Culture Kits on UNC Homepage--and not basketball!

So happy and proud to see my visit to an elementary school and the sharing of the Daily Life in Cairo culture kit featured on UNC's homepage. 

What a fun group this third grade class was!  They loved the stories of watermelon juice you could buy on the street, and how Cairo kids their age were learning both Arabic and English (imagine!), and the games, and (even!) the school books.  Several decided then and there that they would learn Arabic.  I hope they do. 


I'm so very excited for the students and for us!  Carolina does a great job of outreach, and our school partners are the best.  And because basketball will most certainly return to the homepage, I'm including the permanent link.  Enjoy.

Teachers for Global Classrooms Deadline March 12

I'm enormously excited about sharing information again about the upcoming Teachers for Global Classrooms applications.  And not only because this State Department-sponsored program offers great professional development (online and in person) and travel to Brazil, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco (!) or Ukraine.  Although that's certainly enough to excite any global teacher. 

What really excites me, and thrills me, quite frankly, is that I recently heard from a North Carolina teacher who applied last year, was accepted, and, in her words, is now on "an amazing journey" that will take her abroad in summer, 2012. 

This could be you, dear reader, dear teacher.  Please apply by March 12.  Go on your own amazing journey.  It's your turn. 

International Opportunities

This could be you!

Extraordinary interational opportunities here.  Please read and consider exploring.  Some January deadlines here, so get to it!

BRING THE WORLD TO YOUR SCHOOL!

Explore these fully funded programs that are supported by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and implemented by American Councils for International Education!

CONNECT INTERNATIONALLY
The Educational Seminars Program provides short-term professional development opportunities to teachers and administrators from around the world, for 2-3 week reciprocal exchange programs and one-way professional development programs. Participating countries include Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, and Uruguay for reciprocal exchanges and Greece, India, and Italy for one-way programs. 
All Educational Seminars provide airfare, training, travel health care, and living costs. For more information, please visit www.americancouncils.org/es  or email edseminars@americancouncils.org.
Upcoming Program Application Deadlines: January 6 and March 30, 2012

HOST A GUEST TEACHER
The Teachers of Critical Languages Program (TCLP) places EFL teachers from China and Egypt in U.S. K-12 host schools for an academic year where they teach Mandarin or Arabic language and culture. TCLP provides teachers’ salaries, healthcare, roundtrip airfare, training, professional development funds, and ongoing program support.
To increase the number of Americans teaching and learning these critical languages, selected host schools also receive access to grant opportunities to support language learning projects. For more information, please visit www.tclprogram.org or email tclp@americancouncils.org.
Program Application Deadline: January 9, 2012

STUDY LANGUAGE IN EGYPT AND CHINA
Intensive Summer Language Institutes (ISLI) provides fellowships for U.S. classroom teachers to spend six weeks overseas studying intermediate and advanced-level Arabic in Alexandria, Egypt, and Chinese in Changchun, China. Current K-12 teachers, community college instructors of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, and students enrolled in education programs who intend to teach these languages can apply. Participants earn ten hours of graduate credit through Bryn Mawr College, and are provided with peer tutors and roundtrip airfare. All travel and study-related costs are fully covered. For more information, please visit www.americancouncils.org/isli or email isli@americancouncils.org.
Program Application Deadline: March 2, 2012

Nobel Peace Prize 2011

The big news of the week--

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize is awarded jointly to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work".

Two African and one Middle Eastern women working for peace in challenging regions and times.   Their backgrounds and roles are each different, but their goals are the same. 

One of the best outcomes of the Nobel Peace Prize is the opportunity for all of us, students and teachers, to learn more about the most courageous people on earth.  Right now, news agencies are scrambling to get together bios, video, links, writings on the new Peace Laureates. 

Set your students to finding them!  And for now, reflect on Leymah Gbowee's comment from her phone interview today.  "Truly women have a place."

Nobel Prize for Literature

This was supposed to be the year of the Syrian poet Adonis.  Instead, the committee had a (local) surprise--

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2011 is awarded to Tomas Tranströmer "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".

And with that, let's go directly to those images.  Two poems by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer here

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011

If it's Wednesday, that means it's Chemistry. 

From the Nobel Foundation:

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Dan Shechtman "for the discovery of quasicrystals".

Quasicrystals.  And--they are?

Something so strange that when new Laureate Shechtman first saw the structure through an electron microscope, he drew three question marks and muttered to himself  "eyn chaya kazo" (Hebrew for "there can be no such creature"). 

In this YouTube video, Shechtman explains how his ten-fold symmetry discovery broke (and broke open) the laws of matter we'd assumed were universal.  Go ahead--he's a great explainer!  And you can forgive him for smiling as he talks about being ridiculed and expelled from a research group for talking about what he'd observed. 

More information about quasicrystals here.  And tantalizing connections between Shechtman's chemistry research and principles of art (including the Golden Ratio) here.

Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

It's Physics Day in Nobel Week.  This is a biggie.  It's the one Albert Einstein won, after all. 

(Drumroll) And the winners are--

"The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae" with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess."

Anybody else thinking of the scene from Annie Hall when a young Woody Allen mutters morosely that the universe is expanding, and his distraught mother yells, "What is it your business?  Brooklyn is not expanding!" 

Well, it turns out it's expanding at an even faster rate than we once thought.  Listen to a phone interview in which Adam G. Riess remembers the moment he realized what his data was revealing. (And he gives a classy hat tip to fellow Laureate Einstein.  "Maybe he should be getting the Nobel Prize again!") 

The stars--distant supernovae and otherwise--have stories well worth the exploration.  Read more about Laureates' stellar explorations here.