Tulips are my favorite flower to place around my home in the spring. I prefer to choose those in warmer colors. The soft pink and peach tones scream longer days and warmer weather. I hope this color palette will help you bring this summer feeling to all your crafts. You can’t go wrong with this Pink & Peach Color Palette.
Tulip Pink & Peach Color Palette
Something in this color combination makes it perfect for wedding stationery and decoration. Paired with a white dress, it must look stunning. It may seem that pink combined with peach shades may be dull or even childish, but I think that this palette can give a modern and even sophisticated look if used correctly. Let me know if you agree!
As always, we have put together a mood board with some inspiration. It is in perfect Pinterest format, so feel free to pin it for later.
See our collection of other gorgeous color palettes by visiting our color palette section.
What do you think about this color palette? Where would you use it? There are really no limits here. We would love to hear your thoughts. Share them in the comments below.
Lastly, learn about the power of color in blog design in our blog post to see how important colors are in all the projects you create.
If you like warmer tones, make sure to check our WordPress Designs, where you will find pre-made templates like Aurora. It is a colorful design perfect for travel & lifestyle bloggers.
If you create something using today’s color palette don’t forget to share it with us!
If you don’t make time to care for your wellness, your mind, body and soul will force you to make time for your illness. World Wellbeing Week (27 June – 1 July) is a reminder for everyone, regardless of age, background, or station in life, of the importance of wellbeing to our lives and livelihoods. We’ve put together a few tips to help you improve some of these wellbeing areas and the free Alison courses you can enrol in to help get you there.
The pursuit of wholeness and one’s “wellbeing” has over the last few years, become vital to our lives. We’ve learned how it contributes to our capacity to take on everyday tasks, be joyful, and adapt to the ebb and flow of life. Wellbeing is the art of developing comprehensive, holistic, and healthy habits that result in better physical and mental health. Our wellbeing is made up of different components like financial, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental wellbeing. Each one plays in informing who we are.
Financial
“A person either disciplines his finances or his finances disciplines him.” With economic downturns, threats of recessions, rising food, fuel costs and inflation, financial stability and economic welfare has never been more important. This refers to the state where an individual can meet all their current financial obligations, have confidence in their financial future and be able to enjoy life in the present.
Tips to become financially sound:
Don’t spend money before you have it
Live beneath your means
Draw up a budget and stick to it
Plan for your retirement
Know how much you have coming in and how much is going out
Decrease your debt
Be cautious with credit
Save
Money has one language: save me today; and it will save you tomorrow.
Physical
Your physical health is more the absence of disease in the body. Instead, it speaks to the overall lifestyle choices that include diet, sleep, exercise to ensure your body performs at its most optimum level and you can get through the day without fatigue and physical stress. You’re never too young, or old, to invest in and look after your body. Small everyday changes can get you on your way.
Tips to improve your physical health:
10 000 steps, 30 minutes of physical activity or exercise – get your body moving
Hydrate. Drink lots of water
Get 6-8 hours of sleep every night
Adopt a healthy diet, limit alcohol intake
These boost your energy levels, improve your sleep, reduces lethargy, and gives you that extra spring in your step. You wake up feeling good and have a sense that you have everything you need to conquer the day ahead.
Mental
Our mental health affects everything we do (and don’t do), how we think, live, and feel. And state of wellbeing enables us to cope better with the daily challenges of life and helps us thrive in relationships, at work, home, play and make healthy choices. Mental wellbeing is something you can work on everything else we may face.
Tips to improve your state of mind:
Practice mindfulness. Be aware of your thought patterns and think about what you think about. Positive thinking can influence your feelings
Learn a new skill or take up a new course.
Make time for leisure and relaxation
Develop a nutritious and healthy diet and lifestyle
Sleep
Connect with friends and family
Reduce time spent on social media
Get help
Emotional
We experience a wide range of emotions – sadness, happiness, anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, joy. Sometimes all in a day. This is perfectly normal and says nothing else except that we are human. Our emotional health and wellness refer to one’s ability to handle their emotions, to have the self-awareness, understanding and the acceptance of your varying emotions. It’s influenced by a number of factors like stress, physical wellbeing, environmental factors and relationships. By cultivating our emotional wellbeing, we become equipped to face hardships, find happiness and thrive.
Tips to improve your emotional health:
Build a strong support system
Seek to create a balanced lifestyle
Manage stress
Be kind to yourself
Talk about your feelings and ask for help
Together, these four aspects contribute to a stronger and healthier version of yourself. Your wellness matters. It affects who we are, what we do, and is crucial for you to enjoy a high quality of life. When you invest in improving each of these areas, life becomes more than just surviving, but thriving and knowing you have what it takes to overcome every challenge and still enjoy it.
To learn another language is to be at home anywhere. To teach English is to open the doors to the world.
The covid-19 pandemic, if anything, has taught us that life is short, and you can work from anywhere, doing just about anything. Globally, we saw a steep rise in remote working and people opting to pack it all up to live, work and travel on the go. One of the careers that saw a change is that of teaching – moving from the classroom to online. It’s never easier to build your career online and from anywhere in the world. The career of choice for many individuals looking to live the work, travel and get paid to do it is being a TEFL teacher or instructor. Read on for your TEFL guide to the world.
What is TEFL?
TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) is an internationally recognised programme hosted in countries where English is not the primary language. The TEFL certificate and qualification allows native English-language speakers to teach English to students across all age groups and at every level in the specific country. TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) is the term used to cover teaching that includes both TEFL and TESL.
Benefits of TEFL
There are many benefits to obtaining a TEFL certificate. The least of these being the opportunity and freedom to travel and explore other countries and getting paid to do it. Added to these benefits, TEFL holders can:
be a more effective instructor to your students
access to better job opportunities
higher salary and pay scale
flexibility
teaching skills for challenging situations
a broader skill set
boosts confidence for teaching in the classroom and online.
And even better…it’s valid forever. Which means if you decide in your later years to travel again, you won’t have to retake the course.
TEFL Teacher Guide Qualifications
Standing in front of a class of learners, no matter their age, is not as easy as it seems. There’s skills, techniques, and methods you need to know to not just recite lesson plans from a book but ensure the message and knowledge is imparted to your students. An undergraduate teaching degree equips you with these skills.
The good news is for most countries, you don’t need to have a four-year degree in order to teach a foreign language. Many countries across South America and Asia will hire you if you have accredited TEFL certification. The proper TEFL certification will give you the right training and qualifications you need to begin teaching. Alison offers a FREE Guide to Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) to arm you to succeed in your journey.
However, like in most cases where you’re applying for jobs alongside other candidates, you want to set yourself apart from the rest and stand out to the recruitment teams. You can take additional courses like The Crucial TEFL Guide to bolster your skills and give you the edge others may not have.
TEFL Guide: 6 Ways to Win Over Your Class
If you’re a TEFL teacher or looking to become one, you need support and resources to enhance your work for learners of every age group.
Engage your students. Create lesson plans and content that will interest your learners and will make them enjoy not just coming to class but enjoying the process of learning.
Have a plan and objective for your lessons. Know what you want to teach and find the right ways to do this.
Prepare pair and group work. This gives your learners opportunities to put into practice what they’ve learned.
Create a fun, activity-based learning environment. Use games and activities to make learning more interesting.
Don’t be afraid to be different. Bring your own style, personality, and creativity to the classroom and connect with your learners in a way that only you can.
Develop your teaching skills and be confident. Study. Ask questions. Explore.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language is a two-way learning street. The students leave the classroom able to speak one more language and you, the teacher, a world of priceless experiences.
Career Options With A TEFL Qualification
A TEFL qualification opens the doors to many more opportunities. There is global growth potential, and you won’t always have to stand in front of a classroom. As you gain experience as a teacher and expand your skill set with different courses, you can begin to explore teaching assistant positions, senior teaching positions and managerial posts. You can pursue being a Director of Studies at English Language Centres, be a course developer, venture into linguistics, teaching business English to corporations looking to go international, training other teachers and more. It’s not linear and your options are endless.
The countries to do this in, your choice.
Getting Started
Nobody forgets their favourite teacher. When you enrol for a few short, informative and skills rich courses like the ones available through Alison, you give yourself and career a great start. You leave each course having acquired essential knowledge and skills, you improve the skills you already have, and you learn how to communicate with others and in different environments.
A few courses will take you from being a good teacher to a great one! If you’re ready to make the leap into teaching, traveling, and discovering new worlds, your next step is to get your TEFL certification from an internationally recognised institution. Enrol in courses to add to your resume and begin applying for your new job anywhere in the world.
When you’re first starting your coding journey, deciding which programming language to learn is one of the first questions you’ll need to ask yourself. There are a lot of programming languages out there, and developers tend to have strong opinions about which languages they like (and dread) using.
Stack Overflow, the community platform where people ask and answer technical questions, surveyed more than 70,000 developers last month to determine the technologies they use most, and take the tech workforce’s pulse on relevant issues like productivity and salaries.
The survey results might inspire you to start learning something new — or at the very least, affirm your personal programming preferences.
The most popular programming languages of 2022
Curious what the most popular programming languages of 2022 are? Here are the top 10 programming languages ranked by professional developers and code enthusiasts — and how to start learning them today.
JavaScript: This versatile language frequently tops Stack Overflow’s dev survey, and for good reason. JavaScript is flexible, powerful, and crucial for making interactive web technology. If you’re new to JavaScript, start with our course Learn JavaScript, and then check out our full list of JavaScript courses and tutorials.
SQL: If you’re interested in data science, SQL is the data management language used to query and manipulate data in a relational database. In our beginner-friendly skill path Data Science Foundations, you’ll learn how to use SQL to communicate with data and get hands-on experience working with datasets. You can also start with Learn SQL to get a basic understanding of the language and how data impacts our world today.
Python: People tend to dig Python because its syntax is easy to understand and it can be used for everything from web development and machine learning to data science and financial analysis. Learn Python 3 is a solid introduction to Python programming. Or take your skills a step further with Get started with Machine Learning.
TypeScript: Technically, TypeScript is a superset that builds on JavaScript, making it easier to find potential bugs and maintain your code. In our course Learn TypeScript, you’ll learn how to apply JavaScript syntax to TypeScript’s type system.
C#: The high-level language developed by Microsoft is used for web, game, and mobile app development as well as enterprise software. Explore our C# courses to get a sense of the products you can build with C#, or start writing code right away with Learn C#.
C++: Developers use C++ for large-scale software that relies on speed and efficient memory management — like robotics, IoT devices, and AR/VR. Jump in with our Learn C++ course.
PHP: PHP works with HTML to make websites dynamic. In our course Learn PHP, you’ll put your skills to the test coding three different projects.
The most popular programming languages for learning how to code
People who are learning how to code (as opposed to professional developers) had similar responses to the survey, with HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and Python almost tied for first place:
HTML/CSS
JavaScript
Python
Java
SQL
C++
C
C#
Bash/Shell
PHP
How to choose the best programming language for you
Some other cool findings from the new survey? The most-loved programming language among developers is Rust, with 86% of respondents saying they love using the general-purpose programming language. (Keep an eye out for our new course, Rust for Programmers, which will launch this summer.) Rust and Python are the languages that developers want to work with, but aren’t already, according to the survey.
It’s fun to get an insider peek into what technologies people are using today, but remember: You can’t go wrong when you’re choosing a programming language to learn. There’s a good chance that you’ll encounter a handful of these languages as you progress as a developer and pick up new skills that transfer to other technologies. Plus, the tech landscape is always changing, so it’s in your best interest to stay flexible and keep learning.
Seeing “proficient in Microsoft Excel” listed on a job description can be confusing, even if you regularly use the Microsoft spreadsheet software. Considering the vast uses for Excel, how can you tell if you’re truly “proficient” enough to be considered for a role?
For starters, read the job description closely. If Excel proficiency is listed as a “required” technical skill, then it’s safe to assume it’s an Excel-heavy role with little room to fake it or learn on the job. But if the job description categorizes it as a “preferred” or “desired” skill, then you might be more qualified than you think.
“What it means to be ‘proficient’ is going to depend on what you need to use Excel for,” explains Ada Morse, Associate Curriculum Developer at Codecademy. For example, a Business Intelligence (B.I.) Analyst might rely on Excel to manage budgets and financial forecasts, while a project manager might use it to build an organized schedule or calendar.
The beauty of Excel is that it’s a powerful but flexible program with tons of potential use cases. “Like with a lot of programming languages, there’s thousands and thousands of functions in Excel for different things — and no one’s going to know them all,” Ada says.
Our course Learn Microsoft Excel for Data Analysis will teach you some key Excel functions, like how to import and manipulate data and create visualizations, so you can confidently claim proficiency. If you’re heading into a job interview or wondering if you have what it takes to apply to a position that involves Excel, here’s what you need to know.
What does “proficient in Excel” really mean?
Broadly speaking, being “proficient in Excel” means you understand the basic layout of the program and how certain mechanical aspects work, like formulas, functions, tables, and ranges, Ada says. Excel spreadsheets typically involve numeric data, so you should know how to complete basic computations, like calculating averages or finding the maximum and minimum values in a column, she adds.
If you’re working with a large data set, knowing how to use and control AutoFill is a great way to be more efficient, Ada suggests. Being able to filter a data set, so that you can see the data you’re actually interested in, is another way to prevent tedious scrolling, she says. And it’s a good idea to have a grasp on how to create a basic chart from your data, she says.
Similar to Microsoft Word, there are lots of opportunities to change colors and fonts within Excel spreadsheets. Knowing how to format a spreadsheet so that the content is clear and legible is certainly a good skill to have (it’s covered in our Learn Microsoft Excel for Data Analysis course), but don’t get caught up in aesthetics, because everyone has different stylistic preferences, Ada says. “People who use Excel a lot tend to get really opinionated about what the best way to use it is,” she says.
How to answer Excel interview questions
A common example of an Excel interview question that a recruiter or hiring manager might ask is: “What’s your favorite Excel formula or function?” For example, you might say you’re a fan of INDEX and MATCH or VLOOKUP, which are a few different tools that are used to find specific data cells in your spreadsheet. “Each of these has their own little finicky flaws that can get you into trouble if you don’t know how to use them properly,” Ada says.
Or an interviewer might ask you something like, “Do you know what a PivotTable is?” If you don’t know, a PivotTable is a tool in Excel that automatically restructures a table that allows you to quickly (and cleanly) summarize data with categories and subcategories.
While these might seem like oddly specific questions that are designed to trip you up, they’re really ways for recruiters to see what steps you would take to figure something out or solve a problem and how comfortable you are with the software, Ada says. “If someone doesn’t have a favorite Excel function, then probably they haven’t used it enough,” she says.
Another smart way to practice is by downloading a dataset to play around with. “Find the dataset that’s interesting to you, open it up in Excel, and start exploring,” Ada says. “Be inquisitive and see what basic questions you can ask about the dataset.” When you run into something you don’t know how to do, use your friend Google (or the Codecademy Forums) to find a tutorial, she says.
The bottom line: Proving that you’re a problem-solver and capable of learning to fill your knowledge gaps is just as valuable as showcasing your technical chops. “Being able to find out how to do the thing that you need to do is really the base level of proficiency,” Ada says.
Don’t discount your work experience or competency with other programming languages that may overlap. For example, knowing how to Analyze Data with Python could easily transfer over to roles that utilize Excel. Check out our other career paths to explore the data science field, like Data Science Foundations and Data Scientist: Analytics Specialist.
This contest is open to students 11-19 from anywhere in the world. To participate, submit a response by 9 a.m. Eastern on June 24 that answers the questions “What got your attention in The New York Times this week? Why?”
If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comment section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian and your kids or students are 11-12 years old and live in the United States, or 11-15 and live in another country, see the bottom of this post for details on how to submit.
Responses must be 1,500 characters — about 250 words — or fewer.
We hope you’ll click around nytimes.com and find your own great articles, features and multimedia. But we also know that not everyone who participates has a Times subscription. Because all links to Times content from the student features on our site are free, every week we’ll try to help by posting interesting pieces from a variety of sections.
For example, this week you may have read front-page news articles like …
Or, maybe you discovered stories in the Style, International, Sports, Business, Magazine, Arts, U.S., Travel, Science, Health or Smarter Living sections like …
If photos, videos, graphics, illustrations, quizzes or podcasts are more your style, maybe these got your attention …
Need more details? The contest rules are all here, and you can read the work of last year’s winners here. A quick overview, though:
You can choose from anything published in the print paper or on nytimes.com in 2022, including videos, podcasts, graphics and photographs. (In your response, please include the URL or headline of the piece you pick.)
We’ll post this question each Friday from today through Aug. 12, and you’ll have until the next Friday morning to respond with your picks. Then we’ll close that post and open a new one with the same question.
We’ll choose at least one favorite answer to feature on our site each week. Please note that winners from this week will be announced on Wednesday, July 6, instead of Tuesday, because of the Independence Day holiday that week.
Feel free to participate each week, but we allow only one submission per person per week.
The contest is open to students ages 11 to 19 from anywhere in the world. If you are 13 or older and live in the United States, or 16 or older from anywhere else in the world, post your response in the comments section. If you are a teacher, parent or guardian of a student or child who is between the ages of 11 and 12 and live in the United States, or 11 and 15 and live in another country, then you must submit an entry on the student’s behalf using the form below. All entries from the comments section and the form below will be judged together.
This essay, by Louisa Rosenberg-Chiriboga, age 15, from Francis Parker School in San Diego, is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s Ninth Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 16,664 entries.
We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can find them here as they post.
Black, White and Somewhere in Between
What are you?
I came face to face with the seemingly innocuous question for the first time in third grade when we were asked to check a box citing our race for a standardized test. I paused for a second, hovering over the “White,” “Hispanic/Latino” and “Other” boxes. I thought of my Jewish father, whose family I had spent many Friday night Shabbats with. I thought of my mother, whose Ecuadorean family and culture I had not yet had the opportunity to connect with. I considered my green eyes, brown hair and pale skin, which make people who pass by me view me as white. I chose the “Hispanic/Latino” box, yet I still found myself confused.
This is a universal question for mixed race students around the country. After all, it was not until 2000 that the United States Census Bureau began allowing people of mixed race status to check more than one box regarding their racial identity. But this doesn’t automatically mean that multiracial people — especially young multiracial students — grow up in an environment that understands them and helps them in the process of self-discovery.
These students are often taught in an educational setting that wants to box them neatly into one specific race. This creates a lot of pressure for students to “choose a side” and ultimately leaves them feeling like they do not belong anywhere. While something like being forced to check “Other” on an occasional survey or test may seem trivial, it is an indication of the larger erasure and invalidation of mixed race people’s identities.
According to The New York Times, the population of self-identifying multiracial people has increased 276 percent since the 2010 census, from nine million people to 33.8 million people, or more than 10 percent of the United States’ population. And as the population grows, so does the idea of being mixed race as its own identity.
Obviously, more mixed race people results in more mixed race students, which means that schools need to provide spaces for young, impressionable minds to feel acknowledged and to be able to explore and celebrate their multiple racial identities. Many schools have clubs for supporting students of a singular race (which mixed race students are still encouraged to participate in), however, there are not many organizations available for the unique multiracial experience. Faculty and administrators should work to familiarize themselves with specific mixed race struggles if we as a society want to understand and support this growing population.
We mixed race students are not going away, and like many other issues surrounding students, the education system needs to get in line.
This is a report based on a large-scale, longitudinal study (conducted over the course of 15 years) that surveyed over 1000 young people from the LGBT community about their perceptions and experiences in relation to education, work, health, and other areas. Particularly the experiences of LGBT young people in schools and related bullying paint a worrisome picture. The full report is worth a read and can be used as a basis for in-class discussions. While this piece of research focusses on a Scottish population, the findings are likely to reflect circumstances in other countries as well.
On this page, teachers can access a wide range of materials that they can use in their classroom to start their LGBTQ-Inclusive teaching journey. There are posters, infographics, notes, and more. Learn and teach about LGBTQ+ history and famous people, but there are also resources to help raise awareness for homophobic language. All materials are freely available and nicely designed for classroom implementation.
This resource offers a framework for LGBTQ inclusivity in Higher Education. It also nicely highlights what inclusivity looks like in different disciplines (e.g., Art and Humanities, Social Sciences, Law, STEM) and comes with many practical tips.
Are you interested in using multimedia to reach a diverse group of learners? In finding authentic audiences for your students’ writing? Would you like to better connect your curriculum with current events and issues?
If so, we can help. We try to meet all three of those goals every school day via the range of cross-curricular resources we publish for teachers and students. Below, in 23 free webinars featuring guest teachers and Times journalists, we explain how.
Each webinar can be viewed on-demand and at your own pace. Together they offer scores of practical strategies and activities you can use immediately — as well as inspiration for exploring The Times on your own to find the articles, images, podcasts, videos, graphics and photos that can help your students connect what they’re learning in your classroom with the world today.
I. Using The Learning Network
Would you like to use more Learning Network resources in your classroom next year? This webinar series will walk you through our daily and weekly features, like our Picture Prompts, What’s Going On in This Graph?, our lesson plans and more.
You can begin with the introductory webinar that provides an overview of everything we offer — or jump right into a feature of your choice.
II. Teaching Writing With The Times
Are you reworking your writing curriculum for the coming year? We have our own free, flexible, eight-unit writing curriculum that includes lesson plans, writing prompts, mentor texts and related student contests. This webinar series explores how we weave the work of Times journalists into lessons and activities that can teach students to hone their skills with narrative, persuasive and informational writing, all with the goal of writing for authentic audiences.
III. Science, Black History and More: Special Topics
Looking for even more ways to teach with The Times? Choose from these four on-demand webinars that focus on topics our audience told us they’d like to learn more about.
