New Podcast: I was recently a guest on Chanelle Neilson’s Read With You Presents podcast! The topic of the interview was “How to Be Intentional with Children’s Education”. It was a great time, and we covered a lot of ground!
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to the Read With You Presents podcast here, and read the show notes here!
New Podcast: I was recently a guest on Chanelle Neilson’s Read With You Presents podcast! The topic of the interview was “How to Be Intentional with Children’s Education”. It was a great time, and we covered a lot of ground!
You can listen to the podcast here, subscribe to the Read With You Presents podcast here, and read the show notes here!
Don’t be fooled by the term “bridge fuel” to renewable energy. When my daughters were promoting a hydrogen economy back in the early 2000s, the Department of Energy (DOE) met with them to encourage them to be patient and to support the bridge fuel of natural gas to move towards renewable energy. “Natural gas” is really a misnomer. It leads one to believe that it is environmentally friendly, but it is NOT! Natural gas = METHANE.
The climate crisis is happening now and we have less than a decade to mitigate the CO2 problem that we face. So 20 years ago when Nicole and Jaclyn were promoting hydrogen fuel cells and a hydrogen economy, they were on the right track. If we would have moved to a hydrogen or any sustainable energy source over the past 20 years, we wouldn’t be on a collision course that will kill millions of people and cause billions of dollars in damages.
America has pushed natural gas production both here in the United States and all over the world. The way we get natural gas is by FRACKING. Oil and gas companies drill wells that require 1 million gallons of water per well and 50 known carcinogens to capture the methane underground. The process is sloppy and methane escapes during the fracking process. Because fracking is used all over the world and here in America, natural gas (methane) is the fastest growing fossil fuel. What’s worse, methane is a terrible greenhouse gas and it’s 20 times more powerful than CO2. The “bridge fuel” is now being called the “forever fuel.” Hmm. Sounds like a bait and switch scam.
Want to learn more about fracking and how it is contaminating the water here in the United States? Watch GASLAND 2 on vimeo.com. I’ve watched it with my students and they are standing up for their rights to clean water and the truth about our energy and corruption. Seriously, watch GASLAND 2 by Josh Fox and encourage your family and friends to do the same. For me, it was life changing.
Did you know that 7 people die in home fires every day? If you don’t have a smoke alarm in each of your bedrooms, the American Red Cross will install smoke detectors in your bedrooms for FREE!
Red Cross, firefighters, and other volunteers are installing free smoke alarms, replacing batteries in existing alarms, and giving tips on fire prevention across America. They’ve reached almost a million households.
Click here to have the Red Cross install smoke alarms in every bedroom in your home or replace batteries.
Not in California? Click here.
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I didn’t believe it when I first read it: One in five college students report not having enough food to eat on a regular basis. In America? College students? And that’s not all. One in ten students at the community colleges report not eating for an entire day.
When college dining halls fill trays of food to keep their buffets full, you know there is a lot of waste at the end of every breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours. Instead of throwing out the food, dining halls will redirect food resources to feed students who don’t have the funds to pay for meals.
The 2019 Campus Hunger Reduction Act will make sure that every college student has food to eat simply by cutting waste. Many wealthy students skip meals when they dine at restaurants or they go home for weekends or holidays. These meal credits are often lost if not redeemed within a certain time period. With the Campus Hunger Reduction Act, these lost meal swipes may be given to students who need meals. Food insecurity should not exist on campuses and it’s about time we stop overlooking it.
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So proud of Aidan Whitney. He founded Seeds of Hope – a project to plant ONE MILLION trees by 2025. The best part: all of these trees will be planted by students!
Aidan has planted 100s of trees himself, and he’s working with Bay Area teachers to encourage them to mentor students as they plant trees. He has even written curriculum and made videos to streamline the process.
Check out his website at seedsofhopeproject.com.
How do we comfort Syrian refugee children when their world is in shambles? Sesame Street to the rescue! With 6 million children displaced because of the conflict in Syria, they don’t have schools or consistency. Many have witnessed the death of their parents, siblings, and friends. A new Sesame Street program called Ahlan Simsim in Arabic offers social-emotional skills, including coping strategies like counting to five and belly breathing.
The show features 2 characters who speak Arabic and features stories about having to leave their toys at their old home and other issues that the children face in their displacement. Art therapists, psychologist, and writers collaborated to develop these programs. Leave it to Sesame Street to do the research to develop shows that address children in crisis.
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Remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter? Insurance companies are “branding” homeowners with a WILDFIRE RISK SCORE. Yup! Based on your defensible space around your home (100 feet), community wildfire-mitigation efforts (Micro Communities!), construction and roofing materials, access (one-lane or dead-end roads), slope, and vegetation, insurance companies score your home to determine if they will offer renewal policies and at what rate they will charge.
There are several types of wildfire risk scoring systems that insurance companies use. The Verisk Analytics uses FireLine and ranks homes from zero (lowest) to 30 (highest). Houses that score a 1 are not at risk (73%), but a score of 2 or 3 is considered moderate risk (12%), and anything from 4 to 30 (15%) is considered high to extremely high risk. Insurers might not cover homes with a score as low as a 6 and most likely won’t cover homes over a 10 – and that’s out of 30 points! Aegis Insurance in Truckee won’t cover anything with a Fireline score over a 2; Mercury Insurance won’t cover anything with a FireLine score higher than 12.
While your insurance company may not renew your house in the future, homeowners can always get coverage from the Fair Plan or Lloyds of London. These premiums will probably be 2 to 3 times higher than your current coverage.
Winter is the time to create 100 feet of defensible space around your house, organize your Micro Communities, and get your neighbors to do the same. Insurance companies know that even if your house is the model for fire preparedness, your neighbors have to do the same in order for your fire preparedness to be effective. You don’t want to be branded with a Scarlet Number that will determine the fate of your insurance coverage and the value of your home.
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In September, Merit Academy hosted TEDxMeritAcademy at DNA’s Comedy Lab in Santa Cruz.
Zachary George was a featured speaker, and his TEDx Talk is embedded below.
“What If We Restructured the School Calendar?” by Zachary George
Zachary proposes that we alter the traditional school schedule by replacing long summer vacation with seven, evenly distributed, one-week breaks. This revised schedule would have the same amount of learning time, just spread out to encourage a better work/life balance. By adopting Zachary’s new schedule, students will benefit by not losing academic momentum during the summer, having a consistent and supportive schedule, experiencing less burnout, and increasing their school attendance. Zachary’s schedule is not only advantageous to students but also to parents and teachers.
About Zachary George: Zachary George is a high school senior and does many activities outside of school relating to teaching through mentoring, leadership positions, and tutoring at his local high school and middle school. Zachary hopes to help improve his teaching skills and the world of education.
Do rich students have a better chance of getting into top colleges? One-hundred percent YES! 20% of millionaires under age 55 spend more than $50,000 to get their kids into college. Thanks to the college admissions scandal, we all know that wealthy parents have spent tens of thousands to millions of dollars to give their children an unfair advantage of getting into their alma maters or other elite universities.
Besides having parents who donate funds to build science labs or theaters for target colleges, many wealthy children benefit from receiving private lessons in the arts, sports, or other extracurricular activities that make them stand out to college admissions officers. They can get the best SAT/ACT preparation, hire private college advisors, have experts write their college application essays, and get “family friends of influence” to write them letters of recommendation.
As a college advisor myself, I recognize that we at Merit Educational Consultants cater to families who can afford our fees for college advisory, ProjectMerit, essay guidance, and SAT/ACT prep. But we do offer probono support for low-income students and I write blogs giving free advice for all students and parents. This doesn’t even the playing field but I hope that it helps.
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In September, Merit Academy hosted TEDxMeritAcademy at DNA’s Comedy Lab in Santa Cruz.
Spencer Balliet was a featured speaker, and his TEDx Talk is embedded below.
“Why Plastic Belongs in the Trash” by Spencer Balliet: Plastic is piling up all over the country, and we only have ourselves to blame! Spencer Balliet will talk about the problems facing the recycling industry and what can be done to fix it. This includes information about the misconceptions of plastic, what has happened to the recycling industry over the past two years, what you can do right now, and his project H.E.A.R.T. Plastics that intends to save millions of pounds of plastic from landfills all over the country.
About Spencer Balliet: Spencer Balliet has a passion for computer science and technology. He runs his own virtual reality company to help introduce world to the amazing new technology being developed.