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Word + Quiz: limn

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Word + Quiz: limn

1. make a portrait of

2. trace the shape of

_________

The word limn has appeared in eight articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Sept. 17 in “More and More Children Are Feeling Anxious. This Graphic Novelist Is Trying to Help” by Scott Stossel:

Children are struggling. Over the last decade, cases of anxiety disorder in young people have increased by 20 percent or more. Rates of suicide and suicidal thinking have risen sharply among young people of all ages — including, horrifyingly, children under 11. Scholars debate why this is happening — plausible culprits include social media, video gaming, helicopter parenting, school shootings and lockdown drills, overweening college pressure, and both the over- and under-prescribing of medication, among other things — but the fact of steadily rising numbers of children with anxiety and depression is hard to dispute.

Telgemeier is not, in a book aimed at third to eighth graders, out to solve the mystery of this rise or limn its sociological roots. What she does do, in keeping with the mode of her previous books, is provide a remarkably well-rendered and accessible first-person account of what it’s like to experience clinical anxiety as a 10-year-old girl — which, I can say with authority, is also pretty much what it’s like to experience clinical anxiety as a 10-year-old boy.

_________

The Digital Divide: Researching the Challenges of Online Learning for Many Students

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The Digital Divide: Researching the Challenges of Online Learning for Many Students

Find all our Lessons of the Day here.

Featured Article: “She’s 10, Homeless and Eager to Learn. But She Has No Internet.” by Nikita Stewart

In recent weeks, many schools have turned to online learning in an attempt to stop the spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. On March 23, the New York City public school system moved its 1,800 schools online. However, the city has an estimated 114,000 children who live in shelters and unstable housing, which makes offering accessible online education a challenge.

In this lesson you will read about several New York City kids who are navigating online education while living in homeless shelters or homes without internet access. Then, you will create a “one-pager” response to the article, or research your region’s plan for providing online education for students who are homeless.

The featured article profiles six children and teenagers in New York City, beginning with this three-minute video focusing on one child: Allia Phillips. As you watch the video, write down your responses:

  • One quote from the video that you found moving or insightful.

  • Two questions or ideas that you have after watching the video.

  • Three images or stills that you found interesting or meaningful.

Now, read the featured article in its entirety to learn more about Allia and other young people in New York City who are also navigating online education without having permanent housing.

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. In your own words, summarize the different struggles that students, parents and school administrators have faced during New York City’s move to online education. Then, summarize some of the attempted solutions and their effectiveness.

2. Richard Carranza, the schools chancellor, and Christine Quinn, executive director of the nonprofit Win, expressed two very different outlooks on the remote-learning situation in New York City. How would you characterize their perspectives? Why do you think they see things so differently?

3. What did Estrella Montanez, the director of the Nelson Avenue Family Residence in the Bronx, notice when she and her staff went door-to-door in the shelter where they work? What different solutions has she been exploring?

4. What are some of the questions and concerns that Jennifer March, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children, has raised? What do you think of her solutions? Do you have other ideas of what could be done?

5. The article profiles six New York City kids: Allia Phillips; the sisters Kamiyah Williams and Chastity Battle; the brothers Khalil and Tahir; and J’Marion Brown. Choose one young person to focus on and answer:

  • How has their living situation affected their online education experience?

  • What solutions have they and their families explored and implemented?

  • What more do you think could be done to offer support? Who do you think is responsible for providing additional support or services?

Option I: One-Pager

What is your emotional reaction to reading the article? Are you able to empathize — “sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling” — with any of the young people featured in the article? Does the article make you think of anything you have ever gone through, or of anything someone you care about has gone through? Or, do the stories feel very different from anything you’ve experienced? If the latter, are you able to imagine what the children and teenagers in the article might feel?

Now, create an emotional and visual response to the article by designing a One-Pager. Look back through the article and choose:

You can organize your selections on this One-Pager worksheet. If you have more time, design a visually compelling one-pager and explain the importance of the article. If you choose this option, you can add:

  • An additional quote and image.

  • A phrase from the article that can serve as the border of your one-pager.

  • The theme of the article, in your own words, along with problems and solutions.

  • A feeling that you are left with after reading the article.

Option II: Take Action

If public schools in your area are closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, do you know how students without housing or stable living situations are being supported in online learning? If schools in your area have not yet closed, do you know anything about your district’s plan to support those students in the event schools close?

To answer these questions, conduct some research by looking on your school district’s website and in local newspapers. Once you have an understanding of the services that are, or will be, offered to students without stable housing, answer the following questions:

Summarize your district’s plan for providing educational services to students without housing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Evaluate the plan based on what you learned about the struggles in New York City:

  • Is there a plan in place for distributing devices such as laptops or iPads?

  • Is there a way to ensure that all students will have reliable access to the internet?

  • Has any work been done to ensure that students can have a quiet and safe place to work during the day?

  • What is being offered for children who struggle in school or need more support in certain subjects, like J’Marion Brown discussed in the article?

Based on your evaluation, write a letter to your district’s superintendent offering suggestions on how he or she can best accommodate the learning needs of students without housing during the pandemic.

Empty Spaces

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Empty Spaces

In recent weeks, the world’s busiest thoroughfares have become desolate. Airports are ghost towns. Stadiums sit empty. Even Disneyland has closed.

But the barren landscapes provoke a more playful question: What typically-crowded places have you dreamed of having all to yourself?

Would you visit an amusement park without having to wait in lines; run wild on a mall shopping spree; explore a renowned museum with free rein — or is there some other place or activity you’d love to enjoy in solitude?

Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to see a stunning collection of eerily-empty locations around the globe.

Film Club: ‘She’s an Honors Student. And Homeless. Will the Virtual Classroom Reach Her?’

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Film Club: ‘She’s an Honors Student. And Homeless. Will the Virtual Classroom Reach Her?’

5. After you have posted, try reading back to see what others have said, then respond to someone else by posting another comment. Use the “Reply” button or the @ symbol to address that student directly.

Allia Phillips was excited about picking up an iPad from her school in Harlem last week. She did not want to miss any classes and hoped to land on the fourth-grade honor roll again.

On Monday, the first day that New York City public schools began remote learning, the 10-year-old placed her iPad on a tray she set up over her pillow on a twin bed in a studio that she shares with her mother and grandmother inside a homeless shelter on the Upper West Side.

And then, Allia saw nothing.

“I went downstairs to find out that they don’t have any internet,” said Kasha Phillips-Lewis, Allia’s mother. “You’re screwing up my daughter’s education. You want to screw me up? Fine. But not my daughter’s education.”

The Department of Education, which runs the largest school system in the country with more than 1.1 million students, began attempting to teach all students through remote learning this week because schools were closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Shuttering the vast system, which includes 1,800 schools, was a serious challenge for the city, and the large-scale, indefinite school closures are uncharted territory, altering the lives and routines of 75,000 teachers, over one million children, and well over 1 million parents.

Add to that the complication of adapting traditional lesson plans to be taught online, and the city has been faced with an enormous and unprecedented undertaking. Recreating a classroom on the internet is a logistical challenge that will comes with a learning curve for students, teachers and parents.

And it is already leaving poor and vulnerable students behind — especially the estimated 114,000 children who live in shelters and unstable housing.

Resources to Support your Learners: Stay Informed & Productive During the Coronavirus Crisis

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Resources to Support your Learners: Stay Informed & Productive During the Coronavirus Crisis

By Alison Lands, Skills Transformation Consultant

As companies scramble to secure the health and safety of employees, virtualize their operations, and check-in with their customers (not to mention find a quiet + comfortable + decent-looking nook from which to work virtually in their homes!), a new level of leadership is being demanded from every individual along the chain of command. Among those tapped to lean in and shape the COVID-19 professional landscape, the Learning & Development function is fast emerging as an unsung hero of social distancing and the pandemic response. 

With as many as 1 in 3 workers around the globe and 75% of Americans subject to shelter-in-place and stay-at-home orders, traffic to online learning platforms has spiked, with a 60% increase in new registrations in recent weeks. According to McKinsey, “businesses can’t afford to put capability building on hold [due to coronavirus]. Whether the effort is reskilling at the business-unit level or a company-wide aspirational transformation, companies can’t simply push the pause button on critical workplace learning, even as they move rapidly to put employee safety first.” 

L&D leaders and business managers are seizing this opportunity to leverage training to comfort, educate, and empower employees in a climate of uncertainty, and in doing so, position businesses for life after COVID-19. In the spirit of supporting companies globally, Coursera for Business has launched a curated series of curricula designed to engage enterprise learners, support their productivity, and empower them to be leaders in their own right. 

The content showcased above could be disseminated to employees, accompanied by creative messaging to support remote workers and provide encouragement over what looks to be an extended work-from-home timeline. In addition, to help our broader user community stay connected during this critical time, we’re launching new, free resources accessible to everyone, as well as surfacing interesting course collections, community discussions, and expert interviews to help your teams and their extended families stay engaged, positive, and motivated throughout this transition.

Whether we work in an office, at home, or from the laundry room/closet/garage, the criticality of maintaining our momentum on learning represents not only a business imperative, but an overwhelmingly positive response to a grave economic and spiritual challenge for our society. We at Coursera support our Enterprise customers and stand ready to work with you and enable your teams to persevere during this time of uncertainty and challenge. Please let us know how we can support you.

 

Word + Quiz: stochastic

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onlinefreecourse
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Word + Quiz: stochastic

: being or having a random variable

_________

The word stochastic has appeared in five articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on March 6 in the book review “How Rebecca Solnit Found Her Voice” by Jenny Odell:

… Chance encounters lead to further chance encounters that sometimes turn into a book, or to ideas Solnit revisits from an unexpected angle. One chapter begins with an allusion to “hopscotch,” a metaphor she invokes for returning to the same subject, or point in time, armed with new knowledge. It also describes the memoir’s recursive style, which an impatient reader may find frustrating. Others will see it as true to experience, memory and the process of growth.

The stochastic nature of social change has been one of Solnit’s guiding concerns, and here it’s transposed to a personal register: How does a person change? We rarely know what something means when it happens to us. We may be finding out for the rest of our lives.

_________

How Much Do You Know About Bangladesh?

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How Much Do You Know About Bangladesh?

Can you find Bangladesh on a map? What else do you know about this South Asian nation with a population of about 165 million people?

What’s Going On in This Picture? | March 30, 2020

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What’s Going On in This Picture? | March 30, 2020

Students

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?

What’s Going On in This Graph? | April 1, 2020

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What’s Going On in This Graph? | April 1, 2020

This graph appeared elsewhere in The New York Times.

By Friday morning, April 3, we will provide the “Reveal” — the graph’s free online link, additional background and questions, shout outs highlighting student comments and headlines, and Stat Nuggets.

After looking closely at the graph above (or at this full-size image), 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 graphs?

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. 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 1, 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.

4. By Friday morning, April 3, we will reveal more information about the graph 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 differently? Try to incorporate the statistical terms defined in the Stat Nuggets in your response.

  • Read our 2019-20 introductory post, which includes the archives of past releases by topic and graph type.

  • Learn more about the “Notice and Wonder” teaching strategy and how and why other teachers are using this feature from our on-demand webinar.

  • Sign up for our free weekly newsletter so you never miss a graph, and add our 2019-20 “What’s Going On in This Graph?” live-moderated discussion Wednesdays to your Google calendar (4/1 and 4/8). Graphs are always released by the Friday before to give teachers time to plan ahead.

  • Go to the A.S.A. K-12 website, which includes This is Statistics, resources, professional development, student competitions, curriculum, courses and careers.

Lesson of the Day: ‘5 Key Things in the $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘5 Key Things in the $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Package’

Though the Senate unanimously passed the bill, some lawmakers had criticisms of it. The Times reports:

In the final measure, most Republicans agreed to Democrats’ demands for a substantial expansion of jobless benefits, including $600 extra per week on top of the usual amount provided by states.

On Wednesday afternoon, four Republican senators said they were concerned the new benefits would be larger than some people’s wages, prompting employers to lay off workers and some employees to prefer staying home and collecting unemployment payments.

“If this is not a drafting error, then this is the worst idea I have seen in a long time,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “We need to create a sustainable system.”

Mr. Mnuchin said the extra payments were calculated as a way to ensure that states could get money out quickly, saying that he did not believe it would create any perverse incentives. Most Americans, he said, “want to keep their jobs.”

Still, the Republicans’ threat to hold up the bill because of the issue prompted Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont and a Democratic presidential contender, to issue his own warning that he, too, would seek to block the legislation for being too lenient on corporations. Later, in a speech on the floor, Mr. Sanders said he would support the bill despite his many reservations.

Encapsulating the sentiment of many lawmakers in both parties about the hastily negotiated package, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, one of the Republicans who sought to cap the jobless aid, said while he disagreed with Mr. Sanders, “I appreciate his candor in admitting that this is kind of a big crap sandwich.”

What is your reaction to these criticisms? Are any of them valid? Why or why not? What other issues, if any, do you see with this stimulus package? Do you think it should have been passed, even if it’s not a perfect bill? Why or why not?

If you have more time …

Take a moment to scroll through The Times Coronavirus Outbreak coverage. Which industries and workers seem to be most affected by the economic shutdown caused by social distancing and shelter-in-place measures? How, if at all, will the stimulus bill help them?

You might choose one of those industries or groups to read about more in depth, like the travel and hospitality industry, cultural institutions like museums and theaters, public transportation, undocumented household workers and Uber and Lyft drivers.

What are this group’s specific needs and concerns? Does the stimulus package address them? If so, how? Is it enough to sustain them for weeks or even months? If not, what measures would you add to the bill to support them?

Based on what you learned, to what extent do you think the government has a responsibility to help individuals and industries stay afloat during an economic crisis? What responsibility do employers have to their employees? What should we, as individuals, do to support the small businesses, workers and hospitals in our communities?

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