“My name is Kyaw Kyaw Thein. I am an engineer with a background in non-government organisations.I’ve been studying with Alison for two years now. With Alison, I’ve both improved my life and gained knowledge.”
How did you learn about Alison?
I searched online for a place to study free courses online.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
The first course I took with Alison was on Project Management. I chose it because I’m an engineer and I wanted to learn about managing operations.
Where are you working and what are you studying now?
I resigned from my work last month. I had been working for the National Community Driven Development Plan in Myanmar. I am now studying Applied Operations Management.
If you could learn absolutely anything in the world from an Alison course, what would it be?
I would like to learn something that would change my life.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
I would give a good review to others. Alison will transform your life.
“My name is Butholezwe Nyoni. I’m a 46 year old Zimbabwean residing in South Africa. I’m self-employed. I founded and currently run a non-profit organisation – Ubuntu Arts and Culture Emotional Healing Initiative SA.
I wash my body with warm water and make a cup of tea. I also like to watch a movie or play some soft relaxing music.
Where are you working and what are you studying now?
I’m currently running my social enterprise. Also, I’m studying the Diploma in Business Processes Management with Alison. As a director and social entrepreneur, I study with Alison to equip myself with valuable knowledge to be able to run my organisation professionally.
What’s next for you, in terms of education or work?
My goal is grow the organisation I founded into an internationally recognised entity. With the valuable knowledge I have gained from Alison courses, I believe I will always be successful and one day receive a Noble prize and an honorary doctorate.
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
After completing various therapeutic courses and diplomas with Renaissance Life Therapies and founding Ubuntu, I was keen to gain more knowledge on how to run a business. The answer was right in front of me with Alison’s courses and now I’m encouraged and well equipped. I would love to encourage everyone to study with Alison online. Alison courses are accessible and very important for less privileged people like me all over the world. I am so grateful for the knowledge I have gained from this institution. I’m continuing to study and am currently studying the Diploma in Sociology.
“My name is Konan Luc Aimé Kouadio. I am from the Ivory Coast in west Africa. I am a young man and I like reading and studying. I am preparing to go to university. I became an Alison graduate some months ago. I earned a certificate in the art of speaking English effectively.”
How did you learn about Alison?
Through searching on Google.
What was your first course on Alison, and why did you choose it?
What would you say to someone if they asked you about Alison? Would you recommend it and why?
I would tell them that Alison is excellent. I have already recommended Alison because it helps improve skills. With Alison, you get to study the course of your choice.
Codecademy for Business and our friends at Code Climate have been meeting with engineering leaders to talk about their career journeys, leadership tactics, and their advice for the next generation of engineers in an interview series, 1 on 1 with Engineering Leaders.
This week, Hillary Nussbaum of Code Climate speaks with Engineering Coach Mathias Meyer. You can check out previous interviews in the series at the following links:
Here on the Codecademy blog, Mathias shares advice for those that are considering careers in engineering or engineering management. Head over to the Code Climate blog for more from this week’s interview, including Mathias’s thoughts on the difference between authority and leadership.
Q: What interested you about engineering when you were just starting out?
When I went to university, I actually wanted to focus on digital media — things like Photoshop, web design, Illustrator, those kinds of things. But then just had to acknowledge that I have no talent whatsoever on the creative side for that particular stuff.
In my third semester, I started playing with C++ and with databases, and that’s when it clicked. That’s when I found it interesting. Today, some people would say, “Wow, C++, that’s a weird language to get interested in programming with.” But it was fun for me at the time. I just found an interest in building things.
Q: What advice do you have for people who might be considering a career in engineering?
My recommendation here would be to always keep an eye on the business and to always make sure that you understand the business that you work in and work for, that you understand the customer, that you even talk to the customer, to make sure to understand what you’re building, how it’s used by the customer, and also how it’s useful to the customer.
I’ve never found anything more powerful than talking to customers myself — or having engineers talking to private customers — and helping every party understand what’s been built and what a customer is using, or how a customer is benefiting.
It’s not really engineering advice. But if you work in an organization, if you work for a business, always keep an interest in what the business is doing and what the customer is doing and how what you’re building benefits both.
Q: What advice do you have for engineers who are considering management one day?
There are three things that I would recommend to new managers, and most of them are not traditional people management things.
One of them is to have or learn patience, because things take a long time. The people that report to you, the people that you work with, they’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to make mistakes as a future manager — it’s the only way to learn. That can get frustrating really quickly, especially as an engineer. You’re used to debugging things. You find a bug, you fix the bug, you deploy it to production, and you’re done. Ideally, that takes a day, maybe an hour, maybe a week. But in management, any “bug” fix that you deploy in your organization or in your team might take months for you to see if it actually worked.
The second one is curiosity. I think as a manager, you run into a lot of situations, or at least that was my experience, where I was like, “Huh, I wonder why that is.” I found it very useful to just keep diving into whatever I found and just digging deeper, asking people sometimes why, sometimes how, sometimes what, just to figure out what was going on. So there was a lot of asking questions involved and just gathering information, forming some sort of hypothesis of what could be going on. I think curiosity is very, very useful, because asking questions is a big part of the job — just to make sure you understand people and that people understand you.
The third one is writing. I think writing is an undervalued skill, especially in management. A lot of what management is, is communication. Communicating orally in one-on-ones or in meetings is necessary, but it’s not always the most efficient way. It also has the downside that people will remember things differently, even if it’s just two or four weeks ago. I’ve found that when something important happens, you write it down to share it with other people, you write it down for yourself, just so you remember in the future what happened, and it’s just a lot easier to come back to. I think any already-experienced manager will have had a situation where communication didn’t go as well, and people on their team had different opinions of what was discussed at a particular meeting — what decision was made four weeks ago, and why it was made. The simplest thing for that is to just write things down and to be proactive in communicating.
Which Witch Are You? The good or the bad one? I think I’m the good one as I bring you some last-minute free Halloween printable decoration. Even if this year’s party will be held over Zoom, you can still decorate your walls with some spooky printables. It is why I decided to refresh the most bewitched one!
Bewitched free Halloween printable decoration!
I like designing posters because I think they are really universal decoration. They are perfect both for a seasonal office accent and the house party knick-knack. This Halloween poster is easy to print and available in three different sizes – A4, A5, and US Letter.
For Personal Use Only.
What types of decorations are your favorites? Above all, do you even decorate your house for seasonal occasions like Halloween? I would love to know that so please let me know in the comments below!
If you are looking for more Halloween Freebies, make sure to check our free printables library
Looking for something specific?
If you have an idea for printable, let us know in the comments! We are always looking for inspiration. If you decide to print today’s Halloween poster, make sure to share photos of your decorated room with us via Instagram or Twitter.
2. a concise but comprehensive summary of a larger work
Nineties nostalgia is of course nothing new — the pop-cultural landscape has long been littered with hallmarks of the early part of that decade, like flannel and “Jock Jams”-worthy athleisure, and the revivalist sounds to match. But time marches on, and so, too, does that roughly 20-year cycle of the old becoming stylishly new again. And now the halcyon, almost-forgotten pop artifacts of the late ’90s — boy bands, winking futurism, inordinate amounts of glitter — are being dusted off and refurbished by today’s younger stars.
The fashion and design worlds got to this future nostalgia first. In 2016, Evan Collins started a popular Tumblr called the Institute for Y2K Aesthetics, which one write-up described as a compendium of “Baby G watches, Britney Spears cradling a robot dog, a shimmering pink bean-shaped Walkman, [and] inflatable backpacks.” Last July, GQ ran a piece about why, suddenly, “Y2K-era gear became the hottest thing in the vintage-clothing world.” Bold, label-obsessed and often future-fixated, the style of that window of time between 1995 and 2001 was the result of, as the writer Erin Schwartz noted, a “jumble of excitement and anxiety about the spread of technology at the turn of the millennium.”
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.
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.
Has television given you an education about how people of different social classes live their lives? Or have you learned to be wary of the way shows portray real life?
At first, I thought class was about money. “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” taught me that it wasn’t.
I started off in what most people think of as America’s lower class. I was given up for adoption when I was 3; I spent the next four years in seven foster homes. When I was 7, I was adopted and subsequently settled in Red Bluff, Calif., a working-class town, population 13,147, median household income $27,029. Two years later, my adoptive parents got divorced; after that, my adoptive father severed ties.
When I was 15, I got my first job, as a dishwasher at a pizza restaurant, and on breaks, all my conversations with co-workers eventually turned to the topic of money. We would fantasize about what we would do if we suddenly had it: vacations, cars. In high school, we’d hear rumors that so-and-so was rich, because their parents had a second house or a boat. We all thought that money was the important thing: If you had it, you were “rich” — which for us was indistinguishable from “elite.” If you didn’t, you weren’t.
This was true, to an extent. But it wasn’t the whole story. How did I learn it wasn’t? From television.
Mr. Henderson explains how television shaped his values, calling it “a constant and lifeline”:
Today I’m a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University. As someone who has had to navigate a long journey through a variety of social milieus — first foster care and my hometown, then the military, then Yale — television has been a constant and lifeline. It’s been both entertainment and social guide, teaching me the language and the ways of thinking I needed to move fluidly, more or less, from one environment to another.
Along the way, I’ve learned about the complicated ways that class interacts with taste, and what different social classes view as desirable. What I’ve come to realize, as I reflect on different influences in my life, is that the television I’ve watched has made me a different person than I would otherwise have been; choices I’ve made have been guided to a large degree by what TV has taught me about what constitutes a good life. Looking back, I can see that my decisions stemmed from a set of values — but whose? I thought I was building the life I desired, using fictional stories as a road map. Now I wonder how these stories shaped what I desired all along.
The essay concludes:
In the show “Mad Men,” the rags-to-riches protagonist Don Draper also watches movies and television to help blend into the world of New York’s upper class. It works well enough, but even so, he can’t quite smooth all his rough edges: In one episode, for example, Roger Sterling, Don’s boss, invites himself over to the Drapers’ house for dinner. After a few drinks, Roger says to Don, “By the way you drop your G’s every once in a while, I always thought you were raised on a farm.” Don, visibly uncomfortable, changes the subject.
For me, too, watching television took me only so far. I still didn’t quite fit in when I finally went to Yale. Though I didn’t drop my G’s, people on campus were fluent in a language I still could not speak. I remember being bewildered the first time I heard another student describe a joke I’d made as “gendered,” for instance — I’d never heard that word before.
But going to Yale also meant I no longer needed television to learn how to fit in among elites — I could learn from them in real life.
Recently, I was at an academic program in Washington, D.C. There, for the first time in my life, a stranger mistook me for having come from a wealthy background. “I’m not rich,” I said. “I just watch a lot of TV.” I said it as a joke, but it really wasn’t. My “bingeing to belong” approach wasn’t foolproof, but it helped. TV helped me to understand people who were worlds away from how I grew up. It gave me an understanding of the ingredients of social mobility. What I can’t quite disentangle is whether it taught me how to get what I had always wanted or taught me what to want.
Students, read the entire essay, then tell us:
Mr. Henderson intuits that his values were shaped by television shows. To what degree does this also describe your experience? How has TV shaped the way you see the world?
What shows have given you insight into different social classes, communities or cultures? Can you recall ever drawing upon what you saw on TV to help you navigate a situation in real life? If you were writing a similar essay about your own life, what shows would you include?
Mr. Henderson explores how TV helped him learn about people who were worlds away from how he grew up. But does television ever get it wrong? Does it ever promote stereotypes, inaccurately portray communities or gloss over important social issues? What shows come to mind when you think of TV’s distortions, exaggerations and unreliability? Why?
The Op-Ed doesn’t mention any reality shows, like “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” “The Bachelor” or “Survivor.” How would you say reality TV relates to the essay’s theme? Is reality TV ever instructive? Or, despite the name, is it often less realistic than other types of TV shows?
Mr. Henderson concludes his essay with this line about television: “What I can’t quite disentangle is whether it taught me how to get what I had always wanted or taught me what to want.” What does this line mean to you? How, if at all, might it relate to your life?
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.
According to several experts, despite a glut of sports on TV, there is a lack of youth leagues and teams during the coronavirus pandemic that could cost us for years to come.
In this lesson, you will consider how the pandemic is affecting youth sports both now and, potentially, long-term. You’ll then investigate the power that sports have in your community, and look closely at how athletes and teams are adapting.
Warm Up
Did you watch the Lakers win their 17th championship this weekend? What were your favorite moments?
What do you know about what made it possible for these games to happen safely in the first place? As Jared Dudley, a forward for the Lakers, told The Times, this is “one of the worst, strangest years” in the history of professional basketball. The article says:
Nothing about the 2019-20 N.B.A. season was normal. There were tragedies and triumphs, setbacks and highlights. When play finally resumed in July after a four-month hiatus brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, it began in a so-called bubble: a self-contained, spectator-free campus at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., as the league — at no small cost — fought to the finish line.
Do you think it was worth it for the players to spend those many weeks in the “bubble” to make playing safe? If you were a player, would you have done it? Why or why not?
Before you read the article below, think about the youth sports in your community, where precautions like daily testing, which have cost the N.B.A. an estimated $180 million, are not possible. Answer these questions, in small groups or as a whole class if possible:
Which youth sports in your school or community have been canceled entirely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic? Which have been scaled back or changed? How are athletes and teams adapting?
How do you think these changes are affecting the athletes and teams, as well as the community at large? What long term effects do you think the pandemic may have on youth sports and athletes in your school or area? Why?
2. Why do “sports barely exist at all” right now in communities like Watts? How much does your community resemble this one?
3. Why is this “a moment of historic crisis,” according to the director of the Sports and Society Program at the Aspen Institute? What does the program’s nationwide survey show?
4. Do you feel about a sport the way that Aaron Teklu, 17, describes the role of basketball in his life? If so, how has this sport changed your life?
5. How is the pandemic-fueled decline in youth participation, according to Rich Luker, “just one piece of a larger puzzle”? What may be the long-term ramifications? Do you think these may apply to your school or community as well?
6. Why do you think this journalist chose to end the article as he did? How does that last line play on a theme and structure that he had used throughout the piece? How would you answer his final question?
Going Further
Option 1: Investigate and Document the Power of Sports in Your Community
Tyrone Riley says he “knows to his core the power that sports can have in changing lives and bringing communities together.” Do you share that feeling?
How can you celebrate the power of sports in your school or area during a time when that power is threatened? What stories can you gather from athletes, coaches, parents or others about teams or athletes that show how sports can change lives and bring people together? Have you come across any new stories about how athletes are adapting now — like, for instance, the way that high school soccer is being played this season in Massachusetts? How is your community trying to hold on to the power of sports, even given the hurdles?
Investigate an aspect of this that interests you by interviewing a range of people currently involved in one or many youth sports. Then, create something to showcase what you find, whether a short video, an article for your school paper, a podcast, a photo essay, a graphic or even a live outdoor or virtual event. Knowing that many experts believe that what’s happening to youth sports right now could impact an entire generation, how can your contribution help?
Option 2: Design Your Own Fitness Program
Early on in this pandemic, we asked, How are you staying healthy and fit? Even if you don’t consider yourself an athlete, it’s important to have an exercise plan. What have you been doing so far? What, if anything, does your plan lack? One source of information for making sure you’re staying fit is Well, a Times health site. Take a look at Move, one section of the site, for advice from sneaking in exercise while on Zoom to using yoga to relax. What will work for you right now? Why? How will you help yourself to stay accountable to your plan?
About Lesson of the Day
• Find all of our Lessons of the Day in this column. • Teachers, watch our on-demand webinar to learn how to use this feature in your classroom.
