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Lesson of the Day: ‘The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.’

The coronavirus has dominated headlines for the past two months. But all the while the Trump administration has continued to pursue other federal policy actions that shape our country and world.

In this lesson, you’ll learn about one such action: In the three years that President Trump has held office, his administration has officially rolled back more than 60 environmental policies, with another 34 rollbacks still in progress.

Take a moment to study the chart below of environmental rollbacks under Mr. Trump. Then, respond to the following questions:

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. What justification has the Trump administration given for dismantling major climate and environmental policies, many put in place by the Obama administration?

2. What are some of the rules and regulations the administration has been repealing, replacing or weakening? Name at least three.

3. A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency said the agency was “delivering on President Trump’s commitment to return the agency to its core mission: Providing cleaner air, water and land to the American people.” Do you agree that the E.P.A. has delivered on this mission? Why or why not? What evidence supports your response?

4. To what extent has the judicial branch played a role in shaping environmental policy? How do you know?

5. What are the implications of these rollbacks, according to energy and legal analysts? How does this influence your opinion of the Trump administration’s actions?

Look at the chart from the warm-up activity again. How did reading the article give you additional insights into what all those numbers signify?

Next, select one section from the drop-down list at the end of the article, such as water pollution or critters, and read all the related actions the Trump administration has either completed or initiated. Which of those actions, if any, do you think are positive changes for United States policy, based on the short descriptions in the article? Which, if any, do you think are negative policy changes? Why?

Then, choose one of those Trump administration actions to research further. Visit the “Read more” link after the short description. Then answer the following questions:

  • What was the original environmental, energy or climate rule, before the Trump administration initiated changes?

  • Why was the rule originally put in place?

  • Why did the Trump administration reverse this rule?

  • What will be possible consequences of this rollback?

  • Do you think the Trump administration’s reversal of this rule is good government policy? Why, or why not?

You may need to do additional research to answer these five questions.

Wilderness Wayfaring

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Wilderness Wayfaring

What story does this image inspire for you?

How Much Do You Know About Spain?

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How Much Do You Know About Spain?

Can you find Spain on a map? What else do you know about this European nation with about 47 million people?

How Wesley went from Part-Time Cook to Full-Time IT Support Technician

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How Wesley went from Part-Time Cook to Full-Time IT Support Technician

My name is Wesley Mercado, and I live in Los Angeles, California. Before completing the Google IT Support Professional Certificate on the Coursera platform, I had no prior experience in IT Support. Now, I work as an IT Support Technician at a healthcare call center in Beverly Hills. I did not grow up as a computer enthusiast, and my knowledge about computers was very limited. Technology and computers were introduced to me by my step-dad about nine years ago when I came to the United States. I understood that computers consisted of multiple moving parts, but I did not know exactly what the different parts were designed to do. Before taking the  Google certificate, I was studying in college and working part-time as a cook. A friend of mine introduced me to YearUp, a program to help young adults start a new career. YearUp, a Google.org grantee, recommended the Google IT Support Professional Certificate on Coursera, in order to expand my IT skill set.

The Google IT Support Professional Certificate definitely opened doors for me. Apart from my six month internship through YearUp, I did not have any previous professional experience in help desk support. This certificate verifies that I have studied various aspects of computers, software and hardware, that I know how to provide technical support, and that I can be a great asset to any company. All of this strengthened my resume. The most important skills that I gained from this program came from the courses, The Bits and Bytes of Computer Networking and IT Security: Defense Against the Digital Dark Arts. They gave me a clearer understanding of how computers communicate. My company employs remote agents, so understanding how to secure networks outside our reach is a must.

My favorite part of this role is just being in IT. I have on-call shifts, and sometimes employees call me directly with their technical issues or reach out to me first before the rest of the team. Some people may find that a little too much, but I see it as an opportunity to brighten up someone’s day by helping them out with their technical difficulties. This is especially rewarding in a call center environment, where the atmosphere can sometimes be tense and stressful.

This is not to say that it was easy. I live about 50 miles away from West Los Angeles Community College, which is where YearUp Los Angeles is currently located. Every morning, I would wake up early and then drive 50 miles to attend YearUp, and then drive back home afterwards. 

I came to a realization that, with the Google IT Support certificate, in five months or less, I could be a working professional at just 21 years of age. This is something that my friends are still far off from achieving—full-time employment with good benefits. Most of my peers got into universities after graduating from high school, whereas I went to community college. For once, I was able to take the lead and show both my friends and younger siblings that it’s possible to create something amazing, somewhere unexpected.

Whatever you learn through this certificate will stay with you for the rest of time. This can be your first trophy, like it is for me. I used to think I was going to be a filmmaker, but sometimes paths change, and here I am enjoying every moment providing technical support. Think of this program as the first chapter of a new book. We all know that the farther you read, the better it gets.

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Word + Quiz: sanguinary

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Word + Quiz: sanguinary

1. accompanied by bloodshed

2. marked by eagerness to resort to violence and bloodshed

_________

The word sanguinary has appeared in four articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Feb. 6 in “Nicolas Moufarrege Was a Student of Art History. This Work Shows It” by Arthur Lubow:

He was a critic as well as an artist, well versed in art history, as demonstrated by one of the most mysteriously moving pieces in the show, “The Fifth Day” (1980). The title probably alludes, in the Book of Genesis, to the day on which God filled the sky with birds and the sea with fishes. A black bird is flying through a glimmering heaven that Moufarrege graced with effulgent clouds, using silk, cotton and wool threads to dazzling effect. The bird is perhaps a phoenix, the subject of an embroidery that he produced five years earlier.

… But the heroic nude in Moufarrege’s embroidery is not under attack. He is throwing his discus over what appears to be a river of blood, toward a green meadow and a blue sky. The sanguinary stream in the tapestry may refer to the strife that drove Moufarrege’s family from both Alexandria and Beirut, as the papyrus and the tile pattern would suggest. The phoenix could connote his rebirth. What he would not have known when he stitched this scene is that behind the vision of the promised land, further tragedy awaited.

_________

Lesson of the Day: ‘A 92-Year-Old Piano Teacher Won’t Let Students Miss Bach in the Pandemic’

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Lesson of the Day: ‘A 92-Year-Old Piano Teacher Won’t Let Students Miss Bach in the Pandemic’

Cornelia Vertenstein, a Holocaust survivor, is still teaching piano lessons over FaceTime from her Denver home. In this lesson, you will consider the ways students sometimes learn more about life from their teachers than just the subject they are studying.

Have you ever played a musical instrument? If so, did you take lessons? What did you gain from the experience? What did you learn about yourself beyond the music you practiced and played?

Have you been playing an instrument during the coronavirus pandemic? How have social distancing restrictions affected your lessons and practice schedule? Have you been able to continue learning and growing as a musician?

Read the article, then answer the following questions:

1. According to the article, what does Cornelia Vertenstein say about continuity and persistence? How does she embody those things?

2. What do you think Ms. Vertenstein means when she says about her students, “I try to teach them not only how to learn, but how to work”?

3. What has Ms. Vertenstein learned about her students during the pandemic? Why do you think knowing a little bit about students’ lives might be helpful for a teacher?

4. What did Ms. Vertenstein do while her students performed in their virtual recitals? Why did she do that? What does this action tell you about her?

5. What happened after the recitals? What is different about the FaceTime piano lessons versus those Ms. Vertenstein taught in person at her house? What is the same?

In the article, John Branch writes:

The children do not know much of Ms. Vertenstein’s past — the yellow star she had to wear as a teenager during the war, the rocks thrown at her, the fist of fascism replaced by the slogging brutality of communism. She only hints at them.

“It’s very painful to talk about,” Ms. Vertenstein said in a FaceTime interview. “Besides this, why should I tell those kids such sad stories?”

But the stories silently inhabit her lessons.

Do your teachers ever share anything about their own pasts? Do their life stories have any meaning for you?

Now, watch the first video embedded in the article, a prerecorded introduction by Ms. Vertenstein for one of the spring recitals. Here is the transcript:

With great pride, I introduce my students who prepared themselves with discipline and determination in difficult circumstances. When I was a little girl, I could not go to public schools because of my religion. And they created a little school in the basement of an old building, which sometimes had heat and sometimes didn’t. Great minds and achievements came out of that school, which taught me that in any situation you can strive, learn, look ahead and have dreams.

Why do you think Ms. Vertenstein chose this moment to share some of her personal history with her students and their families? What do you think she hoped to achieve with her words?

What’s Going On in This Picture? | May 18, 2020

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What’s Going On in This Picture? | May 18, 2020

Note: This is our final photograph for the 2019-20 school year. Please visit our archive to find hundreds of other images you can use between now and September, when we will resume this feature. You can also sign up for our free weekly newsletter to make sure you don’t miss any of our new images.

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?

Johns Hopkins trains 22,000 contact tracers on Coursera in the first week

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Johns Hopkins trains 22,000 contact tracers on Coursera in the first week

By Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO Coursera

On May 11, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health launched a free course on Coursera, COVID-19 Contact Tracing, to help states expand their contact tracing capacity by training thousands of contact tracers. This is a crucial step in meeting their recommendation for more than 100,000 additional contact tracers in the U.S. alone in order to help limit the spread of the pandemic. 

The course, which was created with support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, teaches the fundamentals of contact tracing, including necessary information about the virus, interview strategies and simulations, communication skills, and ethical considerations. The five-hour course is open to everyone with an interest in contact tracing. Taking the course and passing the exam at the end is a requirement to be considered for a contact tracer role in the state of New York.

We are highly encouraged by the initial response — in just one week, more than 150,000 learners have enrolled in the course. More than 22,000 learners have already completed it, including over 2,500 prospective contact tracers who could be employed by the state of New York. Contact tracing will offer meaningful employment to those impacted by the economic downturn while fulfilling an urgent public health need. 

We look forward to working with the Bloomberg School of Public Health to make the program available to more states across the U.S. and countries around the world.

“We’re thrilled to be able to put this course together and to make it available to anyone who wants to help fill this critical and urgent public health need, or just wants to know about what contact tracing is,” said Dr. Emily Gurley, lead course instructor and an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Coursera’s vision is to create universal access to the world’s best learning, and times like these show how online learning can be effective in providing a timely solution to a major challenge at hand. We’re proud to partner with Johns Hopkins University, a globally recognized institution at the forefront of fighting this pandemic, to offer vital training to help create a domestic and global workforce of informed contact tracers. Learn more and sign up here. 

 

Word + Quiz: corpus

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Word + Quiz: corpus

1. a collection of writings

2. the main part of an organ or other bodily structure

3. capital as contrasted with the income derived from it

_________

The word corpus has appeared in 71 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on May 3 in the book review “Andy Warhol, Superstar” by Luc Sante:

Andy Warhol was not just an artist; he was a giant evolving sensibility that angled itself through a great portion of the late 20th century, absorbing everything in its passage and altering it, often permanently. He affected painting, film, fashion, partygoing, record-keeping, packaging, branding and a very large manifest of items that fall under the heading of self-presentation. His corpus includes everything from major paintings and epic films to Mylar balloons and generic business portraits to monosyllabic interview responses and the standard italic font that became wholly identified with his rubber-stamped signature. You can’t really appreciate anything Warhol did without having some idea of its place in his evolution. Consequently Warhol, more than even van Gogh or Picasso, endures not as a mere collection of works but as a narrative, one that gets more complex the more closely you look.

_________

Film Club: ‘Are Ice Cream Trucks Essential? In These N.Y.C. Neighborhoods, They Are’

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Film Club: ‘Are Ice Cream Trucks Essential? In These N.Y.C. Neighborhoods, They Are’

[birds chirping] [ice cream truck music] “You remember when you was a kid, right? When you heard that bell, that bell was like almost going to Disney World because now you get to come outside and you get to get your ice cream that you always wanted, that rainbow or that vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles or that chocolate cone with cherry dip, you know — whichever makes you happy. [ice cream truck music] I have an obligation. I have to take my trucks to the street. Why? Because I believe the ice cream trucks are essential service. Someone asked me why am I working in the coronavirus? Well, I mean, my customers actually wait for me. What’s up, Champion? Speaking Spanish: Chocolate or vanilla? You know, they can choose anybody. They can choose Mr. Softee, they could choose Carvel, but they choose to come to the FunTime Frostee truck because I’ve been serving them for the past 26 years. You got it? Have a great day.” “Thank you.” “It’s harder for us to social distance six feet to give you an ice cream cone.” “Thank you.” “I try to tell the drivers make sure that the truck is disinfected. Make sure that you got wipes. Make sure you got gloves. Make sure you got two masks. You know, make sure that the customer order back up. Hey, how’s it going? As this coronavirus happens, as it’s going on, you know, the ice cream trucks have been kind of lonely. We had to transition to now wait for the customer. I think they coming. There’s no more stopping five minutes and going. Now, we have to stop 10 minutes, 15 minutes on a block, and get ’em downstairs.” “Well, when I hear the ice cream truck, I just come running.” “She acts like a child when she hears the ice cream truck.” “I’m glad I heard the ice cream truck, ’cause it’s better than hearing the sirens of the fire truck and ambulance.” “Dos.” “A lot of people haven’t been buying ice cream because of the coronavirus. You know, they don’t want to touch nothing. I know that, but this is a childhood thing, you know?” “The atmosphere now is crazy in New York City because I’m a born New Yorker, and I’ve know this place to be hustle and bustle. But driving around the neighborhoods now, it’s like … [sirens] … wow, is this really happening? Is this happening?” [sirens] [ice cream truck music] “And then when you hear the ice cream truck, you say, ‘Oh, guess what? Hey, Joey, go get your clothes. Come on. We’re gonna go get some ice cream.’” “Now we feel normal again because now I can go outside, because now I can go bring my kids. We can have a little ice cream, stay outside, catch a little fresh air and then go back inside. Have a great one. We are essential. We’re providing a service, making you and your family happy during the pandemic, without a pandemic, rain, sleet or snow, I feel that I can bring that joy to people.” [ice cream truck music]

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