make sure to visit our free printables library or check our monthly wallpapers! if you would like to see more seamless patterns option on our blog, make sure to let us know in the comments below.
