GO STEMXchange Scholarship

Free Online Course on eHealth

The course will start on 6 February

http://usascholarships.com/free-online-course-eh

Coursera - Free Online Courses From Top Universities

Want to better understand the art you see at MoMA? Our free online course Modern Art & Ideas is the perfect introduction. Sign up via Coursera by October 31.

[Felix Gonzalez-Torres. “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers). 1991. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. © 2016 The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York]

(via Coursera - Free Online Courses From Top Universities)

Scholarship: The CM CARES Religious Scholars Program

Application Deadline: April 15th, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/cm-cares-religious-scholars-program/

When you factor in tuition, room and board, books and other fees, this is what going to a top 10 school will run you yearly. And this photoset doesn’t even include the most expensive school of the top 10. Yes, it gets worse.

Scholarship: Accenture Student Veterans Scholarship

Application Deadline: March 31, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/accenture-student-veterans-scholarship/

The king of veterans, Shuutoku High School!

Scholarship: Nordson BUILDS Scholarship Program

Application Deadline: May 15, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/nordson-builds-scholarship-program/

I Lie About My Teaching

Here is an interesting article I came across in The Atlantic. 

The story of a Teacher and how we portray our lives to others in the field. What are your thoughts? 

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I liked Devon. We were all first and second-year teachers in that seminar—peers, in theory—but my colleague Devon struck me as a cut above. I’d gripe about a classroom problem, and without judgment or rebuke, he’d outline a thoughtful, inventive solution, as if my blundering incompetence was perhaps a matter of personal taste, and he didn’t wish to impose his own sensibilities. When it fell upon us each to share a four-minute video of our teaching, I looked forward to Devon’s. I expected a model classroom, his students as pious and well-behaved as churchgoers.

Instead, the first half of Devon’s four-minute clip showed him fiddling with an overhead projector; in the second half, he was trotting blandly through homework corrections. The kids rocked side to side, listless. For all his genuine wisdom, Devon looked a little green, a little lost.

He looked, in short, like me.

Teachers self-promote. In that, we’re no different than everyone else: proudly framing our breakthroughs, hiding our blunders in locked drawers, forever perfecting our oral résumés. This isn’t all bad. My colleagues probably have more to learn from my good habits (like the way I use pair work) than my bad ones (like my sloppy system of homework corrections), so I might as well share what’s useful. In an often-frustrating profession, we’re nourished by tales of triumph. A little positivity is healthy.

But sometimes, the classrooms we describe bear little resemblance to the classrooms where we actually teach, and that gap serves no one.

Any honest discussion between teachers must begin with the understanding that each of us mingles the good with the bad. One student may experience the epiphany of a lifetime, while her neighbor drifts quietly off to sleep. In the classroom, it’s never pure gold or pure tin; we’re all muddled alloys.

I taught once alongside a first-year teacher, Lauren, who didn’t grasp this. As a result, she compared herself unfavorably to everyone else. Every Friday, when we adjourned to the bar down the street, she’d decry her own flaws, meticulously documenting her mistakes for us, castigating herself to no end. The kids liked her. The teachers liked her. From what I’d seen, she taught as well as any first-year could. But she saw her own shortcomings too vividly and couldn’t help reporting them to anyone who’d listen.

She was fired three months into the year. You talk enough dirt about yourself and people will start to believe it.

Omission is the nature of storytelling; describing a complex space—like a classroom—requires a certain amount of simplification. Most of us prefer to leave out the failures, the mishaps, the wrong turns. Some, perhaps as a defensive posture, do the opposite: Instead of overlooking their flaws and miscues, they dwell on them, as Lauren did. The result is that two classes, equally well taught, may come across like wine and vinegar, depending on how their stories are told.

Take the first year I taught psychology. I taught one section; my colleague Erin taught the other.

When I talked to Erin that semester, she’d glow about her class. Kids often approached her in the afternoons to follow up on questions, and to thank her for teaching their favorite course. Her students kept illustrated vocab journals totaling hundreds of words. They drew posters of neurons, crafted behaviorist training regimes, and designed imaginative “sixth senses” for the human body. Erin’s mentor teacher visited monthly and dubbed it an “amazing class” with “incredible teaching.”

Catch me in an honest mood, and I’ll admit that I bombed the semester. I lectured every day from text-filled overhead slides. Several of my strongest students told me that they hated the class and begged for alternative work. I wasted three weeks on a narrow, confining research assignment, demanding heavy work with little payoff. One student openly plagiarized another. I wound up failing several students who, in hindsight, I should have passed. Yet I know that this apparent train wreck of a class was, in truth, no worse than Erin’s.

That’s because I made Erin up. The two classes described above were the same class: mine. Each description is true, and neither, of course, is wholly honest.

I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my teaching. When talking to other teachers, I often play up the progressive elements: Student-led discussions. Creative projects. Guided discovery activities. I mumble through the minor, inconvenient fact that my pedagogy is, at its core, deeply traditional. I let my walk and my talk drift apart. Not only does this thwart other teachers in their attempts to honestly evaluate my approach, but it blocks my own self-evaluation. I can’t grow properly unless I see my own work with eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.

I had a private theme song my first year teaching: “Wear and Tear,” by Pete Yorn. It was my alarm in the mornings, my iPod jam on the commute home. The chorus ended with a simple line that spun through my head in idle moments and captured the essence of a year I spent making mistake after rookie mistake: Can I say what I do?

It’s no easy task for teachers. But I think we owe it, to ourselves if to no one else, to tell the most honest stories that we can. I’ll only advance as a teacher, and offer something of value to those around me, if I’m able to say what I do.

Source: The Atlantic

Share some feedback. What are your thoughts of the article? 

Scholarship: The Farm Kids for College Scholarship

Application Deadline: April 13, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/farm-kids-college-scholarship/

Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University

Scholarship: Freeman Awards for Study in Asia

Application Deadline: March 1, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/freeman-awards-study-asia/

Imagine calling Woozi (and the rest of Seventeen) whenever you start getting nervous because you know their voices and sweet words can help you calm down.

Scholarship: The Farm Kids for College Scholarship

Application Deadline: April 13, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/farm-kids-college-scholarship/

Bouyant and beautiful

Residents of Laurel, Delaware, will have a new water feature to check out this year - a floating wetlands structure designed to improve water quality in the town park.

The device was designed by five University of Delaware engineering students - Danielle Gerstman of Chalfont, Pa., Sarah Hartman of Wilmington, Del., Erica Loudermilk of Lothian, Md., Mark White of Wilmington, Del., and recent graduate Megan Doyle - and can be placed in rivers, ponds and areas that are not part of a natural structure.

Plantings for the six-sided structure are chosen for the way they interact with water - removing nitrogen and phosphorus with both high efficiency and beauty.

The team worked with faculty advisors Dustyn Roberts and Kurt Manal, with participation from UD’s Sustainable Coastal Communities Initiative and Delaware Sea Grant, Andrew Hayes and landscape design expert Jules Bruck of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“I am excited about the floating wetland project because of the potential it has to improve water quality both locally and around the world,” Sarah said. “This novel approach to surface water treatment is aesthetically appealing and educational by nature, allowing the community where it is deployed to learn the value of clean water and the science behind how natural wetlands treat water.”

Scholarship: The CM CARES Religious Scholars Program

Application Deadline: April 15th, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/cm-cares-religious-scholars-program/

Temple University ‘19

Come chat <3

loveisneverwrong96.tumblr.com

Scholarship: Nordson BUILDS Scholarship Program

Application Deadline: May 15, 2017

Link: http://usascholarships.com/nordson-builds-scholarship-program/

A guide to being a vocal citizen

For people wondering how to take action post-election of a racist demagogue (pulled from Twitter and cleaned up):

Make a spreadsheet or a file for your representatives with names, addresses to their offices, phone numbers, and contact forms. Put everyone there. Make a note in your calendar app to check in on issues once a month.

Pay attention to news. If you get angry, upset, or worried, seek support from friends but ALSO shoot these reps an email, too. Be courteous but firm and blunt. It’s a numbers game. Often we remain invisible because we don’t go to events and rallies and can’t be physically present. But we can attach our names to emails, we can write letters, we can be vocal. We don’t have to be invisible.

You can do this with your national reps, state reps, and local reps. If someone reps you anywhere, note them. Open a line and revisit it. It’s hard work and slow. One email at a time. One letter at a time. One call at a time. Emails are easy these days, so splurge every few months on a stamp and send a letter if you can. Put your humanity in front of these people. Flout it. Some won’t care, but others will. Change ONE mind and results can cascade.

Rural areas are bubbles full of bigotry and now it’s newly revealed. But we white people who live here have the clout and power! We can speak up when our reps say terrible things, and do terrible things, and vote terrible ways. We can go “I am disappointed in you.” It’s work, but as we’ve seen the last six months, it’s time for us to do that work. If someone goes “who are your reps” you gotta know. If you don’t know and you’re mad about this election, it’s time to create that file and keep it with you and use it.

The time for social media rants only is over. Or, do those, but maybe pull those threads out into a paragraph and send them to your reps. And don’t ONLY email or contact when things go badly. Also reach out when things go right. Even if they voted AGAINST something. Treat them like you would want to be treated if you were wrong or mistaken. But we’ve gotta reach out and let them know we’re here.

Anyway, I know this is hard work. If you need help collecting your reps, give me a ping via DM and I’ll help you get started.

The Grote Chemistry Scholarship Program

Dear Sir/Madam,

The Grote Chemistry Scholarship Program is available for the students who had completed a course in high school chemistry and had achieved grade point average of 3.5 or above.

Application Deadline is February 15, 2017

We thought your students might find this information useful.

http://usascholarships.com/grote-chemistry-scholarship-program/