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Education

Teacher's messy descriptive writing lesson goes viral

Descriptive writing is important, even if you have no plans to become a bestselling novelist. When you're tasked with writing instructions for a new employee or even for the babysitter while you take a much needed night out, having a firm grasp of descriptive writing comes in handy. It only takes one time reading Amelia Bedelia to see why accurately describing things can make things a little easier.

Kay Sloan is a first and second grade looping teacher, meaning she stays with the same students through both grades. Recently she gave the kids a descriptive writing assignment where they needed to tell her how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To demonstrate how well they did on their descriptive writing, Sloan used their assignment as directions. But instead of inferring what the students meant and filling in the blanks with her own knowledge, she made the sandwiches as literally as possible following the descriptions given.

Peanut Butter And Jelly GIF by EvaGiphy

It was immediately clear to the students that she was making the sandwich wrong. The first paper must've read to get bread, put jelly on one side and peanut butter on the other side because Sloan takes an unopened loaf of bread, globs jelly on top of the plastic wrapping then flips the unopened loaf over to smear peanut butter on the other side. Shouts and giggles can be heard while the teacher tries to keep it together.

In a later clip she's smearing the sandwich fillings on her arms as the kids squeal in the background. At this point it's probably safe to say that the children likely think their teacher as essentially lost her mind. Surely there's a student watching this occur wondering if they should go get another adult.

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Of course she explains what she's doing before she starts just slopping jelly all over the nearest desk but it still doesn't stop her students from being confused. One paper simply says "you get bread. You get peanut butter and you get jelly." There were no further instructions so she stood with all the ingredients in her arms asking if she succeeded in making a sandwich.

While still sporting her peanut butter and jelly covered arms, she brings home the lesson, "so we just did a whole lesson on adding detail to our writing. Do we understand why you have to have detail? Did anybody ever mention a plate or a knife? Did we even use these? All I did was exactly what you told me to do. So do we see how important it is to include all of the correct steps?"

That's certainly one way to get a lesson to stick, quite literally. Commenters love the teacher's dedication to the lesson, with one writing, "THIS. IS. A. TEACHER. They truly don’t pay you enough."

Another praises, "Honey you taught the heck out of that lesson!! They’ll never forget the details that are necessary for descriptive writing!!"

"Descriptive writing! They’ll Remeber this for sure!!! Success!" someone else says.

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"Imagine those kids going home and trying to explain this to their parents," another commenter laughs.

"I work in management at an assembly plant. We did this same exercise to demonstrate the importance of details in each job instruction sheet. A room full of adults all had these same reactions lmao" someone else chimes in.

"This is actually a great way to teach kids about writing code. Computers are just electronic Amelia Bedelia," one person shares.

Some helpful information to fight misinformation.

The rise of misinformation on social media has been a monumental stress test for the world’s critical thinking skills. Misinformation has had a huge influence on elections, public health and the treatment of immigrants and refugees across the world. Social media platforms have tried to combat false claims over the years by employing fact-checkers, but they haven’t been terribly effective because those who are most susceptible to misinformation don’t trust fact-checkers.

“The word fact-checking itself has become politicized,” Cambridge University professor Jon Roozenbeek said, according to the Associated Press. Further, studies show that when people have incorrect beliefs challenged by facts, it makes them cling to their false assumptions even harder. These platforms have also attempted to remove posts containing misinformation that violates their terms of service, but this form of content moderation is often seen as insufficient and is often applied inconsistently.

misinformation, conspiracy theories, tin foil hat, fake news, debunking false informationConspiracy theorists are associated with tin foil hats.via Mattias Berg/Flickr

How do we combat dangerous misinformation online if removing false claims or debunking them hasn’t been effective enough? A 2022 study published in the journal Science Advances by a team of university researchers and Jigsaw, a division of Google, found a relatively simple solution to the problem they call “pre-bunking.”

Pre-bunking is an easy way of inoculating people against misinformation by teaching them some basic critical thinking skills. The strategy is based on inoculation theory, a communication theory that suggests one can build resistance to persuasion by exposing people to arguments against their beliefs beforehand.

The researchers learned that pre-bunking was effective after conducting a study on nearly 30,000 participants on YouTube.

“Across seven high-powered preregistered studies including a field experiment on YouTube, with a total of nearly 30,000 participants, we find that watching short inoculation videos improves people’s ability to identify manipulation techniques commonly used in online misinformation, both in a laboratory setting and in a real-world environment where exposure to misinformation is common,” the recently published findings note.

The researchers uploaded videos into YouTube ad slots that discussed different types of manipulative communication used to spread false information such as ad hominem attacks, false dichotomies, scapegoating and incoherence.

Here’s an example of a video about false dichotomies.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Researchers found that after people watched the short videos, they were significantly better at distinguishing false information than they were before. The study was so successful that Jigsaw is looking to create a video about scapegoating and running it in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries are all combating a significant amount of false information about Ukrainian refugees.

Many people talk about "critical thinking," but a lot of people don't really understand what the term means. Learning about the tropes and techniques used to spread misinformation is a vital part of developing critical thinking skills. It's not just about thinking for yourself and determining what's true based on what your brain tells you; it's about recognizing when messaging is being used to manipulate your brain to tell you certain things. It's learning about logical fallacies and how they work. It's acknowledging that we all have biases that can be preyed upon and learning how propaganda techniques are designed to do just that.

There’s an old saying, “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. Teach that man to fish and he’ll eat forever.” Pre-bunking does something very similar. We can either play a game of whack-a-mole where social media platforms have to suss out misinformation on a minute-by-minute basis or we can improve the general public’s ability to distinguish misinformation and avoid it themselves.

Further, teaching people to make their own correct decisions about misinformation will be a lot more effective than pulling down content and employing fact-checks. These tactics only drive vulnerable, incredulous people toward misinformation.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

Education

Mom is shocked when her daughter says state writing exams don’t involve writing anymore

“Are you saying that in the 1900s you had to hand write all of your exams?”

Mom shocked after daughter reveals there's no writing in state writing exam.

State standardized testing isn't something that most kids or parents look forward to. They're typically long, boring, and don't accurately measure how well every child understands the information they've been taught throughout the year. But it's currently the only way for states to get measurable data on the education happening in public schools.

Erin Monroe was driving her daughter to school when she learned her daughter had state testing in English Language Arts (ELA). To no one's surprise, Monroe's daughter was not thrilled about taking state testing, especially for a test that likely required a lot of reading and writing. This was Monroe's time to shine by pulling out her pep talking and comforting skills to ensure her 6th grader had positive words to remember during testing.

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The mom wasn't prepared for the emotional whiplash she was about to endure when her daughter dropped the truth of her ELA exam. There's no manual writing involved.

"I was like, I get it. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of reading and writing but we all had to do it. Just do your very best and get to it, I know your hand's going to really be hurting at the end of the day," Monroe recalls about the conversation with her confused daughter before reiterating to her child that it involves a lot of writing.

This bit of information not only confused but amused the middles schooler who came back with a bit of a reality check for the mom by giving her the amusing truth of today. "And she goes, 'wait, are you trying...are you saying that in the 1900s you had to handwrite all of your exams?'"

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She threw in the 1900s. THE. 1900s. As if to make it seem like this millennial mom was really riding in a buggy trying to survive dysentery. After the insult and revelation that there was no handwriting involved in the state ELA test, Monroe jokingly kicked her daughter out of her car.

"You're trying to tell me you're complaining about doing your exam and you get to type it? Um, absolutely not. First of all don't call it the early 1900s and it was good character development," Monroe says she told her daughter.

There's something about the reminder of growing up in the "1900s" that just takes the wind out of your metaphorical sailboat. Viewers of the video were equally amused and shocked by this seemingly new information with one person recalling, "The fear they instilled in us for not having #2 pencils."

"Do the blue books not exist anymore?!?!?!?!?" someone demanded to know.

"My kids literally said their state tests are on their laptops & I wholeheartedly got mad for a second, if you don’t give these kids a scantron!!!!!!!" another chimes in.

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"I still have the calluses on my index finger… 20 years later," someone else jokes.

"My 6th grader was also complaining about her writing exam and it never even occurred to me that she wasn't actually writing.. I'm going to go sit in the rocking chair and watch Wheel of Fortune," another commenter writes.

"I was showing kids the 'tools' they can use to take their test - ruler, highlighter, magnifier, etc. I'm the librarian and also teach some tech, but I used to teach 4th grade, so I was explaining that the last time I gave the test, it was on paper and the tools were cardstock. One of the kids said, 'What, in, like, 1965'?' I'm 49. Child."

@bllshfrv/Reddit, Wikipedia

Nearly two years of learning a language…something's had to have stuck.

In the age of algorithms and keywords and incredibly steep competition, people have to be more strategic and creative than ever to secure a good job. Especially when it comes to drafting a resume that stands out amongst hundreds of others.

Recently, one job recruiter was so impressed by one job seeker’s clever idea of listing their 671-day Duolingo streak—alongside a fluency in English and limited American Sign Language —under the "languages" section in their resume that he decided to share it online.

According to Newsweek, the job recruiter, named Bilal Ashrafov, was pleasantly surprised, and had even considered including something similar on his own resume, “but wasn't sure if it would come across as professional.”

“Seeing someone take that first step made me reflect on its relevance,” he said, noting that “a long-standing Duolingo streak can demonstrate dedication and continuous learning,” even if the popular app only requires a minute of practice a day.

After sharing the resume onto Reddit, others seemed to agree, and commended the potential employee for their innovative approach.

"Imagine explaining that in an interview—'I'm not just consistent, I'm Duolingo consistent!'" one viewer quipped.

Another commented, "If I was hiring, I would definitely interview this person."

Still another said, "It got noticed, didn't it? Sounds like not too bad of an idea."

Considering that there are a few ways folks can keep their Duolingo streak intact without truly getting proficient in a language, like continuing to purchase streak freezes, this idea might never take on as the new resume must-have. But, on a much broader scale, this story highlights the need to bring a bit of ourselves to our resumes. As the concept of portfolio careers, or a career that includes multiple income streams, rather than a single job title, becomes more and more mainstream, we’ve seen people find great success in listing what they uniquely bring to the table, professional or otherwise.

When it comes to adding resume items that pop, and offer a true reflection for who you really are, think about including:

Soft skills:

These are personal qualities that describe how you work and interact with others, such as conflict resolution or time management, and they are not only gaining importance across the workforce, but are highly transferable across different types of work.

Personal projects:

Whether you got paid for these isn’t paramount here. If you led a community initiative your passionate about, or even have a long-standing blog about something that interests you, this could be included.

Technical skills beyond the job description:

Do you have a proficiency in certain programs, like coding languages, data visualization, project management, etc? Even if a job doesn’t specifically ask for these skills, they could be helpful additions.

Creative or unique hobbies:

You never know what interesting conversations your oddball pastime might inspire, if anything else. So don’t be embarrassed if you’re a wiz a Photoshopping old-timey puppy portraits or engage in recreating Scandinavian folk tunes with GarageBand.

Community involvement:

This can be your volunteering roles, and mentorship programs you might have participated in, or even charities you have close ties to.

Academic achievements:

Include relevant published research papers or presentations, and awards or honors you received during your studies, or any significant contributions you might have made to a research project

These are just a few suggestions to get you started. Include a few, or perhaps your own impressive Duolingo streak, or something else. Just remember, sometimes it pays to think outside the box.

This article originally appeared in February