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College and Career Readiness through Blended Learning

Life Preparedness
Life Preparedness

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An Apple for the Teacher... a Good Teacher is Priceless

by Cathie Maglio

Or maybe chocolate…

This blog post is dedicated to all the teachers I have had, all the teachers I work with, and all teachers everywhere!

Think back to when you were in school, and the teachers that taught you. Can you remember your favorite teachers? I remember my two favorite high school teachers, Mr. Lindsay who taught me algebra and calculus and Mrs. Schack who taught me chemistry. I loved going to their classes. (I also remember some teachers who were not my favorites, but we’ll pass over that.)

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Independence Day-- or Equality Day? What are we celebrating?

by Gary Kaplan

What are we celebrating?

The Declaration of Independence is a curious document. Much of it consists of grievances against the actions of King George III which are summarized as “the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.” There are 27 discrete articles in the catalogue of complaints.

The themes are familiar: arbitrary governance and legislation; usurpation of justice and the rule of law; military occupation; economic imperialism in taxes and trade; overt military aggression and incitement of domestic insurrection. All tourists on the Freedom Trail and fans of the Boston Tea Party have heard these complaints recited since childhood.

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There Comes a Time We Must Come Together, WE Are The World

by Greg Cunningham

The world must come together

“Check your egos at the door.”

This sign, inscribed by Quincy Jones, greeted 46 world-famous singers who showed up  at the A&M Studios in Los Angeles the night of January 28, 1985, to record We Are the World for USA For Africa to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. A drought of a magnitude never seen in the region had caused famine-scale food shortages. Thousands were dying every month and horrific images of starving children haunted nightly news broadcasts around the world.

The song soared up the charts as soon as it was released, juiced by a promotion hatched by Georgia DJs Bob Wolfe of WROM-AM and Don Briscar of WKCX-FM that brought it to a wide audience, including President Ronald Reagan aboard Air Force One.

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Pandemic politics and science denial: how to measure a year

by Greg Cunningham

Pandemic politics and science denial: how to measure a year

When the number came on the screen the song popped into my head:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure? Measure a year?*

Except it wasn’t a Broadway revival. It was the latest death toll in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the number had just ticked past half a million people. We were only days away from the grimmest milestone imaginable: one person dead from Covid-19 every minute of every day. One death per minute for an entire year. How do you measure such a year?

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Cracks in the Bedrock, The destabilizing effects of inequality

by Gary Kaplan

History doesn’t repeat itself, Mark Twain observed, but it often rhymes.

Because of our peculiar history, the current calls for redirection of police funding to social programs fall with a familiar cadence at JFYNetWorks.

We are often asked what JFY stands for. It stands for Jobs For Youth, the original name of the nonprofit organization. Jobs For Youth was founded in 1976 with a Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention grant from the US Department of Justice. Our original mission was to help high school dropouts find jobs. Low-income youth were dropping out of high school at rates rising toward 20% nationally and 40% in the cities. In the early 1970s the Nixon Administration, predating Reagan, thought the best social program was a job. And so, our history began as a juvenile justice delinquency prevention program.

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Math skills. Not just a passing grade requirement, but essential for life after school

These skills are essential for life after school

There are basically two types of people in the world: those who already love math, and those who don’t love it yet. In this webinar, we explore why math skills are important, not just to pass required math classes, but also for jobs and for life after high school in our data-driven society where almost everything eventually turns out to be a numbers game.

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Star Light, Star Bright… Use the Force

Is it the end? Or just a pause for regeneration?

by Greg Cunningham, Blended Learning Specialist

On the night of December 18, 2019, a piece of my childhood came to an end. Though I would not be shocked if Disney found a way some day to resurrect the Star Wars saga, it seems that the storyline which began when I was seven years old, in the back of my parents’ car at the drive-in theater, has come to an end.

My friends and I grew up with Star Wars. Though we learned at some point that the first movie was not actually the beginning of the story, still the release of the first three movies enthralled us. I had a Luke Skywalker poster hanging in my bedroom, complete with fuzzy edges, well into my early teenage years. The action figures, which today would be worth hundreds of dollars, were scattered around the basement.

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