Earlier this year, Maya Gabeira surfed the biggest wave ever ridden by a woman. It was also the biggest wave surfed by anyone during the 2019-20 winter season.
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by what you see.
If you like, try writing from Gabeira’s point of view: What led you to this moment? What’s going through your mind as the wave breaks? What would it feel like to accomplish such an exhilarating feat — and become part of the world record books?
Post your piece in the comments, then read the related article to find out more about this first for women in professional surfing.
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.
verb: wrangle or haggle (over a price, terms of an agreement, etc.)
_________
The word huckster has appeared in 16 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Nov. 2 in “Adam Neumann and the Art of Failing Up” by Amy Chozick:
The last 80 days have seen an implosion unlike any other in the history of start-ups. WeWork filed for an initial public offering with a prospectus that was quickly ridiculed for its incoherence; investors learned of several red-flag financial arrangements by Mr. Neumann; the company’s valuation plummeted; Mr. Neumann was forced to resign; and the I.P.O. was withdrawn. Once estimated to be worth $47 billion, WeWork was reduced to $7 billion, after a rescue by the Japanese giant SoftBank.
…. Whether Mr. Neumann was hailed as a visionary or denigrated as a huckster, he had always maintained a powerful hold on voting power within WeWork. At one point, his shares had been worth 20 votes each. To get control of his stake, SoftBank decided, it had to pay up.
Do you enjoy going to plays and watching performances? Are you a self-proclaimed “theater kid?” Or do you prefer being behind the scenes or in the audience? Well, “She Kills Monsters,” a play by Qui Nguyen, seems to give everyone a meaningful chance to be part of a theatrical production. The play has been making the rounds in high school auditoriums and across college campuses for years and is now making its virtual debut.
In this lesson, you will meet some of the people who have been part of “She Kills Monsters” productions across the country. Then, you will watch or read some of the play, or brainstorm and write the opening scene of your own short play.
What do you notice about this play? What stands out to you about the language, characters, setting and initial conflict? Does it remind you of anything else you have seen or read before?
What do you wonder about the play? What predictions can you make about what it will be about?
(Note to teachers: This excerpt contains some explicit language. Please preview it to make sure it is appropriate for your students.)
1. What are some of the reasons that “She Kills Monsters” has been so popular among high school and college performers and audiences? Do any of these reasons resonate with you? Why?
2. Nguyen said he had made sure “none of the roles were based on race at all.” Why was that important to him? What was the result? Do you think it is important to have racially specific characters and casting? Or do you think it is more important that anyone can play any role in a play?
3. The author writes, “Openness, tolerance and resilience are more than the show’s subjects: They are baked into its DNA.” What does she mean by that? What evidence supports that statement?
4. What are some of the ways the play has been adapted for the coronavirus era? Which adaptation would you want to watch or perform most? Why?
5. What purpose has the play served for those staging it, particularly while social distancing? What lessons or messages have you taken away from reading about this play?
Going Further
Option 1: Read or Watch “She Kills Monsters”
Read the rest of the “She Kills Monsters” excerpt that you started in the warmup. Or, watch one of the many versions that are available online, like this full-length production by Arcadia Stage from March 2020. The play is almost two hours long, so if you’re short on time, you may choose to watch or read just the first act.
Then, reflect on the following questions:
What is your reaction to the first few scenes of the play? Do you want to read or watch more? Why? What do you think will happen next?
How would you describe the main characters in the play? Do you relate to any of them? How so?
Which lines of dialogue or stage directions help give a sense of character and place?
Are you familiar with Dungeons and Dragons or other role-playing games? If yes, how effectively do you think the playwright used that point of reference in the play? If you’re not familiar with the game, were you still able to follow the play and understand the humor?
(Note to teachers: This version of the play was created specifically for high school performing groups, but the script and the production contain some explicit language and innuendo. Please be sure to preview them both to make sure they are appropriate for your students.)
Option 2: Create Your Own Play
“She Kills Monsters” uses Dungeons and Dragons to tell a story about “finding your real and metaphorical families, as well as yourself.” If you were to write your own play, what would it be about?
Respond to the prompts below to make some choices about the main ingredients of your play:
If you like, start by brainstorming a vehicle, like Dungeons and Dragons, through which to tell your story. It can be a sport, an artistic practice, your favorite content-creating app or anything else you can imagine. This can help determine the characters, setting, conflict and theme of your play, but if it feels too limiting to you, feel free to skip this step.
Where does your play take place? Is it in our world? Or someplace fantastical?
Who are the main characters? What is their relationship to one another? Are they siblings, like in “She Kills Monsters”? Friends? Enemies?
What is the conflict of the story? It might be something you navigate as a teenager, such as issues with friends or parents, problems at school, or challenges in dating. How might the vehicle you identified above intensify that conflict?
What lesson or universal message do you want your audience to take away from the play? How can the vehicle help communicate that message?
You’ve identified the overall theme and conflict, so now get more specific: what is the climax of the play? What one event can show the central problem in your play? How will it be resolved?
Now that you have made decisions about these core ingredients of your play, write the first scene. It can be as short or long as you like. Be sure to include stage directions, as well as dialogue between characters. You can share some of your opening scene in the comments section of this lesson or act it out with your classmates.
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.
Coursera was founded in 2012 with a mission of providing universal access to world-class learning. At no time in Coursera’s history has this mission been more relevant or urgent. The world is facing unprecedented economic disruption, and the need to develop skills for a digital future is even more apparent now. The pandemic has created irreversible changes to the ways universities, enterprises, and governments operate — and online learning will be at the heart of how the world responds.
As we adapt to a “new normal,” Coursera is seeing unprecedented demand. Since mid-March, over 21 million learners have joined Coursera, a 353% increase from the same period last year. Similarly, during that time, we’ve seen more than 50 million course enrollments on Coursera, a 444% increase. Thousands of colleges and universities now offer Coursera to enrich their students’ learning experience.
In Coursera’s inaugural impact report, you’ll find that how the world learns is dramatically changing. Students globally are seeking high-quality online learning options. Universities are ushering in a new era of digital transformation. Workers are learning job-relevant skills to stay competitive. Public health officials are training thousands of contact tracers at scale. Together with our partners, we launched a number of initiatives to help learners and institutions every step of the way, providing them with access to free content, job-relevant skills, and many resources on Coursera.
What started as a short-term response to a crisis will result in a long-term digital transformation of higher education. Much still needs to be done, but together we have made a difference that we all can be proud of.
Codecademy for Business and our friends at Code Climate are meeting with engineering leaders to talk about their career journeys, leadership tactics, and their advice for the next generation of engineers in a new series, 1 on 1 with Engineering Leaders.
Last week we shared an interview with Tara Ellis, Manager, UI Engineering at Netflix. This week we’re sharing an interview with Brooks Swinnerton, Senior Engineering Manager at GitHub. Brooks shares his advice for those that are considering careers in engineering or engineering management below.
You can find even more from the interview with Brooks on the Code Climate blog, where Brooks shares his thoughts on hackathons and the most interesting engineering advice he ever received.
Q: What interested you about engineering when you were just starting out?
I think the ability to tinker and build something from scratch is really what drives me and the world of engineering. I find it just absolutely fascinating that you can take an amorphous idea that you have and turn it into a reality.
I find that the ability to create that is so fun and exciting — and frustrating at times. But it’s kind of this murder mystery novel that you’re constantly trying to get to the bottom of. And when you finally figure out how to make that thing work, it’s a fantastic feeling.
Q: What advice do you have for people who might be considering a career in engineering?
Looking back on my time getting into engineering, things like hackathons were a really interesting and fascinating way to meet people under pressure and try and figure out how to build something. But those take up time. You do those on the weekend and not everyone has those opportunities.
But especially now, in this time of COVID, there are a lot more resources that are out in the open. And whether it’s using something like Codecademy to familiarize yourself with a new programming language or watching YouTube videos, there are so many opportunities on the internet now to enter the world of engineering. I think just fully utilizing the power of YouTube and blogs and tools like Codecademy is really awesome.
Q: What advice do you have for engineers who are considering management one day?
If it’s something that you know you want to try out, stepping into a technical leadership role is a really fantastic way to try it out. You can get a little bit more autonomy and more responsibility for a subset of your work. You’ll build those organizational skills that may or may not be related to coding every day.
But the most impactful work that you can do before moving into engineering management, if that’s what you’re looking to do, is to influence others. That may be other teams — or that may be your peers. Try to influence in such a way that you’re pushing the organization forward or pushing your team forward. That could be engineering practices, like the way that folks review code, or the technical direction of the company. Seek out those opportunities and take advantage of them.
Q: Once someone is sure they want to become a manager, are there any specific skills they can build to prepare while they’re in an IC role?
The thing that I’ve realized over time is that engineering management is a lot about communication. I think a lot about the game of telephone that I played in grade school where one person’s communicating to another like this term or sentence or something like that. And by the end of it, it gets completely misconstrued from what the first person said.
I think a lot about that from the perspective of being an effective engineering manager. Being able to distill down the things that you’re hearing from folks on your team — what areas you need to solve and what problems that we need to solve. And communicating that upwards, as well as communicating information from leadership, downwards to your team.
It’s very easy to have a miscommunication of “this is the most important thing that we need to work on and here’s why.” The role of an engineering manager, I think, is really effectively communicating changes. And that’s probably the best thing to brush up on.
Some airlines have begun offering “scenic flights” for passengers longing to travel again; these flights land in the same place they depart from.
The article explains:
At a time when most people are stuck at home and unable to travel, and the global airline industry has been decimated by the pandemic, flights that take off and return to the airport a few hours later allow airlines to keep staff working. The practice also satisfies that itch to travel — even if it’s just being on a plane again.
Although most people may think of flying as a means to an end, existing solely to get them from one place to the next, some say that it is an exciting part of the travel experience. For those people, flights to nowhere are the salve for a year in which just about all travel has been canceled and people have been fearful of airlines not enforcing social distancing and mask-wearing rules.
What do you think of these flight-to-nowhere trips? Do you think they are a waste of time, money and jet fuel? Or are they an innovative attempt to preserve airline jobs, and restore normalcy for those who miss traveling? Would you take one?
What places (cities, countries, natural wonders) have you always dreamed of seeing from above?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about these flights to nowhere.
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.
The word jettison has appeared in 50 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on June 4 in “This Is Not the End of Fashion” by Vanessa Friedman:
For years, fashion has fretted about the meaninglessness of its seasons, partly because global warming and globalization rendered them null and void and partly because there were so many collections, they couldn’t be temporally defined. (Pre-spring, after all, is simply … winter.)
Now it is actually in everyone’s interests to jettison them entirely. Timeless fashion is fashion that holds its value and can be worn and reworn. It can also be sold and resold. It does not become passé in a matter of days. This may mean that fewer garments are made and bought and shown. It may mean a contraction of volume that will impact manufacturers.
Above is an image related to one of the news stories we followed over the past week. 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.
“Like most things, there’s a skill to having good arguments,” Mr. Guinness writes. “Productive disagreements aren’t all-out shouting matches with a victor and a loser; they’re deliberate attempts to explore differences and reach a common ground, whether that be about who should be President of the United States — or if pizza for dinner is acceptable three nights in a row.”
In this lesson, part of our suite of resources for our Civil Conversation Challenge for teenagers, running from Sept. 22 to Oct. 30, students will practice putting the six practical tips in this article into action. They will then consider how these tips apply to online disagreements and to teenage “cancel culture”— as well as to broader questions many have posed about what it means to have a “civil conversation” in the first place.
Warm Up
Before you read the article, try having some “joyful disagreements” first. Click through the choices above — which include “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” and “How does the roll of toilet paper go on the holder?” — and then choose one that you feel strongly about. Next, find a classmate, family member or friend who feels differently than you do about the issue, and debate it for a few minutes.
When you’re done — whether because you came to a stalemate or because one of you convinced the other — stop and process it together. What happened in your debate? What was productive about it? What wasn’t? If the argument was unsatisfying to either of you, how might you have had a better discussion?
Questions for Writing and Discussion
Read the article, then answer the following questions:
1. What are the “three realms” of arguments, according to Buster Benson, and how would you explain each? Can you think of a time you had an argument that was unproductive because you were arguing in different realms?
2. This article says that “the emotions you feel when someone disagrees or challenges you on something reveal where your personal expectations don’t line up with reality.” Do you think that might be true for you? Think about a time a disagreement inspired strong emotions in you. Stepping back a bit, do you think your personal expectations were unrealistic? Why or why not?
3. Why might genuine, as opposed to leading, questions about someone else’s position on a topic lead to better disagreements? Can you come up with an example for both types of questions about a topic, perhaps the one you tried in the Warm Up?
4. Why is summarizing a position back to the person you’re arguing with an effective way to understand nuances? How might doing this help you to understand someone else’s logic?
5. One piece of advice in this article for healthier relationships is to “talk about disagreements when you’re not having them.” What argument do you have over and over with someone close to you? How might you use this piece of advice with that person?
6. What is the final piece of advice in this guide, and why do you think the writer ends with it? What does it acknowledge about disagreeing with other people in general?
7. Would any of the tips in this piece have worked for the argument you had in the Warm Up? How so? When you and your partner processed your discussion, did either of you mention similar ideas?
Going Further
Do these tips apply to online arguments, too? The article you read dealt chiefly with having disagreements in person, but many of the arguments you may find yourself in these days take place online, sometimes with strangers. What is your experience with disagreements online, whether as a participant or an observer? Do you think the tips in this piece could apply to the arguments you’ve observed there? If so, which ones? If not, why not?
Do the tips apply to teenage cancel culture? In a 2019 piece titledTales From the Teenage Cancel Culture, Times journalists describe several situations set in high schools or colleges in which someone was called out for his or her actions and “canceled” as a result.
Are these situations familiar to you?
Do you have examples from your own school?
What do you think of the quote from Ben, 17, who says in the article that people should be held accountable for their actions, whether they’re famous or not, but that canceling someone “takes away the option for them to learn from their mistakes and kind of alienates them”?
Do you agree that there is a difference between being called out and being “called in”? (As the article defines it, “‘Called in’ means to be gently led to understand your error; call-outs are more aggressive,” but for more information, you might read “Speaking Up Without Tearing Down,” an article from Teaching Tolerance.)
How, if at all, do you think the tips from the article you read above apply to situations like those described here?
What does it mean to have a civil conversation — and can calls for civility be repressive? We posted this lesson as a first step for those interested in participating in our Civil Conversation Challenge — yet right now, the very idea of what a “civil” conversation means is in question. Listen to this short segment from NPR — or read the related piece. As the article puts it:
Right now [our] social contract — a common agreement on what appropriate public behavior looks like and who deserves respect — feels broken. No one can agree on the facts, let alone on how to argue or what to argue about.
In that context, the article explains, “the calls for civility can feel like an effort to stifle people’s outrage over injustice or hate, because civility can be a tool to build or a weapon to silence.” Who gets to define what civility is? How can voices that may have been stifled in the past be a part of the conversation?
Finally, take a look at the rules for our Civil Conversation Challenge — six discussion forums in which we’ll be inviting teenagers to weigh in on sensitive and divisive issues like race and our national response to the coronavirus pandemic. Let us know what you think of our rules by considering the following:
Do tips like the ones from the first article you read apply to discussions on issues as complex as the ones we’re inviting students to discuss, or are they too simplistic?
Are there any guidelines we should add, take away or detail further?
Let us know by posting a comment here, or by writing to us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com. Then, consider participating and adding your voice, anytime from Sept. 22 to Oct. 30.
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.
We’d like you to meet Vishnu Mohankumar from Kerala, India. A tech enthusiast from a young age, Vishnu has always loved helping neighbors in his village by fixing any and all technology-related issues. Today, he is a Desktop Support Engineer at Astreya Consultancy. Below, he shares his learning journey and discusses how earning his Google IT Support Professional Certificate helped him attract attention from recruiters, land his new role, and launch his IT career.
My name is Vishnu Mohankumar. I am from a small village in Kerala, India, where I have spent most of my life. Coming from a small family with financial constraints, it was difficult for me to gain access to the latest technology and gadgets as a child. But I was passionate about technology and happy to go the extra mile to get my hands on anything tech-related. Like most people in my village, my first experience with a computer was during an IT Lab at my school. I fondly recall experimenting with the computer systems in my classes.
After school, I joined a Government Polytechnic College, where I learnt more about the IT field. I then enrolled in an institute where I went down the path of Java and Android Programming. Soon after, I got a job. While it was non-technical, I decided to take it in the hope that I would soon be able move into the systems department. Luckily, this move worked just as I hoped it would!
I moved to Mumbai, and while I was working, I decided to enroll in the Google IT Support Professional Certificate. Soon after completing the certificate, I received the completion badge and updated my LinkedIn profile to include the skills I learnt from the program. Immediately, my profile started receiving more views, mostly from recruiters. I was lucky that the first recruiter who contacted me truly understood the value of the certificate. Through this, I got an offer from a US-based IT Service provider. I am now a Desktop Support Engineer at Astreya Consultancy.
“I truly believe that this certificate is the best one for a beginner looking to enter the world of technology.”
In my opinion, IT is all about automating processes to help people get things done in a way that is simple and easy. With technology evolving everyday, I believe that there will always be unlimited need for individuals who are skilled at maintaining systems, troubleshooting problems, and supporting users. I have always enjoyed helping people and explaining to them how things work. I chose the IT Support path because I love to help people and to fix things. I believe this enthusiasm is the key to the success that I am enjoying now.
“Having come from a small village in India, working with a global tech company is a dream come true.”
While pursuing the program, there were times when money was an issue. As a result, I couldn’t complete the program as fast as I would have liked. However, l was focused on the content and wanted to learn, so I made ends meet. Completing the assignments on time was another obstacle I faced. In the beginning, I had a tough time planning and scheduling learning hours. I decided to quit spending time on social media platforms and started to spend most of my after-office hours working towards the certificate. Now, I am proud that I learned some life skills along with IT Support fundamentals.
To my fellow learners and friends out here, my advice is this—no matter the situation you are in, just focus on your goal. There may be times when you want to give up. But, believe me, real magic happens the minute you choose to go on.
