Dr. Michelle Holmes on the COVID Effect in Our Schools and On Our Students [Podcast]
College and Career Readiness through Blended Learning
Home Life Preparedness
Life Preparedness
There comes a time
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.
And yet it moves
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?
JFY Helps Teachers Give Rise to Student Success
College and Career Readiness is Life Readiness
JFYNetWorks closes the college readiness gap by helping young people build the skills to climb the ladder into college and on to jobs and careers. We give them the tools to do the hard work of turning their dreams into reality. That is what we mean by College and Career Ready.
Giving Thanks in a Socially Distanced Year
by Gary Kaplan
This will be a Thanksgiving like no other.
Our customary rituals of gathering and sharing will be at best constrained, at worst cancelled. The very idea of social distancing is antithetical to the spirit of the season.
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.
Math skills. Not Just a Passing Grade Requirement [VIDEO]
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.
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.
Stress and Pressure: Helping Students Navigate
We need to help them manage expectations effectively.
by Eileen Wedegartner, Blended Learning Specialist
Growing up, I remember there were high school students around me who had either attempted to take their own life or had done so. As a teen, it shook me to think that anyone felt that alone. It was sad, but it was also an anomaly.
In the last few years, a community near mine experienced a spike in suicides among high school students. It was enough of a crisis that the Boston Globe wrote about it in the article “After suicides in Acton and Boxborough, A Communion of Sorrow.”
Philosophy in a Traffic Jam; Pondering Uncultured, Aggressive, Rude Behavior
Acrimony and outlandish behavior the new norm?
by Greg Cunningham, Blended Learning Specialist
Adults are not always on their best behavior. One need only drive on the Expressway during rush hour to confirm this truth. We do the best we can, especially around children, but sometimes we’re forced to explain the behavior of other adults who should absolutely know better.
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