Nexus Showroom is Looking for Interns!
January 17th, 2012
Nexus Showroom, a high-end luxury fashion showroom in Midtown Manhattan is looking for 10-15 interns.
Duties/Tasks involve, but not limited to:
- Assist on special projects and events such as our fashion shows and sales market
- Assisting the sales department
- Merchandising showroom
- Scheduling appointments
- Assist in sales appointments
- Customer service: preparations of sales campaigns, after sales services
- Administrative duties
- Helping with daily activities
- Updating accounts, sample tracking, etc.
- PR activities: Social Media, Assist stylists, Tracking pulls and updating lists
School Credit is offered and you have the Opportunity To Display Your Own Line In Our Showroom!
Please contact Jeff at NexusShowroomNYC@gmail.com or call 917 340 1101
Tags: Interns, Nexus Showroom
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Moving Beyond Political Rhetoric in International Comparisons
January 8th, 2012
Making international comparisons about education systems was all the rage in 2011. Rhetoric suggested that America’s education system is performing so poorly that we as a nation have lost our competitive edge, and that the world’s emerging economies are out-educating us, which will result in the further decline of our nation.
I’m not sure if that rhetoric will stop in 2012, but it is time we move beyond it. How can we do that?
First off, in talking about our education system, we need to acknowledge that, as Dan Domenech (executive director of the American Association of School Administrators and chair of the Learning First Alliance Board of Directors) points out, it is actually the best that it has ever been. Graduation rates, college attendance rates and performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are at their highest levels ever. Domenech also points out that when educators and education leaders travel internationally, they find that “overseas colleagues refer to our school system as the gold standard” and “parents in every corner of the world want to send their children to American schools.”
While it is important to remember that some public schools in America are not performing nearly as well as they should, it is equally important to remember that some are doing a phenomenal job, and that many in the international community still look to us as a leader in the education field.
Second, we need to be honest about what an incomplete or misleading picture educational data (be it performance, staffing, funding or any other subcategory of educational data) can paint. For example, federal officials have claimed that students in other countries – emerging economies like China and India as well as established high-performing nations like Korea and Japan – spend more time in class than American students. If you look at the number of days students spend in school, that may be true. But a recent review by the National School Board Association’s Center for Public Education shows that actually students in the U.S. receive around the same number of instructional hours as do many of their Asian counterpoints. [It also points out that U.S. students receive more instructional hours than a number of European nations, including high-flying Finland, and that there does not seem to be a relation to time in class and student performance.] The general point: We must move beyond simply citing figures in making international comparisons.
And third, in addition to observing the educational practices in high-performing countries, we need to actually implement the policies we admire so much.
As we all know, Finland is widely touted as a model for educational excellence. Yet as a recent article in The Atlantic points out, the educational policies that politicians in the U.S. have been favoring for the past decade-plus are nothing like what exists in Finland. What do I mean? Here is the U.S. we seem to have become dependent on standardized tests. But in Finland, there are no standardized tests (aside from a matriculation exam at the end of what is roughly the equivalent of American high school).
We talk a great deal about accountability. But there is no word for “accountability” in Finnish, according to Pasi Sahlberg director of the Finnish Ministry of Education’s Center for International Mobility – “Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted.”
We allow individuals with little training into our schools to teach our children. In Finland, one must have a master’s degree to enter the teaching profession. Teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the nation. Teachers have prestige, decent pay and a lot of responsibility.
And we spend a great deal of time debating issues of school choice – charter schools, private school vouchers, inter- and intradistrict choice. But in Finland, there are no private schools. The small number of independent schools are all publicly financed, and none can charge tuition. School choice is not a priority. As the article puts it, “the main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.”
As Sahlberg is quoted, “In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same.”
That is the heart of the lesson from Finland. But as the article’s title – What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success – points out, it is something we often ignore here in America.
The goal of the Finnish education program is not excellence, but equity. The idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn. Accomplishing equity ultimately led to excellence.
Critics often charge that what works in a nation like Finland won’t work here in the U.S. Finland is small, homogeneous nation – very unlike ours. And to be sure, we shouldn’t simply import what worked in Finland. We must adapt it to our context. Still, Finland’s size and diversity are comparable to that of some U.S. states. And we must only look to Norway, as Samuel Abrams (a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Teachers College) has done, to realize that being a small, relatively homogeneous nation does not guarantee excellent educational performance. Norway has mediocre performance on international assessments. The lesson there?
“Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country’s school system than the nation’s size or ethnic makeup.”
We need to force the conversation around international comparisons beyond political sound bites, publicly acknowledging the strengths of our own system and revisiting often-cited data to get a more accurate picture of the state of education around the world.
And we must be willing to apply what we learn to our own context. One possible starting place: Finland’s revelation that “The problem facing education…isn’t the ethnic diversity of the population, but the economic inequality of society. … More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.”
Food for thought as we ponder strategies for improving education in 2012.
Tags: International Comparisons, Rhetoric
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Universities raise £50m in library fines
January 5th, 2012
Top of the pile was Leeds University, which has raised more than £1.8 million in the last six years.
In second place was Manchester University, which collected almost £1.3 million and in third was the University of Wolverhampton with £1.25 million.
At the bottom of the table was Imperial College London, which collected just £26,703 in fines.
With fines as little as 10p for each day a book is overdue, it shows that students are returning thousands of books late each year.
However, many are never returned at all as more than 300,000 books remain unaccounted for from universities across the country.
Leading the way at number one was Bucks New University with 30,540, closely followed by Oxford University with 20,923 and the University of Kent with 19,613.
In order to avoid paying the full price to their university for a new copy, some students are turning to the internet and buying replacements from Amazon.
The figures were revealed in Freedom of Information requests to all of Britain’s universities by the Press Association.
They to supply details of the amount of fines issued, the total received and the number of books unaccounted for from its libraries for the six academic years from 2004/05.
In total 101 universities responded to the request but many were unable to provide details of the amounts they fined students for returning books late.
Penalties at the universities vary.
Most students are fined 10p for every day a book is overdue, while at Edinburgh Napier University daily fines can be as much as £1 per day.
“The charge on the invoice reflects the amount it would cost us to replace the item using our normal suppliers,” the university revealed.
“Sometimes a student who has genuinely lost an item will buy it through Amazon at a reduced price and give us the book – we are very happy to accept that.
“At the end of the day our priority is to ensure that materials we have in stock for student use are available so when an item is not returned we start the invoice process with the aim of replacing the item.”
For persistent offending, students can have their library account suspended or lose access to their university’s IT system.
At Imperial College London an outstanding fine of £4 will see library privileges barred until the books are returned.
Aston University admitted that some students get around a library suspension by getting their friends to borrow books on their behalf.
“Beyond the limit of 15, borrowing is stopped until the fine is paid – although we know that in some cases students simply ask their friends to borrow for them to avoid paying the fines,” the university’s reply to the FOI request reveals.
The odd one out was the University of Westminster, which does not fine students at all for returning library books late.
Instead of a financial penalty, students are banned from using the library for the length of time that corresponds with how late their books are.
Some may even be barred from graduating if they owe their university money.
As little as a £5 debt at Exeter University will prevent graduation, as will £20 at Lancaster University or £25 at the University of Glasgow.
Other universities said they would instruct debt collection agencies if the library debts were part of other larger debts owed, such as fees and accommodation.
A Leeds University spokesman said: “The sole purpose of library fines is to prevent individuals from keeping books for unreasonably long periods and so disadvantage others who need to use them.
“We set the rates to make them a deterrent only, and not an opportunity to make money from our customers.
“The funds which are raised this way are therefore reinvested in books and services to support our customers.”
Tags: Raise, Universities Raise
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No, the school nurse is not in
January 3rd, 2012
More than half of American public schools dont have a full-time nurse, and the situation is getting worse as school systems further cut budgets. This year, 51 were laid off in Philadelphias public schools, 20 in a Houston suburb, 15 in San Diego and dozens more in other school systems nationwide.
Other schools have reduced their school nurse staffing.
At Githens Middle School in Durham, N.C., school nurse Valerie Mitchell is only there two days a week. Parent Suzanne Fuller chalks it up to luck that Mitchell was there the day her son, 12-year-old Rock, had a seizure. In addition to having seizures, Rock has an attention deficit disorder and cerebral palsy.
When the school had a fire drill a few months back, the sensory overload of the flashing lights, screaming alarm and rushing students was too much for Rock. His teacher thought he was having a seizure and called Mitchell.
“Had a bad headache, and he just felt like he was in a tunnel. That’s what he kept telling me. I just tried to keep him calm, tried to keep him comfortable. You multitask during that time,” Mitchell says.
Mitchell checked his vital signs, told the office to call his mom and cleared out the nearby students. She says Rock got through it without going into a full seizure — and he was OK by the time his mom got there. She says Mitchell made a huge difference.
“I was very lucky that she’s here,” Fuller says.
The rest of the week Mitchell bounces between four other schools. She’s the only nurse at each one.
Cutting Positions
The National Association of School Nurses reports that a quarter of schools don’t have a nurse at all.
The association’s president, Linda Davis-Alldritt, says that’s bad for schools, parents and students.
“Children are coming to school with increasingly complex medical conditions that need to be managed on a daily basis. And when there is no school nurse available, those kids are not going to be well-managed in school, and so it puts them at risk for complications,” Davis-Alldritt says.
And Davis-Alldritt says the staffing is getting worse. In the association’s most recent poll, one-third of school districts surveyed said they reduced nursing in the past year. She says the recession has dried up local and state funding for school nurses.
Sue Guptill, director of nursing in Durham, says that’s what happened in her district.
“We’ve had two that were actually cut by the state, [and] one that was actually cut by the county. And so we’ve lost three positions,” Guptill says.
Guptill says almost none of Durham’s public schools has a full-time nurse, and some schools go two weeks without a nurse visiting. She says students’ health needs fall to teachers and other staff.
“You’re asking someone who is not a health professional to make a decision about, ‘Is it time to give the child medicine? Is it time to call a parent?’ And if a kid is kind of quiet, and you’ve got a room full of kids, a teacher just might not notice,” she says.
But there’s often no one else to take care of students. At Githens Middle School, the only people trained to help diabetics inject insulin are a janitor and a records specialist.
Ryan Dozier, the records specialist, says Mitchell taught him what to do.
“Of course, you always hope that nothing serious ever happens. So that’s kind of the nerve-racking part,” Dozier says.
Back in the nurse’s office, Mitchell shows a teacher’s assistant what to do if a student has a seizure and she’s not around. She tells the assistant that the timing is crucial.
“So he comes to me now at a quarter till, and saying, ‘I don’t really feel well.’ You don’t time it from there, you time it from the time that he goes out, has a seizure,” she says. She explains that at that point, the child might be breathing very heavily or might get a little blue around the mouth as he struggles to breath.
Mitchell says this is an essential part of her job. She can’t be at five schools at once, so she teaches staff members at each how to handle emergencies, and that sometimes, it’s best just to call 911. Copyright 2012 WFAE-FM. To see more, visit .
Tags: Nurse, School Nurse
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Heading Back to School
January 3rd, 2012
1. Motivation. It’s so easy to let school slide. If you’re tired or don’t feel well, school is one of the first things to go. And after time off, it’s really hard to get up the motivation to leap back in. I suggest (and I plan to) making the first couple of days back fun days. Pull out the crafts and the educational games. Ease back into the routine by padding the way with fun rather than diving right back in to all the workbooks. I think the teacher needs this just as much as the students.
2. Lapses in memory. When I was a homeschooled kid, we did year-round school because we forgot too much if we took the summer off. The same thing can happen if you just take a few days off – your children can forget skills and concepts they were learning just before the break. If you need to backtrack, no worries-just go back to where they feel comfortable and move forward from there. It’s not a race.
3. Keeping it positive. Sometimes when we’ve taken a break, we put pressure on ourselves to get back into the swing of things. We worry about how much time we’ve lost, and if our kids are reluctant, we might put too much negativity into the process. Homeschool is about finding joy with our children, and if we get too stressed about catching up, we’re missing the most crucial part of why we chose to homeschool in the first place.
Welcome back to school, and may it be fun and rewarding for you and your children!
Tags: School
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