What story does this image inspire for you?
Use your imagination to write the opening of a short story or poem inspired by this photo — or tell us about a memory from your own life that this picture makes you think of.
Post it in the comments, then read the related article to find out what this image is about.
Find many more ways to use our Picture Prompt feature in this lesson plan. You can find all our Picture Prompts in this column.
: a percussion instrument consisting of a pair of hollow pieces of wood or bone (usually held between the thumb and fingers) that are made to click together (as by Spanish dancers) in rhythm with the dance
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The word castanets has appeared in six articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Jan. 26 in the Opinion essay “A Seed in Darkest Winter” by Margaret Renkl:
NASHVILLE — For most of my adult life, I wore a red coat when the weather got cold. It started when I was 22 and searching for new outerwear during my first winter in Philadelphia. (It turned out to be my only winter in Philadelphia.) I kept being drawn to a bright red peacoat in a mail-order catalog. Perhaps it reminded me of home in Alabama, the color of the ubiquitous cardinals perched among green pine needles.
…. For decades afterward, I stuck with that red-coat cure for the wintertime blues, but four years ago the zipper broke on my latest red coat, and I couldn’t find a replacement I liked. Turns out it didn’t matter. Somewhere along the way I had stopped hating winter. I fell in love with the way the peeling bark and bare limbs of the sycamore reveal a ghost tree reaching for the sky, and the way the faded beech leaves cling to their branches and rustle in the wind like castanets. A shivering beech tree in a damp winter forest gives off its own light in the same way that dogwood blossoms in springtime look like tiny ground-borne suns.
_________
In this lesson, you will learn what’s gotten better and what’s gotten worse in the five decades since millions of people marched to demand a cleaner, healthier environment. In a Going Further activity, you will consider what the focus of the environmental agenda should be in future decades.
What do you know about Earth Day? Have you ever celebrated or participated in it?
This week, the world marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day — which helped shape the modern global environmental movement.
The featured article spotlights 10 big environmental victories — and 10 big failures — from the past half-century. What positive and negative changes do you think might be included in the article:
Name two things you think have gotten better.
Name two things you think have gotten worse,
(For more on the history of Earth Day, you can read how The Times covered the very first celebration here or you can visit Earthday.org.)
Read the article’s short introduction and then choose TWO environmental victories (in light green), and TWO environmental failures (in light red) to read in full. Afterward, respond to the following questions:
1. Which topics did you did select and why?
2. What did you learn from the sections your read? Give three details, facts or statistics that were interesting, intriguing or provocative.
3. Of the two victories you read about, which one do you think is most significant and why? What were the primary factors that led to the environmental improvement?
4. Of the two failures you read about, which one do you think is most significant and why? What were the primary factors that led to the environmental decline?
5. What questions about Earth Day and the environment do you still have after reading the article?
6. How did the article change how you view Earth Day and the environmental movement it helped to spawn? Does it make you more or less optimistic about the health of our planet? The possibilities for change?
Choose one of the following activities:
1) Share your opinion.
How do you celebrate Earth Day? What, if anything, are you or your family, friends, school or community doing to commemorate this year?
Do you think Earth Day is still meaningful 50 years after the first celebration? Does the day help people learn more about the environment, reflect on their behaviors and promote policy changes?
How concerned are you about the environment? What do you think are the biggest problems facing the Earth today? How do you try to do your part to protect the environment?
If you could wave a magic wand and make your environmental dreams come true, what would they be, and why?
After reading the article, are you more likely to participate in Earth Day in the future?
2.) Help set the Earth Day agenda.
In “Earth Day Message to Leaders: After Coronavirus, Rebuild Wisely,” Somini Sengupta writes:
Activists and scientists worldwide, mostly prevented from demonstrating publicly because of the coronavirus pandemic, marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day with online events on Wednesday, and their message was largely one of warning: When this health crisis passes, world leaders must rebuild the global economy on a healthier, more sustainable track.
That was highlighted by an influential scientific body, the World Meteorological Organization, which forecast that the pandemic would drive down global greenhouse gas emissions by 6 percent this year, the biggest yearly decline in planet-warming carbon dioxide since the Second World War. But the group said that would be nowhere near the reductions needed to avoid the most devastating impacts of climate change.
The agency went on to caution that, while the short-term reductions are largely a result of the sharp decline in transportation and industrial energy production, emissions are likely to rise in the coming years unless world leaders take swift action to address climate change.
Do you agree with this message for the 50th Earth Day celebration? What do you think should be the focus of the environmental agenda for the next 5, 10 or 50 years? Are there environmental issues you think are not getting enough attention?
Welcome to our sixth writing unit of the school year. Below, you will find a detailed description of each element as well as ways to put them together to make your own custom unit. To learn more, visit our writing curriculum overview.
If your students click or scroll around the offerings on NYTimes.com, they’ll soon see that there are many more ways to break news and tell stories these days than just via the written reporting they might associate with print newspapers. They’ll find photo essays, illustrations, graphs, videos, GIFs, podcasts and more.
Though you may not “read” multimedia the same way you do an article, writing still plays a starring role in creating it. In this unit, we’ll explore how that is so by focusing on podcasting, a medium that has exploded in popularity over the last several years and further surged during the coronavirus pandemic.
As all our units do, this one culminates in a student contest. At a time when we’re all stuck at home, we hope this challenge — one students can do from their bedrooms or at their kitchen tables — will provide an interesting, even fun, creative outlet.
How will students use writing in the process? They’ll be brainstorming and outlining, scripting and editing, researching, honing lists of questions, considering structure and flow, and thinking about hooking an audience and keeping it hooked. In other words, they’ll be using many of the same skills they’ve used across our writing units — they’ll just be doing it in a format that may be new for them.
Below, the core ingredients for our unit in more detail. We’ve suggested a sequence and created resources that are flexible enough for students to use on their own, or with help from a teacher or parent.
One great source of inspiration is our growing library of writing prompts. Several winning podcasts have grown directly out of this categorized list of over 1,000 questions, covering everything from video games and music to morality and government policy. And, of course, we publish two new writing prompts every school day, so your students can always search a stream of new ideas by scrolling through the collection to find something that speaks to them.
For example, what podcast ideas might your students be able to brainstorm in response to questions like these?
What do you know about your family’s history?
What was your most precious childhood possession?
What ethical dilemmas have you faced?
Is racial and economic diversity in schools important?
What era do you wish you had grown up in?
Are you the same person on social media as you are in real life?
What weaknesses and strengths about our world are being exposed by this pandemic?
Once your students have a list of great topic ideas, the next step is to figure out how they might work as podcasts. What format should they use? How will they hone their topic to work well as a five-minute podcast? What structure makes the most sense?
This is where the work of previous contest winners comes in handy. Even if your students aren’t planning to send their final compositions to our competition, showing them the successful “moves” kids their own age have made in answering those same questions can encourage them to experiment. We’ve gone back and listened to all the top podcasts in our 2018 and 2019 challenges, and used elements of them as examples in this step-by-step process students can follow as they make their own.
For example, what can they learn from the way one teenager interviews members of her family who have been incarcerated? From how another marks the transitions between the beginning, middle and end of his podcast about a famous April Fool’s hoax? From the way two young women have a seemingly unscripted conversation about “Their Eyes Were Watching God” on their podcast about black writers? This guided practice can help.
When we announced our first podcast contest, we also created a mini-unit to support it. You might use Project Audio: Teaching Students How to Produce Their Own Podcasts along with the mentor text guided practice above to support students in analyzing the techniques that make for good storytelling, interviewing and podcasting. The mini-unit also picks up where our mentor text piece leaves off, and helps with the nuts and bolts of recording and editing.
Here is the challenge we extend to middle and high school students:
Imagine yourself — or, perhaps, you and your friends — as hosts of your own podcast. What would you talk about?
Maybe you’d tell a story, perhaps about a childhood memory, an experience that changed your life, or a bad romance. Or maybe you’d rather interview guests about a topic you’re exploring, whether a news-related issue like gun violence or gender roles, or a hobby, passion or concern of your own? Or, maybe you’d just like to have a conversation — about pop culture, sports, food, fashion, technology, politics, or, if you’re stuck, any of these 1,000-plus topics we’ve rounded up to inspire you.
In our Third Annual Podcast Challenge, we invite teenagers to submit original work of five minutes or less. Our favorites will be featured on The Learning Network.
We hope your students will join us.
The tech industry is one of the most vibrant and fast-growing in the world, with demand for web services soaring even before the coronavirus pandemic pushed many businesses into operating online only.
In the future, tech skills will be increasingly valuable in a competitive jobs market. With the world moving online at an ever-faster pace, it’s important your CV doesn’t get left behind.
Fortunately, FutureLearn has a wide variety of online tech courses and IT classes – from coding, to web development, and cyber security – designed to give you the basic skills you need to take your first steps in this thriving sector.
We’ve picked out ten essential courses to give you a head-start – whether you want some extra skills to level-up your current role, or you’re thinking of rebooting your career altogether.
Where better to start than exploring how computers actually operate? This course will walk you through the mathematical fundamentals of computing, including system architecture, and how computers use binary and logic to function.
From there you can learn to build a range of simple circuits, gaining knowledge of how all computers – from the smartest supercomputer to the smallest smartphone – work along the way.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google combine again with another killer course designed to give you fundamental IT skills.
On this course you can build a website using HTML, style it with CSS, and then make it interactive using JavaScript. By the end, you’ll be able to create a quiz web page and even make your very own website.
Coding is one the key in-demand tech skills any budding developer needs to master, underpinning the design of everything from apps to video games.
Part of the popular Introduction to Coding and Design program, this course will let you learn the problems coding can solve. You’ll come away being able to write your first computer programs.
From Netflix to Google, the code of all the apps and websites you use throughout the day is written in specific programming languages.
On this course you can get to grips with three of the main languages used to code computers – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – learning how to style and build your own projects in the process.
With most work moving online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, knowing the latest trends in digital working is crucial to staying ahead of the career curve.
Here you’ll discover the digital skills you need to futureproof your CV, and explore how the technological revolution is changing the way we think about work itself.
Are you mad for Mario, or zany for Zelda? If you’re a video games guru, a career as a game developer might be a great next step.
On this course, you’ll explore the practicalities of applying for a developer position in the games industry – how to ace an interview, how development teams really work, and what skills you need to boss a competitive field.
Learning about how to use databases is a key component of GCSE Computing in the UK, and other equivalent school computing degrees around the world.
After taking this course, teachers and students alike will feel confident in using tables to manipulate and interpret data.
Python is one of the fundamental programming languages used across the web. This course is designed for absolute beginners to tackle the essentials of this most important of coding languages.
You’ll go from clueless to coder in a matter of weeks, as you learn the key concepts of programming, write your first program, and explore core programming tools like functions and loops.
If you’re a teacher looking to learn the basics of programming before heading back into the classroom, this course would be perfect for you.
You’ll learn how to understand the basics of Python, going on to use your new coding skills to create your own program.
As the tech revolution encroaches on more and more aspects of modern life, so the risk of cyber crime increases.
Cyber security – the job of preventing cyber crime – is a burgeoning field. This course will give you a grounding in the essentials of how to protect yourself online, introducing you to central concepts like network security, cryptography, identity theft, and risk management.
Whatever your area of interest, explore our full range of tech courses and get switched-on to the tech revolution today.
Bring Coursera for Campus to your college or university by having a professor, department head, or university leader sign up by July 31, 2020.
As of early April, colleges and universities are closed in more than 175 countries, and more than 220 million college students have had their studies ended or disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you’re a student at a college or university impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, Coursera and our partners want to help you keep learning.
As we continue to roll out new initiatives to support learners across the globe during this crisis, we want to make you aware of two key steps you can take today, starting with helping your school get access to Coursera for Campus.
Coursera for Campus empowers any university to offer high-quality, job-relevant online education to its students. From now through July 31, 2020, this program is available globally at no cost to any university impacted by COVID-19, and provides access to over 3,800 courses from leading universities and companies.
To bring Coursera for Campus to your college or university, use this message to ask a professor, department head, or university leader to sign up by July 31, 2020.
Once your university signs up, you’ll have access to 3,800 courses, Specializations and Professional Certificates that empower you to:
“Coursera for Campus helped Duke Kunshan University make a quick online pivot when the campus was closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. Faculty benefited from access to a high-quality library of courseware from hundreds of Coursera partners. Students dove right into learning new skills on their own—some finishing four courses in just the first few days.”
—Matthew Rascoff, Associate Vice Provost, Digital Education & Innovation, Duke Learning Innovation
In addition to helping your institution get access to Coursera for Campus, you can also start learning independently today with free courses for college students or other free learning resources that we’re sharing with our community during this time. We also invite you to connect with learners around the world in the Coursera Community, and share your questions, ideas, and comments about how our community can continue to support and learn from each other.
By Leah Belsky, Chief Enterprise Officer and Kevin Mills, Head of Government Partnerships
As businesses across sectors lay off workers due to an abrupt economic slowdown, the world faces the biggest unemployment crisis in the modern era. The pandemic has affected the livelihoods of 2.7 billion workers globally. In the U.S. alone, jobless claims have surpassed 26 million.
Today, we are proud to announce the Coursera Workforce Recovery Initiative to help governments worldwide provide unemployed workers with free access to 3,800 online courses. The initiative’s goal is to help impacted workers develop the knowledge and skills to become re-employed. Federal, state, and local governments can sign up until September 30, 2020, and those enrolled by then can learn until the end of the year. The U.S. states of Illinois, Arizona, and Oklahoma, as well as the governments of Colombia, Costa Rica, Greece, Malaysia, Panama, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan will be the first to make the initiative available. Over the next few weeks, more U.S. states and countries around the world will announce the initiative to their people.
Through the Coursera Workforce Recovery Initiative, governments will be able to provide unemployed workers, many of whom lack financial resources, with job-relevant online learning. The 3,800 courses on Coursera, covering critical business, technology, and data science skills, are taught by some of the world’s leading universities like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Duke University, University of Michigan, Yale University, and more. The initiative also includes Professional Certificates from industry educators like the Google IT Support Professional Certificate, designed specifically to train people for high-demand jobs. The workforce initiative is part of the Coursera for Government offering, which was launched in 2017 to equip government employees and citizens with in-demand skills.
In an important step towards public and private sector partnerships, various government leaders have made the initiative available to their respective states and countries.
“The State of Illinois is dedicated to supporting the thousands of Illinois workers who have lost their jobs and livelihoods due to the pandemic,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “I am proud to see Illinois join this initiative with Coursera, a company with strong ties to the University of Illinois, to make job-relevant online learning available to help impacted workers re-enter the workforce.”
“The partnership with Coursera, OESC, and OU will help currently unemployed Oklahomans further their career paths and ready them to re-enter the workforce with new, valuable skills,” said Oklahoma Lt. Governor Matt Pinnell. “As we work to revive our economy from the COVID-19 pandemic, partnerships like this will help diversify our economy and create innovative opportunities for businesses and employees alike.”
“The well-being of Costa Ricans and our resilience relies on our focus to prepare for the jobs of tomorrow, which given this situation, are becoming more so the jobs of today,” said President of Costa Rica Carlos Alvarado Quesada. “I am excited to announce that with Coursera, we now have the opportunity to provide our citizens with the technical skills they need to find new, well-paying jobs.”
“We are excited to join this initiative to make online learning widely available to Colombians who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic,” said President of Colombia Ivan Duque. “With access to courses teaching high-demand digital skills, our citizens will be better prepared to return into new jobs and careers.”
Coursera, along with our community of partners, is ready to serve the millions of workers who have lost their jobs and are going to have a hard time returning in a slow economy. We are honored to help governments around the world in their efforts to alleviate the impact on communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
For more information, please visit https://www.coursera.org/workforce-recovery.
This article is part of our latest Learning special report, which focuses on the challenges of online education during the coronavirus outbreak.
We asked teachers and college students about their experiences with the change to online instruction. The Learning Network, a site about teaching and learning with content from The New York Times, asked students in grades K through 12 how they have been coping with remote learning. The following comments have been edited and condensed.
So much of what we do in classrooms are driven by student responses and reactions. I’d give anything to watch their faces light up, their hands in the air, their smiles and fist pumps when they share a new learning or big idea with me. – Meg Burke, teaches grades 3 through 8, Doylestown, Pa.
Here I am, at 66, within a year of full retirement, having to learn how to use Google Classroom with 35 first graders at various places in their learning. I feel as though I am attempting to drive on a road that I am simultaneously paving while also following a paper map. – Janet Kass, teaches first grade, Bloomingburg, N.Y.
Over 80 percent of the students at my school come from low-income families, and only a quarter of my students have a computer at home. For economically disadvantaged students, this outbreak means they will fall even further behind their wealthier peers. – Kaitlin Barnes, teaches fourth grade, Baltimore
Dear Parents: I promise you that we have your child’s best interest at heart. We worry about them, we miss them, we want more than anything to be back in the classroom. We don’t teach because we like figuring out how to work Zoom, we don’t teach to stare at a screen all day, we don’t teach to field an onslaught of emails each day. We teach because we love your children. – Kara Conceison, teaches sixth grade, Watertown, Mass.
I work with continuation high school students (where I have been for 23 years) who have a deep connection to our school, and I know we all feel lost, lost without the daily hugs, fist bumps and dose of reality we try to provide to each other. – Gregg Witkin, teaches grades 10 through 12, San Jose, Calif.
I miss getting to celebrate with them, cry with them, laugh with them. These are memories with my seniors that I will never get back. That is what hurts the most. – Stacey Travis, teaches high school math, Maryville, Tenn.
I miss real conversations with my students, about anything, but particularly about their writing. It doesn’t seem like students have any motivation to participate in things outside of school. – Matthew Ebersole, teaches eighth grade, Gloucester, Va.
Teaching involves human connection, and I feel like that’s been taken away from me. – Mathew Kennedy, teaches grades 7 and 8, New Orleans
My students are eighth graders. They may not be learning as much history as my former students, or writing as many essays, but they are LIVING history right now. But they’re learning so much — resilience, time management and how to be responsible for their own learning. – Lauren Brown, teaches eighth grade, Oak Park, Ill.
I believe that this distance learning has enhanced portions of my teaching. I am now allowed to utilize technology that perhaps I haven’t had time to before. I’ve also noticed that my students who struggled academically in class are excelling online. – Jodi Ramos, teaches sixth grade, San Antonio
No amount of online instruction can replace the power and potential of student-teacher relationships and the learning that happens in that context. Both teachers and students are the lesser for that. – Joshua Fleming, teaches ninth grade, Redmond, Wash.
I attempted a Zoom discussion about the end of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with my eighth graders. In response to my questions, I heard two or three strong ideas and a parent asking about chores. It made me a little sad, since the play is always a favorite of ours, and our study of it ended in such an anticlimactic way. – Pauline Brew, teaches grades 6-8, Columbus, Ohio
I have had more free time, but I feel less productive, taking more time to complete each assignment (however this hasn’t necessarily led to better results). I very much miss the social aspect of school. – Ariana Oppenheimer, 15, The Pennington School, Lawrenceville, N.J.
I believe that I have it very lucky and I know that some of my peers are struggling a lot. I know that my school is trying very hard to help the kids, like providing food for children that relied on school lunches and having a curbside pickup for laptop rentals. – Morgan Sharp, 15, Anna High School, Anna, Texas
Me and my friends often have to work for quite a long time, like at least 5 hours on all the assignments. It’s really boring to read the lesson info by yourself and then apply it to your assignments. I feel like this is the hard part. The good thing however, is that we don’t have to wake up at a certain time, so we are at least now getting enough sleep. – Danny Peng, 13, William Alexander Middle School, Brooklyn
Remote learning has introduced a new classroom dynamic, in which the inability to see one’s classmates/students causes classmates to begin speaking at the same time (and consequently stop speaking) and teachers to move on to the next subject despite a student’s hurried attempt to type their question into the chat box. – Cindy Li, 16, Glenda Dawson High School, Pearland, Texas
I have committed to college, school has been canceled (any student’s dream), and ice cream can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So why do I still wish that I was back in school? – Ethan Turkewitz, 17, New Rochelle High School, New Rochelle, N.Y.
There are some distractions when learning at home. Since everyone is required to do remote learning, it can be really loud if there are people in your house who are also doing the same thing. – Alvin L., 14, William Alexander Middle School, Brooklyn
Since my school has started online class it’s been harder to motivate myself to work and pay attention. I also miss my art elective. We had our first online art class today and it was only 20 minutes long which was strange because it’s usually two hours. – Alexis Jennings, 16, School of the Woods High School, Houston, Texas
It can become very stressful to completely shift our schedules and our academic plans. Due to this, the one day at a time method has become extremely helpful for me. – Valeria Casas, 17, Glenbard West High School, Glen Ellyn, Ill.
At the beginning I was so confused and didn’t know how to work anything and set up my Google classroom for different classes, and keep track of all the homework. But I’m getting the hang of it. Hopefully things can go back to normal, because I miss going to school. – Mia Mohamed, 13, Middle School 51 William Alexander, Brooklyn
Online school has been a stressful process for many of my friends and me. I live in an area where internet access and Wi-Fi are hard to get and, as a result, I’m not only stressed about school but I’m often anxious that I will not be able to join and maintain access to online classes and assignments. – Kitty Evans, 16, The Pennington School, Stockton, N.J.
Remote learning has been difficult for me. I have encountered obstacles such as slow internet, procrastination, and feelings of isolation from my friends and family. While technology does allow us to interact with each other somewhat effectively, it should not replace face to face interactions. – Argelina Jeune, 15, Valley Stream North High School, Valley Stream, N.Y.
I wake up every morning and do homework all day long. I thought having all my classes online would make my life easier because I’d be able to work ahead, but I’m actually falling behind. – Laney McDermott, 17, Williams High School, Burlington, N.C.
I was studying abroad in Buenos Aires and was sent home after 17 days. I am now living at home, taking classes in Spanish about Argentina online and struggling to get a refund for room and board from my study abroad program. However, all in all I have been incredibly lucky as no one in my family is sick, and I’m not worried about where my next meal or paycheck is coming from. – Pearl Sullivan, Atlanta, Elon University
I’m an international student, so I had to go home. The time difference is nine hours, so all my classes are at night and extend into the early morning. I’m studying at desks I share with my brother and dad. My campus bookstore is offering to ship my textbooks for free, but it’ll take months for them to reach me. – Amina Elmasry, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Northwestern University
My schooling was online already. The difference is now being faced with food and financial insecurity and still being expected to turn in all homework, study topics that are all pretty disturbing (for social work master’s degree) and get projects done on time. – Sonya Davis, San Diego, Rutgers University
My attention span at home is a lot shorter than it is at school since my house was not created to be a school environment. Every time I have a class or I want to get some homework done, there’s always some kind of distraction. – EJ Onah, Ithaca, N.Y., SUNY Albany
I would so much rather be back in class. Online courses are more work that the normal classes. It’s also harder to get feedback on you work. The professors and T.A.s are doing the best they can to support “office” hours, but it’s just not the same. I can’t wait to be back in class. – Howard Lukk, Los Angeles, University of California, Santa Barbara
I am a biology student with the intention of going into medicine after graduation. One of the most important parts of our undergrad education are science labs, which give us practical experience and application of the difficult concepts we learn in our lecture courses. Due to the outbreak, my organic chemistry lab has had to go online, which is essentially an impossible undertaking. All of us are missing out on this essential process of synthesizing our own reagents and running a chemical reaction, replaced by this poor substitute of watching videos and doing worksheets. – Andrei Robu, Greenville, S.C., University of South Carolina, Columbia
My university gave me three days to move out of my dorm. With my parents living 10 hours away, it was terrible circumstances. I had no car to put everything I owned. My boyfriend’s family came in a clutch and helped me move out and let me stay in a spare bedroom of theirs. If not for his family, I would have had no where to stay. The day after I moved my stuff out, Whitmer announced a shelter in place order to start the next day at midnight. I called my parents, and my dad drove 20 hours round trip to get me home. – Karen Larss, Iron Mountain, Mich., Western Michigan University
I am a 55-year-old man who takes two classes per semester after work towards a TESL degree: teaching English as a second language. I enjoy the classroom experience. It is how I effectively learn. Listening to live lectures, asking questions, and speaking with other students about assignments and concepts. Both my classes went online, and I knew immediately that I would have to drop one of them as I was having trouble with the material in a normal classroom setting. I knew that I would not be successful sitting in my living room with all the distractions of home around me while trying to focus on a tough subject. – Kent Shimizu, Santa Clarita, Calif., California State University, Northridge
I do enjoy being able to wake up later because now I just have to log in to a class rather than get ready for an entire day. I can also sleep more, but I still miss the in-person interactions going to class on campus provides. I’m also worried how moving online is going to impact classes that require sequential learning or classes that assume I acquired skills already learned in a prior class. – Kate Carniol, Great Falls, Va., Syracuse University
As a senior, transitioning to online learning has been nothing but difficult. Sometimes I’m not even motivated to do my work. I am a good student, I have a 3.5 gpa but everything is on you now. – Casey Malone, Milford, Conn., Westfield State University
Being at college, I was able to forget the sometimes-traumatizing moments I lived through as a teenager. But now, every part of my childhood home reminds me of the past I’ve tried very hard to move on from. I know I should be grateful simply to have a roof over my head and relative financial security at a time like this, but it’s hard not to let myself get sucked down the rabbit hole of my high school mental health challenges that seemed so far gone while I was living on my own at college. – Kelsey Bonham, Washington, Colgate University
As a theater major, the online curriculum poses particular challenges for my classmates and I, since much of our learning is highly kinesthetic. In my Presentational Styles acting class, we’re performing Shakespeare’s Macbeth via Zoom, and the project certainly loses much of its excitement and immediacy when we aren’t all performing in a room together. Despite these setbacks, I remain impressed by how adaptable and positive my professors have been in approaching them. – Sydney Cahill, New Providence, N.J., Providence College
Our academic advisers are going beyond and above to make sure all students are comfortable with this change. Online tutoring has been implemented for the success of the students. We meet with the president of the school weekly via Instagram live along with our academic advisers via Zoom. I’m a hands-on type of person, and as a member of the Quinnite Nation I am proud to say through these trying times we are an uplifted community. – Pakedra D. McCoy, Dallas, Paul Quinn College
Things are much more self-managed. My emotions toward school range from feeling unmotivated to writing shadow letters to my professors apologizing for my lack of focus. I have always loved school, but this doesn’t feel like learning. My professors try to create normalcy, but there is none. – Alexsis Tarte, Fairfax, Va., George Mason University
I’m a junior, and my anxiety is at an all-time high. More recently, my exams, assignments, discussion boards and document submissions have been piling up. I work at a noncorporate, family-owned, restaurant drive-through full time and go to school full time. With Shreveport and Louisiana becoming a hot spot, I fear I might attract the virus by working, but going to work is my escape from school and general life. – Jacob Pickett, Stonewall, La., Louisiana State University, Shreveport
Going to school filled me to the brim with nirvana, that is, until we switched to online instruction. Now, my education is no longer an escape into “me time” — it is midnight after a long day, dry-eyed and exhausted, staring blankly at my laptop screen searching for motivation. As a new mother of a 4-month-old, in-person classes held the irreplaceable value of “me time.” Even the hourlong commutes, with raging drivers and construction detours, were enjoyable because of the break it gave me to just do something for myself. – Alexis Coates, Ridley Park, Penn., West Chester University of Pennsylvania
This graph above and map below, both showing the global temperatures since 1880 as compared to the average global temperature for the mid-20th century years of 1951 – 1980, appeared elsewhere on NYTimes.com. All temperatures are in degrees Celsius.
By Friday morning, May 1, we will provide the “Reveal” — the graph and map’s free online link, additional background and questions, shout outs highlighting student comments and headlines, and Stat Nuggets.
After looking closely at the graph and map above, think about these three questions:
What do you notice? If you make a claim, tell us what you noticed that supports your claim.
What do you wonder? What are you curious about that comes from what you notice in the graph and map?
The questions are intended to build on one another, so try to answer them in order. Start with “I notice,” then “I wonder,” and end with a catchy headline.
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 online. Teachers of younger students are welcome to post what their students say.)
3. Below the response box, there is an option for students to click on “Email me when my comment is published.” This sends the link to their response which they can share with their teacher.
4. After you have posted, read what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting a comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.
On Wednesday, April 29, our collaborator, the American Statistical Association, will facilitate this discussion from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern time to help students’ understanding go deeper. You might use their responses as models for your own.
5. By Friday morning, May 1, we will reveal more information about the graph and map at the bottom of this post. Students, we encourage you to post an additional comment after reading the reveal. How does the original article and the moderators’ comments help you see the graph and map differently? Try to incorporate the statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets in your response.
This couple, who are in their eighties, are separated during this pandemic by national borders. He lives in Germany, and she lives in Denmark. But every day they meet, and sit a few feet across the border from each other, chat, joke and share a drink.
Who would you most like to see in person right now if you could? Why? Is that person separated from you because of the coronavirus, or for other reasons? What do you think you would talk about? Where, ideally, would you meet?
Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to learn more about this couple and their daily ritual.
