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"The year I started teaching seventh- to twelfth-grade English in Minneapolis, Prince launched his song about urban ruin, "Sign o' the Times." That song was an apt musical backdrop for the lives of my students, most of whom lived in poverty and challenged me daily. That year also afforded me the opportunity to be assaulted with a stone, two chairs, a Rambo knife, a seventh-grade girl's weak jab, and dozens of creative swear words. Fortunately, classroom order improved when I learned that successful classroom management depends on conscientiously executing a few big strategies and a lot of little ones"

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

"I cannot count the number of times I've heard a colleague advise a student to do what makes them happy. Yet I wonder often how many teachers are happy in their jobs. In a 2012 survey, job satisfaction was at a 25-year low, teacher turnover is alarmingly high and costly, and morale is constantly under assault by social and political commentary. But who needs statistics? Just look around during a staff meeting to see the weight educators carry. In an effort to counter these patterns, stakeholders need to build systems of support for each other. It's even better when those support systems are grassroots efforts instead of mandated. One way I've done this for the past several years is through what I call the Hump Day Bump, a compilation of staff-to-staff notes of gratitude and compliments (bumps) emailed to staff each Wednesday."

GENEVA - An worldwide conference on Sunday accepted a U.N.-brokered serenity strategy that demands the development of a adjusting govt in Syria, but at Russia's insistence the bargain contract remaining the entrance start to Syria's chief professional being aspect of it. The U.S. supported away from requiring that the strategy should clearly contact for President Bashar Assad to have no part in a new Syrian govt, expecting the concession would motivate Italy to put higher stress on its long time best friend to end the aggressive attack that the resistance says has stated more than 14,000 life. But even with Russia's most specific declaration of assistance yet for a governmental changeover in Syria, it is far from certain that the strategy will have any actual impact in reducing the assault. A key expression in the contract needs that the adjusting relating to human body "shall be established on the foundation common approval," successfully providing the existing govt and the resistance veto energy over each other. Syrian resistance results instantly denied any idea of providing in a changeover with Assad, though the contract also needs protection power chiefs and solutions to have the assurance of the individuals. Assad's govt had no immediate response, but he has regularly said his govt has a liability to remove terrorists and will not take any non-Syrian style of government.

"For years, Canadian parents and educators have engaged in passionate debate over how kids learn math. The math wars, especially contentious in Alberta, have pitted "old" math versus "new," or "discovery," math. But Daniel Ansari, of the University of Western Ontario, says it's time to end the wars. The researcher says the evidence shows that the best way to teach math is with elements from both methods. He refers to the two schools as  "procedural learning" and "conceptual learning," and says they can complement each other when taught together. Ansari says he understands why the topic is so contentious, but adds that it doesn't need to be that way. He offers his solutions for educators, and for parents too. "