Help Students Skill up
 
In the past few months, we’ve experienced massive changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have lost their jobs or been furloughed. Many of us who are working are working from home. Children, teenagers and college students have transitioned to online learning, with college students moving back home. With no change in scenery for those of us who are homebound, the days seem to both stretch forever and fly by.

It seems to be a time of contradictions.

In our home, all four of us are now working or learning from home. We are blessed to have high-speed internet and enough room for each of us to focus and work. Our college student has been graceful in her reentry into our daily life, and our high school senior has been stoic and realistic about the pandemic interrupting the spring semester of his senior year. We are grateful to be home and safe but also yearning to go out and connect with others again.

From an economic perspective, some service industries (restaurants) are struggling or failing. Other industries are ramping up — information technology and health care are struggling to keep up with demand in some sectors. Friends I connect with have a variety of experiences. Some are working nonstop; others are not working at all.

The transition to sheltering at home seems to be easier for introverts than for extroverts, but everyone is dealing with a different day-to-day world than they did a few months ago. Gone are the days of running to the store on a whim, or even gathering for a sports event or concert.

What we all have in common is living in a period of uncertainty. We are not sure when the peak will happen, when we will resume somewhat normal activities and how the economy will restart.

What we should know is that we can’t wait for others to figure everything out. Each of us needs to make individual progress by either changing our business model if we own or run a business that is faltering; adding products or offerings to our clients; or changing how we deliver our value-added services. Even if we can’t figure out what we can do today, we can all spend time and effort gaining new skills and knowledge so that when this crisis has passed (and it will), we will be ready.

For parents and teachers who want to help their students gain valuable skills during this time, the FoolProofMe website offers free online learning for both middle school and high school students. Financial knowledge has always been important to me. I can remember my mother writing on the back of her checkbook every penny (yes, literally down to the penny) that she spent.

While she taught me to track my own expenses, she did not teach me about how money could and should be used. That was because she did not know that then. But she learned that later in life when she joined a ladies’ investment club.

According to a survey carried out last year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Investor Education Foundation, most Americans lack basic financial literacy. The survey asked the participants five questions covering a broad range of topics including “aspects of economics and finance encountered in everyday life, such as compound interest, inflation, principles relating to risk and diversification, the relationship between bond prices and interest rates, and the impact that a shorter term can have on total interest payments over the life of a mortgage,” according to the FINRA website.

These are basic questions that every American should be able to answer easily. FoolProofMe, whose mission is “to teach consumers the importance of using caution, questioning sellers, and relying on independent research before spending money,” provides “over 22 hours of free, online, video-driven, self-grading financial literacy instruction.”

I like the fact that the videos on the site don’t feature teachers lecturing but instead peers of the students. The high school curriculum takes 30 class days, and the middle school program features 14 class days.

The website also features specific topics including student loans, buying cars and buying homes. While we might be in the middle of a pandemic, we still have the ability to control what we do on a day-to-day basis — as for me, I’m attempting to skill up, not only myself but also my children. With 25 million middle school and high school students in the U.S., we have a great opportunity to drastically improve financial literacy. FoolProofMe, a project of the nonprofit FoolProof Foundation, gives everyone a chance to do this for free.

SOURCE




Campus shenanigans

America is reeling, facing the world’s highest COVID-19 deaths, soaring unemployment, the economy in melt down. Campuses are closed across the country; students are home with their parents or struggling to support themselves.

You’d have thought it might be time to hold back on the campus gender wars, but, oh no, the feminists aren’t going to let up on their campaigns.

Two weeks ago, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) wrote to the Education Department urging the bureaucrats to set aside the Trump administration’s moves to end campus kangaroo courts. The lawyers argued that at this time of national emergency it wasn’t appropriate to push forward “fundamentally flawed” changes to the rules.

This is simply their latest tactic in an almighty battle which has been taking place ever since Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy de Voss, announced in 2017 that the administration proposed changes to the tribunal system set up by Obama who used anti-discrimination, Title IX legislation, to require publicly funded universities to tackle sexual violence. The tribunals evolved into a grossly unfair system, leading to over 200 successful lawsuits against universities for failing to protect the due process rights of the accused.

Fourteen months after de Voss’ initial announcement, the proposed reforms to Title XIV were announced, which, although far from perfect, went some way towards addressing obvious deficiencies.

The battle was on. The NWLC tried a lawsuit to stop the changes which was eventually dismissed by the court. Then they tried every possible means to extend the period for public comments on the proposed changes, mounting a social media campaign telling De Voss to “keep her hands off Title IX”.

Next came an amusing little development. Take a look at the attached little Instagram video featuring Meredith Smith, a university bureaucrat, revealing the NWLC’s tactic of organising endless meetings between victim rights groups and administration bureaucrats, which serves to push the release date back. The aim is to stall until after the November 3 election, given that Joe Biden has promised to leave the current stacked tribunal system firmly in place.

All this latest news of the US campus struggle comes from SAVE, the excellent American lobby group which has spent years exposing what’s happening at their universities.

Email from Bettina Arndt: Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au





Australia: A dozen students per classroom, disinfection after every lesson, no stationery or canteen: How pupils' school life will change forever after COVID-19

Children will be returning to school in Queensland for the first day of term two

Those few teachers and students who do go to school for term two will encounter a very different classroom to the ones they knew before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some children returned to school in Queensland for the first day of term two on Monday after five weeks of learning from home during state-wide lockdowns.

Queensland's policy was largely the same as New South Wales - that distance learning was preferred and schools were only for the children of those who must work outside the home during the lockdown.

Pupils in Queensland now have to bring their own stationery to school and use hand sanitisers as they walk between classrooms that will allow no more than 12 people per 52 sq/m room.

Schools have had to rearrange furniture in classrooms to maintain those social distancing protocols by keeping people at least 1.5m away from each other.

Frequent cleaning has also been recommended by state authorities with special attention placed on light switches, door handles, desks, toilets, taps and sinks.

The Gap State High School in Brisbane sent letters to parents with a full list of changes, The Courier Mail reported.

It had employed cleaners during the school day to disinfect classrooms, furniture and bathrooms during breaks.

At that school, a maximum of ten students will be assigned per classroom for all lessons throughout the day.

Students must bring their own food, as the canteen will be closed and pupils will not be allowed to leave school grounds to buy lunch.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stressed that schools are only open for vulnerable children and children of essential workers who are unable to learn remotely.

As a result, The Gap State High School will send attendance surveys to parents each fortnight so school authorities can decide how many teachers they need on site and how to ensure social distancing policies are being met.

'If you are working from home and incapable of supervising to ensure your child is getting online resource work happening then contact your principal,' Ms Palaszczuk said. 'But now is not the time to be sending your child to school if you don't meet those categories.'

Queensland Education Minister Grace Grace said sending the children of non-frontline workers to school would make social distancing protocols impossible to meet, jeopardising the safety of students and teachers.

'We want to make sure we can exercise social distancing, we want schools to be a safe environment because remember if there is an outbreak at a school, it will immediately be shut down and parents will have to cope with that.'

The new procedures are expected to run for five weeks and will be reevaluated on May 22.

It comes after Ms Palaszczuk announced that 5,254 laptops would be distributed to students across the state to ensure all pupils could continue their education from home.

Telstra donated 5,000 simcards and 4,000 dongles and hotspot devices to make sure all children had access to internet learning portals.

Up to 15 per cent of the state's students are expected to show up at school on Monday.

SOURCE