July 30, 2010

SENATE VOTE SCHEDULED FOR MONDAY ON EDUCATION JOBS

This week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blocked the Senate from voting on an education jobs amendment as part of a larger bill on small business. But, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has scheduled another vote for Monday evening, August 1. The package being considered will provide $10 billion to save over 135,000 education jobs. It will also provide funds for Medicaid to help prevent more deep cuts to the programs that serve our most vulnerable populations.

We are facing an education crisis, with hundreds of thousands of educators being laid off, class sizes growing, and programs critical to students’ success being cut or eliminated. Our students’ education and the future of our nation are at stake! EVERY VOTE COUNTS and every Senator needs to hear a strong message of support. Tell your Senatorts to stand up for what is right!

CONTACT YOUR SENATORS TODAY:

E-mail your Senators. Tell them to VOTE YES on a $10 billion education jobs package (H.R. 1586).

Call 1-866-608-6355 to contact your Senators. You will hear talking points and will be connected to the United States Capitol Switchboard - ask for one of your Senators. Tell your Senator that public education faces a budget catastrophe and that he/she should VOTE YES on a $10 billion education jobs fund. Remember to call back to speak with your other Senator.

Ask your colleagues, friends, and family to call and e-mail the Senate too.

NEA Government Relations
202-822-7300
http://www.nea.org/lac

1201 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

Education Insider is sent to your in-box once a week. We deliver inside information on developments in the federal government that affect children and public education. If you find this information useful, tell a friend. They can sign up for their very own copy at http://www.nea.org/lac and click on “Become a cyber-lobbyist and subscribe to our weekly e-mail newsletter”.

This list conforms to the Acceptable Use Policy of the National Education Association for electronic mailing lists. To receive a copy of that policy, send email to list-aup@list.nea.org

Over the past 10 months, Money Talk has covered a number of subjects related to helping you achieve your financial goals. In this post, I’ve linked some great online feature articles and calculators you may have previously missed on subjects that can help you recommit to meeting your 2010 resolutions.

Financial Resolution #1: Save More - Sounds easy, right? But changing your habits so that you save more of your take home pay sometimes requires creative thinking. First, if you have regular child care or medical expenses, be sure to look into flexible savings accounts. Seek out employer matches to your retirement contributions; if available, and if you are over the age of 50, you’re eligible to use catch-up contributions. Don’t forget to investigate whether you are qualified to use the educators’ expense deduction or lower income saver tax credit. Lastly, check out the online calculators How Much Should I Set Aside for Emergencies? and for longer term or retirement saving, Am I Saving Enough? What Can I Change?

Financial Resolution #2: Spend Less - This goal goes hand in hand with saving more, but requires diligence to break some “less than helpful” spending habits you may not even know you have. Be sure to seek out discounts wherever you can like brown bagging lunches and bringing your own coffee to work. Use the public library and other free community resources whenever you can, and read Works4Me to find creative cost savings for the classroom. Also, don’t forget to check out online budgeting tools like How Much Am I Spending?, What’s it Worth to Reduce My Spending? and How to Make a Budget and Stick to It.

Financial Resolution #3: Decrease Debt - To be effective in decreasing the amount you owe on debt, consistency is key. Develop a plan you can stick with to break down your debt and learn about the fees you are paying on the consumer debt you currently carry. Other good debt decreasing advice can be found in the article Using a Snowball to Melt Away Debt and for education related debt read Put Your Debt in Detention.

Financial Resolution #4: Learn More about Finance - This topic can sound overwhelming and ever changing, but just like eating the proverbial elephant, take it one bite at a time and consider it lifetime learning. A good start is to pick a few smaller topics and build from there, such as determining your financial opportunity cost, understanding the rule of 72 and how compounding and dollar cost averaging work. For some investing basics, review subjects like risk tolerance, asset allocation and the reasons for rebalancing. Lastly, bookmark the Money Features section of neamb.com and check it regularly for new articles on the subjects of finance, money and saving.

In a way, his predicament was perfectly understandable. Of the tens of thousands of visitors to Japan, how many actually make the effort to tackle the written language? To be fair, the challenge can seem daunting: the hiragana syllabary, which represents the bottom rung of the ladder, consists of at least 46 basic symbols and score of derivatives. The same is true of katakana, and when we come to kanji, the ideograms that make up the core of the language, we are faced with memorizing about 2,000 characters and at least as many compounds if we want to reach even high-school level literacy.

Yet many do manage to attain this level of mastery, or even beyond. Each year, the national Japanese Language Proficiency Test, the benchmark for language learning, is held at centers throughout the country. Hundreds come to try for a certificate, sitting tests held completely in Japanese, even at the lowest levels. Some do it for the prestige and job opportunities, but I suspect that most just want the satisfaction of knowing that they have progressed beyond the fumbling, Japanese-English bar conversation stage, and are on their way to real independence and cultural immersion.

I did it. After six years or so of piecemeal study while teaching English I decided to buckle down get ready for the examinations. Taking one a year, I finished with the highest certificate after four years. Along the way, I turned my hobby into a vocation by finding a translation agency willing to hire me, despite my “intermediate” ability. Years later, I still earn a living as a translator, though now from outside Japan. My customer base is worldwide, and I am rarely without work, which arrives on a regular basis by email (have laptop will travel!)

As another example, a friend came to Japan with no knowledge of the language, and after a year’s immersion course was accepted at Kyoto University, one of the most prestigious in the country. Writing all his essays and exams in Japanese, he completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, and then moonlighting as a translator, went on to continue his education in graduate school - not bad for an ordinary kid from the Philippines!

Of course, there is no such thing as a leap into literacy - like everything else worth doing, written Japanese is best tackled in manageable stages. And stage I is mastery of hiragana.

Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Hiragana

The purpose of this book is to help ESL learners at the intermediate level with the potentially confusing turns of phrase common to English articles online, in magazines and in newspapers. ESL veterans will appreciate that while many books cover English grammar and vocabulary, there are precious few dealing specifically with idioms, verbs, and other compound constructs from a practical perspective. My goal has been to create a workbook systematic enough to integrate easily into a variety of academic contexts, making the learning experience as efficient and painless as possible.

This book actually stems from my experiences as a Japanese translator. Working at an agency in Hiroshima, I was struck by the number of questions I was fielding from coworkers trying to make sense of English newspaper articles and other challenging documents. On closer inspection, most of the difficulties seemed to involve idioms (on the loose, public outcry), constructs that are poorly covered in many textbooks and are difficult to look up due to their compound nature. In discussing this issue with friends and teachers it became apparent that related grammar elements such as connectors (as…as a) and verbs of one type or another (to show promise) present similar problems for non-native speakers. I began collecting examples of the most commonly misunderstood offenders, and ultimately put together the manuscript over the course of about two years.

Applications: On one level, the book functions as a simple guide to the meanings of nearly 200 connectors, phrasal verbs, idiomatic verb-phrases, and expressions. Individual sections can also be introduced a few pages at a time into almost any classroom situation, gradually building English comprehension. To develop full lessons of 40 minutes or more, I would recommend supplementation with materials on mass-media, the internet, and current events. The tips sections on website content deal with the typical structure of online articles, and are best covered as part of a writing class with internet access. The mini-quizzes at the end of each unit provide immediate feedback about the progress of the students, and can also serve as a template for the creation of your own tests and exams.

Reading English News on the Internet: A Guide to Connectors, Verbs, Expressions, and Vocabulary for the ESL Student

Elmer’s will donate $10 per each post written to Adopt-A-Classroom, up to $10,000. Bloggers participate by giving away a virtual bag of school supplies and creating a blog post with the specific rules listed at the Bag It Forward site (click here).

This starts today, July 22, and ends midnight EST on Thursday, August 12.

If you don’t blog yourself, please tell any friends that do and have them participate.

A good first step to take is to read the online Wills FAQ. Wills eliminate any misunderstandings by making sure your final wishes are followed and your estate assets go to those loved ones you choose, instead of whom the state intestate laws dictate (see the articles What happens when you die without a will? and Avoiding Probate). For more detailed will information, nolo.com and NEA MB have some interesting articles on simple wills, leaving an inheritance to children and whether you really need a lawyer to make a will.

Next, be sure the person you designate in your will to be your personal representative or estate executor knows where you keep your documents, including your will, by reviewing the online article Getting Organized Now. Furnish your family or personal representative with a detailed record of up-to-date legal, financial, and personal information and provide them with access to copies of medical treatment instructions or your living will so that your last wishes for your medical care are also followed. Having this information will help alleviate added strain during what is often already a painful and difficult time for your family.

Finally, don’t forget to revise your will and final instructions when life events change your circumstances (see Is It Time to Change Your Will?). And as part of those revisions, always update beneficiaries on retirement accounts and insurance policies which are not governed by the instructions in your will or intestate court decisions due to the nature of their beneficiary designation.

http://dailyschedule-lgallego.blogspot.com

http://horariodiario.blogspot.com

The first step is to check out the great tips on 10 Ways to Go Green in your school from nea.org and how to Green Your Classroom. You can also find information on Teaching Students About Carbon Emissions.

For greener living at home, look into the Greener Living Online Tools available at neamb.com. Be sure to check out the Energy Savers Audit tool and the Everyday Living’s Home Energy Savers Guide. Both could save you hundreds of dollars on your energy bills.

Two of my personal favorite “green” savers are bringing my own reusable bags to the grocery store and using CFL’s, or compact fluorescent lamps or light bulbs, instead of incandescent ones. At 5¢ a bag, I usually save around 30¢ each grocery trip with my reusable bags while reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills. In addition, CFL bulbs use 75% less energy than their incandescent counterparts and last 10 times longer. A single CFL light bulb will save you around $30 over its lifetime. Remember, every little bit helps!

And if all of these ideas have inspired you to do more, be greener, and encourage your students to do the same, be sure to apply online for the NEA’s Green Across America grant program. Hurry, though, as the program is only available for a few more weeks and applications will only be taken until Friday, July 30^th!

For this concert, OfficeMax, one of Adopt-A-Classroom’s national sponsors, committed $50,000 to a fundraising challenge that matched every dollar donated for Nashville-area schools up to a total of $50,000. The money will help replenish much needed classroom supplies for the schools affected by the floods.

While classes are out for the summer, you can still support our students and teachers in Nashville and all across Tennessee and, in fact, throughout the United States. We know that the teachers would sure be happy to have a classroom grant and donated funds available for when school starts up again in August/September. Just go to www.AdoptAClassroom.org.

Identity theft can take many forms, your wallet may be stolen or you may be phished and provide personal information unwittingly while you’re online. In many instances, like mine, you may not even know something is wrong until your identity is already compromised. Weeks before we were to close on a new house, I found out someone had made $18,000 worth of charges in my name in another state. It was only after statements started arriving in my mailbox that I even knew there was a problem.

Taking some simple steps can help prevent you from being a victim. Shred paper statements or anything that has account numbers or personal information on it before disposing of them. And never give out your password, PIN, or social security number to someone you don’t know or you can’t verify has a need for that specific information. You can get more useful information and tips on identity theft prevention in these great online articles: Fighting Back Against Identity Theft, Don’t Let the Grinch Steal your ID, and Phishing: Don’t Get Hooked by Internet Fraudsters. For older members, NEA MB also has information available in the Healthy Wealthy & Wise consumer guide on avoiding scams (see page 19).

And lastly, if you are thinking about taking more proactive steps towards protecting yourself and your identity, check out the NEA ID Theft Protection Program.