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Guilty Pleasures

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Guilty Pleasures

A Times article detailed one writer’s struggle to kick her diet cola habit. Have you ever struggled with giving up soft drinks, sweets or other guilty pleasures? Are there other bad habits you have tried (successfully or unsuccessfully) to quit? What tricks helped you stop? What obstacles prevented your success?

Is there an upside to indulging in habits, foods or behaviors that might be “bad for you?”

Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more.

Want more Picture Prompts? Find them all in this column.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, 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.

Word of the Day: kindle

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Word of the Day: kindle

1. catch fire

2. cause to start burning

3. call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses)

_________

The word kindle has appeared in 35 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Dec. 22 in “At a Paris Market, Costs Rise, Even for the Humble Baguette” by Liz Alderman:

Bread prices play an important role in French history. After shortages of loaves helped kindle the French Revolution, the government fixed prices to ensure that bread remained affordable for everyone. Those regulations ended in 1986, but boulangeries will try to pass rising costs to products like brioche before touching the sacred baguette.

That has become harder amid soaring wheat prices and higher electricity bills for the bakers’ ovens. When the cost of a baguette rises, Ms. Noel said, “there’s no question that it impacts people.”

Can you correctly use the word kindle 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 kindle can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.

If you enjoy this daily challenge, try one of our monthly vocabulary challenges.

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.

What Are the Essential Foods to Eat Where You Live?

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What Are the Essential Foods to Eat Where You Live?

If someone were to visit your hometown for a day, where would you send them to eat? What specific dishes would you recommend? What meals best represent your hometown’s people and culture? Why would you recommend these dishes?

In “The 25 Essential Dishes to Eat in New York City,” writers from T Magazine asked six chefs and food experts to create a list of the most delicious and memorable meals they’ve had in New York. Kurt Soller writes that the final list “is nothing like what any of us expected going into this challenge.” He continues:

Pizza and tacos aside, almost none of the classics commonly associated with New York are represented, whether bagels, dirty-water hot dogs, xiao long bao or emblematic sweets like rainbow cookies or Cronuts. In their place is a creamy, pungent sauce, from a recently opened Middle Eastern restaurant, meant for smearing on anything in sight, and a rotating spread from a two-table Indonesian place in Elmhurst, Queens, that can only be described as “weekly lunch.” Our choices span many neighborhoods and every borough except Staten Island, though there was lots of discussion about what we might include from there, even if our panelists ultimately decided that nothing quite made the cut. (We also spent lots of time talking about the pizza from Razza in Jersey City, which surely would have earned a spot had it not been a river away.) Ultimately, though, conversations like this are always subjective — a different menu of worthy picks would have emerged from a different panel, or even from this same group on a different day. The list should, nonetheless, get you excited to try new flavors around town as New York’s ever-changing culinary scene comes (carefully) back to life post-lockdown — or at least make you very hungry.

Credit…Daniel Tierna

The first dish on the list is the albondigas at La Morada, a restaurant in the Bronx that serves Oaxacan food. Amiel Stanek writes:

A shallow bowl of albondigas, golf-ball-size spheres of beef, crowned with a sprig of cilantro and luxuriating in a tomato-chile sauce the color of sun-baked clay — in many ways, this modest dish, which is only sometimes on the menu at La Morada, is an apt metaphor for the restaurant itself. Just as each supple orb splits open to reveal the pimiento-stuffed green cocktail olive buried in its center, this casual spot represents so much more than its unassuming storefront might suggest. The chef, Natalia Mendez, and her family, who opened La Morada in 2009, serve Mexican food, sure. But look beyond the tacos and burritos and you’ll find the menu’s true standouts: complex, idiosyncratic dishes from their native Oaxaca, such as elaborately spiced moles and those perfect little albondigas. Still, to focus too tightly on the food, excellent though it is, is to elide the larger significance of the restaurant as a bastion of local activism. Mendez and many of her family members who own and work at La Morada are openly undocumented, and the day-to-day operations of the restaurant run parallel to their fierce advocacy work with and for the city’s immigrant community, as well as to their vigorous mutual-aid efforts to support those most affected by the ongoing pandemic. To eat a humble plate of meatballs here is to be reminded not just of what a great restaurant is but of what a great restaurant can do.

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

  • What are the essential foods to eat from your city or town? Put together a list of dishes that showcase the local food in your hometown. What makes these foods so special?

  • Are there any restaurants in your area that you would recommend to visitors — places that capture something unique about where you’re from? Are there hidden gems that only locals know about? What makes these dining spots so worthwhile?

  • Pick one of the dishes or restaurants on your list and write a descriptive paragraph, using the article as a model. Use vivid language to draw on the reader’s five senses. We hope you’ll share your description in the comments section.

  • Which of the 25 dishes listed in the article stand out to you the most? Which dishes would you want to try? Which are you least likely to try?

Want more writing prompts? You can find all of our questions in our Student Opinion column. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, 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.

Word of the Day: baleful

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Word of the Day: baleful

1. threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments

2. deadly or sinister

_________

The word baleful has appeared in 14 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Aug. 28 in “Britons, Unfazed by High Covid Rates, Weigh Their ‘Price of Freedom’” by Mark Landler and Stephen Castle:

LONDON — Nearly 60,000 soccer fans packed London’s Emirates Stadium last Sunday to watch Chelsea outplay Arsenal. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cinderella” made its glittering debut in the West End after multiple Covid-related delays. On the subway, where masks are still mandatory, half of the riders go barefaced.

… “We don’t seem to care that we have these really high infection rates,” said Tim Spector, a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London who has been leading a major study of Covid-19 symptoms. “It looks like we’re just accepting it now — that this is the price of freedom.”

Some of that equanimity may stem from the fact that Britain’s case rate, while high, has not yet risen anywhere near the level that government officials predicted when they lifted virtually all Covid restrictions last month. Some may be because so many Britons are vaccinated, fewer serious cases are being reported. And some of it may simply reflect fatigue, after 17 months of baleful headlines and stifling lockdowns.

Can you correctly use the word baleful 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 baleful can be used in a sentence, read these usage examples on Vocabulary.com.

If you enjoy this daily challenge, try one of our monthly vocabulary challenges.

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.

How Do You Overcome Your Fears?

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How Do You Overcome Your Fears?

It’s told like this: Amanda Gorman performed at the inauguration and the rest is history.

The truth is I almost declined to be the inaugural poet. Why?

I was terrified.

I was scared of failing my people, my poetry. But I was also terrified on a physical level. Covid was still raging, and my age group couldn’t get vaccinated yet. Just a few weeks before, domestic terrorists assaulted the U.S. Capitol, the very steps where I would recite. I didn’t know then that I’d become famous, but I did know at the inauguration I was going to become highly visible — which is a very dangerous thing to be in America, especially if you’re Black and outspoken and have no Secret Service.

It didn’t help that I was getting DMs from friends telling me not-so-jokingly to buy a bulletproof vest. My mom had us crouch in our living room so that she could practice shielding my body from bullets. A loved one warned me to “be ready to die” if I went to the Capitol building, telling me, “It’s just not worth it.” I had insomnia and nightmares, barely ate or drank for days. I finally wrote to some close friends and family, telling them that I was most likely going to pull out of the ceremony.

I got some texts praising the Lord. I got called pathologically insane. But I knew only I could answer the question for myself: Was this poem worth it?

The night before I was to give the Inaugural Committee my final decision felt like the longest of my life. My neighborhood was eerily quiet in that early morning dark, though I strained my ears for noise to distract me from the choice that lay ahead. It felt like my little world stood still. And then it struck me: Maybe being brave enough doesn’t mean lessening my fear, but listening to it. I closed my eyes in bed and let myself utter all the leviathans that scared me, both monstrous and minuscule. What stood out most of all was the worry that I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what this poem could have achieved. There was only one way to find out.

By the time the sun rose I knew one thing for sure: I was going to be the 2021 inaugural poet. I can’t say I was completely confident in my choice, but I was completely committed to it.

Yet fear can be love trying its best in the dark. So do not fear your fear. Own it. Free it. This isn’t a liberation that I or anyone can give you — it’s a power you must look for, learn, love, lead and locate for yourself.

What do you think of this advice? Do you agree you should not fear your fear, but own it?

Lesson of the Day: ‘The Uncertain Fate of a London Neighborhood’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘The Uncertain Fate of a London Neighborhood’

This lesson is a part of our new Accessible Activities feature, which aims to welcome a wider variety of learners to our site and to The Times. Learn more and tell us what you think here.

Featured Article: “The Uncertain Fate of a London Neighborhood” by Aina J. Khan

An East London neighborhood that has long been known for its many Bangladeshi-run businesses has undergone big changes in the past several years because of a process called gentrification.

In this lesson, you will learn more about gentrification and how it has affected the Brick Lane neighborhood. Then, you will use what you’ve learned to evaluate whether you think gentrification mostly helps or hurts communities.

The featured article focuses on a process called gentrification. Have you heard this word before?

In a 2020 article in Teen Vogue — “What Is Gentrification? How It Works, Who It Affects, and What to Do About It” — Andrew Lee explains:

In brief, gentrification happens when wealthier newcomers move into working-class neighborhoods. New businesses and amenities often pop up to cater to these new residents. Potholes might get filled; a new bus line might appear. These changes attract even more affluent people, and property values go up. Landlords raise rents to what these new arrivals can afford to pay, so the original tenants get forced out. Real estate speculators may pressure homeowners to sell their family homes. Some of those pushed out will move to more affordable neighborhoods, others to entirely different cities; others may become unhoused.

Define “gentrification” using a Frayer model with the following prompts as a guide:

  • Concept: Write “gentrification.”

  • Definition: In your own words, write a short definition of “gentrification” based on the Teen Vogue excerpt above.

  • Facts and/or Characteristics: What are some of the key features of gentrification?

  • Examples: What are some examples of gentrification from the description above? Can you think of any in your own community or from the news, TV, movies or books?

  • Non-examples: What are some things that would not be considered gentrification?

Fill in as much of the template as you can now, but you can continue to add to it as you read the featured article.

Take a look at this list of vocabulary words that appear in the featured article:

1. earn
2. gentrification
3. multicultural
4. chain
5. uncertain
6. resent
7. disapprove

Do you recognize any of these words? Can you define them or use them in a sentence?

To make sure you know the meaning of each word, review this list on Vocabulary.com.

Read the article below, and then answer the following questions:

1. What makes the Brick Lane neighborhood in East London unique?

2. The reporter says that the Brick Lane Jamme Mosque is a symbol of the multiculturalism of the neighborhood. How so?

3. What is one sign of the gentrification of Brick Lane mentioned in the article?

4. Why were some residents angry at the decision to build a five-story shopping center at the site of the Truman Brewery?

5. Why is the Truman Brewery important to the community of Brick Lane?

6. The article shares the perspectives of two Bangladeshi business owners: Shams Uddin, who says the shopping center could be good for the community, and Jamal Khalique, who does not support the proposal. Whose argument do you find more persuasive and why?

Return to the Frayer model you created in the warm-up. What other characteristics, examples or non-examples of gentrification can you add after reading the article about Brick Lane?

Then, tell us, or discuss with your classmates:

  • What is your reaction to the story about gentrification in Brick Lane?

  • Have you witnessed gentrification where you live? If yes, what is an example of it? What has it been like for you and your community? If no, why do you think your community has not experienced gentrification? How do you think you might feel if your home were to change in this way?

  • After learning more about gentrification, and seeing one example, do you think it mostly helps or mostly hurts communities? Why? If you don’t feel like you can answer this question, what additional information would you need?

If you’d like to learn more about how gentrification affects residents, watch or listen to one of the videos or podcasts below. What is it like hearing about gentrification from these first-person perspectives?

Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.

The Empowerment Challenge – Week 1 starts Tuesday!

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The Empowerment Challenge – Week 1 starts Tuesday!

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Empowerment Challenge, a series of engaging and self-improving tasks designed to empower our Learners by encouraging their personal and professional development. 

Participants can track their empowerment journey by using the #EmpoweredByAlison hashtag, which also allows you to follow the progress of other Learners across the world through our social media channels. 

The first week of the challenge is about getting to know yourself better and improving yourself personally, in order to be able to develop professionally across week two. Check out the first 7 challenges below!

 

1. Pledge your commitment to self-empowerment!

Share this post across your social media channels with your friends and family and use the #EmpoweredByAlison hashtag to show your participation in the Empowerment Challenge and your commitment to self-improvement!

 

2. Find out who you truly are!

Our Workplace Personality Test uses cutting edge psychometrics to provide you with an invaluable personal balance sheet. Take the test to learn your professional strengths, weaknesses and what courses will improve your job prospects.

 

3. Personalise your learning experience!

We offer over 3,500 courses to our 21 million Learners, so to tailor your learning experience we offer adaptable and reactive personalisation, depending on your professional requirements and educational needs. Personalise your Alison account to take your upskilling to the next level!

 

4. Gain transferable skills!

Soft skills are the people skills that every job requires and that mark you out from your professional peers. This course teaches you these vital transferable skills that will stand to you through your career.

 

5. Develop your emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is fundamental to living a happy life, both personally and professionally. By concentrating on your personal development, you’ll lay the groundwork for a much more successful professional life.

 

6. Take care of your mental health

Empowerment is only possible if you’re in a stable and healthy place mentally. Our Mental Health & Wellbeing Test is an incredibly powerful resource for better understanding your mental health and gaining the necessary tools for staying grounded and happy.

 

7. Take control of your personal finances!

Financial independence is essential for self-empowerment. Learning how to effectively budget and manage your income and expenditure is a pivotal step in gaining full control over your resources, time and future.

What’s Going On in This Picture? | Jan. 23, 2022

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What’s Going On in This Picture? | Jan. 23, 2022

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?

We’ll post more information here on Thursday afternoon. Stay tuned!

More?

• See all images in this series or slide shows of 40 of our favorite images — or 40 more.

• Learn more about this feature in this video, and discover how and why other teachers are using it in their classrooms in our on-demand webinar.

• Find out how teachers can be trained in the Visual Thinking Strategies facilitation method.

Students 13 and older in the United States and the Britain, 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.

Lesson of the Day:‘In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig’

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Lesson of the Day:‘In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig’

Featured Article: “In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig” by Roni Caryn Rabin

On Jan. 7, doctors in Maryland successfully transplanted a pig’s heart into a human. “The breakthrough may lead one day to new supplies of animal organs for transplant into human patients,” Roni Caryn Rabin writes.

In this lesson, you will learn about the groundbreaking procedure and consider its place within the greatest medical advancements in history. In Going Further activities, we invite you to research other recent medical breakthroughs and to speculate on how far the field of medicine might extend life.

What, in your opinion, are the greatest medical achievements of all time?

With a partner or small group, brainstorm medical innovations and advances throughout history, such as aspirin, Band-Aids, X-rays, contraceptives and the recent coronavirus vaccine. Which do you think have made the biggest impact, whether by reducing pain, suffering and disease; giving comfort; or extending human life?

Then, choose one advancement from your list and make a one-minute case to the rest of the class for why it could be the single greatest medical achievement of all time.

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. Why was an eight-hour surgery in Baltimore on Jan. 7 global news? In your own words, describe what happened and why you believe it is making headlines around the world.

2. Understand the importance of organ replacement by finding some numbers in this article: How many Americans received a transplanted organ last year? How many people received human donor hearts last year? How many people are waiting for kidneys and other organs? And how many people on lists waiting for organs die each day? Taken together, what do these numbers tell you about the need for organ replacements in this country?

3. Who is David Bennett Sr. and why did he decide to “gamble on the experimental treatment”? Would you ever consider participating in a risky and experimental trial like Mr. Bennett did?

4. The article states that xenotransplantation, the process of grafting or transplanting organs or tissues from animals to humans, has a long history. Which examples from the article did you find most fascinating or significant?

5. Why a pig heart? What advantages do pigs offer over other animals for organ procurements?

6. Dr. David Klassen, the chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant physician, called the news of the successful transplant a “watershed event.” Do you agree? How significant do you think it is? Return to your list from the warm up. Where would you place this pioneering surgery, or organ transplants more generally, on your list of greatest medical achievements?

7. Do you think that the use of animal organs for human transplants will become commonplace in the next 10 or 20 years? Should they? What ethical questions and concerns, if any, does the article raise for you?

Option 1: Learn more about other medical advances.

A mechanical womb to grow mouse embryos. A drug that brings drastic weight loss to patients with obesity. An unexpected key to understanding hair loss. These are just a few of the recent medical innovations and breakthroughs covered by The Times.

Choose one of the articles below or search for one that grabs your interest on the Times’s Health topic page. Then, write or discuss with a partner: What is your reaction to the article? What was the most fascinating, surprising, provocative or memorable thing you learned? What questions do you still have about the scientific breakthrough you read about?

Option 2: Share your thoughts and opinions: How long can medical advancements extend life?

Last century, the average human life expectancy doubled. Medical and social advances such as the development of antibiotics and vaccines reduced childhood deaths, mitigated diseases of old age and vastly prolonged life. In “Can We Live to 200?,” Nicholas St. Fleur, Chloe Williams and Charlie Wood presented 43 advances that could radically extend life spans over the next 100 years. Look at the interactive timeline, then respond to the following prompts:

  • Which scientific advancements and breakthroughs in the article do you most look forward to? Which do you think will most likely come to fruition?

  • By 2100, how long might people be able to live? Do you think humans will reach the ages of 130, 150 or even 200?

  • Does the possibility of radical life extension intrigue, surprise, excite or even scare you? Would you want to live to 200? How long would you want to live, if you could choose your life span?

If you are interested in joining a conversation with other students, share your thoughts in our related Student Opinion prompt.

Additional Teaching and Learning Opportunities:

  • Learn more about the science behind the story: Read “Here’s How Scientists Pulled Off the First Pig-to-Human Heart Transplant” from Science.org, which details how the effort involved genetic engineering, an experimental drug and cocaine. How did the article add to or change your understanding of the first successful transplant of a pig’s heart into a human? What was most interesting or surprising? What questions do you still have?

  • Explore bioethical issues further: The Times later reported that Mr. Bennett Sr. had a criminal record stemming from an assault 34 years ago in which he repeatedly stabbed a young man, leaving him paralyzed. The victim’s brother and people on social media expressed outrage and questioned the choice to select Mr. Bennett as the recipient of the pioneering transplant procedure. However, Karen J. Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center and the editor of the journal Ethics & Human Research, said, “There’s a longstanding standard in medical ethics that physicians don’t pick and choose who they treat.” Read the article and give your reaction: How should we decide who receives a lifesaving treatment? Should a patient’s history affect the decision? Why or why not?

Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.

Launching Alison’s 14 Day Empowerment Challenge!

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Launching Alison’s 14 Day Empowerment Challenge!

The New Year offers everyone the opportunity for a fresh start and brings new beginnings, energy and enthusiasm. If you harness that potential effectively then you can set yourself up for an exciting and productive twelve months.

But we know just how hard it can be to channel those best intentions and January is also a month of false starts, broken resolutions and missed opportunities.

That’s why we’ve created the 14 Day Empowerment Challenge, an interactive and encouraging set of tasks to help you capitalise on that positive mindframe and leverage your New Year energy into a New, More Empowered You!  

The Alison Learner Community

When it comes to self-improvement, going at it alone can be extremely difficult. Add to that the pressures and expectations that come with New Year resolutions and it’s easy to understand why many people fall short of the goals they set for themselves at the beginning of the year.

We believe that one of the most important aspects of our free, learner-focused model is the global community of Learners that has built up around the Alison platform. Through Alison’s social media channels, and also through student-led community groups, an organic support network of Learners has emerged.

Our 14 Day Empowerment Challenge leverages that community spirit and mutual encouragement to help you stay focused and succeed in your New Year resolutions for a more empowered and successful year!

How the 14 Day Empowerment Challenge works

This January, we’re challenging our Learners to undertake a 14 day journey of upskilling and self-improvement. For two weeks, Learners will complete a daily task that will build towards their self-empowerment and help them achieve their goals of promotions, dream jobs and new careers.

The challenges include a variety of exciting and rewarding tasks such as taking the Alison Workplace Personality Test, gaining transferable skills, developing their emotional intelligence and learning how to create a job-securing CV.

To be automatically entered into the challenge, Learners just need to:

  • Visit the Challenge page on our website. (Learners who sign into Alison or create a new profile during the campaign will also be entered into the challenge if they complete a course.)
  • Pledge your commitment to a new Empowered You by completing the daily tasks set out in the 14 Day Empowerment Challenge.
  • Complete as many Certificate and Diploma courses as you can between 25 January and 7 February 2022.
  • The Alison Learner who completed the most courses will win a year’s worth of FREE Alison Certificates.
  • The winner will be chosen and contacted by the Alison HQ Team between 8 and 11 February 2022 via the email address associated with the person’s Alison account.

And the winner is…

The Learner who completes the most courses at the end of the challenge will win a year’s worth of free Alison Certificates and Diplomas. This unprecedented prize will allow the winner to build on the energy and enthusiasm they’ve generated during the campaign and make 2022 the year their dreams come true!

 

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