TeachAde currently offers four TeachAde/NEA MB Groups:

21st Century Skills
Do you have a focused 21st Century Skills curriculum? Is it vital for students to learn these skills in school? Our online community of teaching professionals debate whether schools should teach 21st century skills or stick to a core curriculum.

Budgeting Your Money
Recently we’ve all learned the importance of tracking where our money goes. Discover ways your peers have succeeded in budgeting their money. Coming soon … our exclusive Blog with NEA MB’s Certified Financial Advisor with regular updates on ways to save more of your hard-earned money.

Elementary Online Resources
Calling all elementary school teachers! Join this Group to share lessons and activities, as well as tips and tricks to get the most from your students.

National Board Certification
This community group is dedicated to helping teachers decide whether or not to pursue their National Board Certification, with resources on the merits of Certification as well as everything you need to know before you start the process.

Each SAT or ACT taken by a student costs her roughly $50 and half of a day of her life — a small price when compared to the potential benefits of admission into college.  Now, consider this: one of the best ways to prepare for taking the SAT (or ACT) is, well, taking the SAT (or ACT).  So, take both — as often as one can stand the effort and expense.  But that could mean taking twelve tests a year!  Surely that is too much.  So what else should one consider?

Consider the history and purpose of each test.  The SATs were created in the 1920s by and for several elite eastern colleges (i.e., the Ivy League) to supplement high school grades in the colleges’ evaluation of prospective candidates for admission.  The tests have changed over the years, but the basic testing philosophy has not.  The tests are designed primarily to measure the skills a student needs for success in college.  Despite some controversy (regarding diversity fairness and “trick” questions), the tests correlate well with students’ success as freshmen in college. Today the SATs are taken nationwide, but are most popular among colleges (and their prospective students) located in states on or near the coasts.

The ACTs were created in the late 1950s by and for midwestern colleges unhappy with some aspects of the SATs.  The ACTs are designed primarily to measure what a student has learned in high school.  They also correlate with student success in college, but less so than the SATs (according to some experts).  Today the ACTs are taken nationwide, but are most popular among colleges (and their prospective students) located in the broad middle of the country.  Many students feel more comfortable with the ACT (thinking they did better on it than on the SAT), but they are often surprised to find that their percentile rankings on the ACT are no better than those achieved on the SAT.

Nearly all college admissions officers accept either test.  I help prepare students for either or both.  If time and money are not major concerns, I say “go for both.”  If there is a limit, either test will do.  Personally, I lean toward the SAT because of its emphasis on the skills needed for success at the college level.  Getting into a college is only the beginning.  A student must be prepared to succeed in the college learning environment – which is vastly different from that in high school.

In high school, the teacher covers the material in class.  If she is conscientious, she will then assign reading and exercises.  A student, even one weak in critical reading and problem solving, should then be able to do the assignment because the material was covered in class.  In college, the professor does not cover the material.  The student is expected to come to class having already done the necessary reading and exercises.  The professor then “uncovers some of the material” and conducts a seminar with the (informed) students.

In high school a student is tested often.  Most high school quizzes and tests do not emphasize writing or the solving of problems a student has not seen before.  Most college courses test only three times: a midterm exam, a final, and a term paper.  Depending on the course, each test will demand writing, problem solving, or both.

The skills required of college students are precisely the ones tested by the SAT.  Preparing for the SAT thus helps a student develop the skills needed not only to get into college, but to stay there.  So, for most students, my answer is to take both the ACT and the SAT, but to concentrate primarily on the SAT.

About the Author: Captain Karl K. is a retired engineer, college lecturer and admissions officer, and high school teacher.  He is an active and highly successful tutor in a wide variety of subjects including ACT and SAT preparation, English grammar, reading, and writing, mathematics from geometry to calculus, and science (especially physics and chemistry).  He and his wife live in Atlantic Beach, Florida (near Jacksonville).

TeachAde will be integrated into the newly revamped NEA MB Web site to help members connect with each other, share best practices, and access invaluable resources with a click of the mouse. The collaboration is part of the Web site’s intentional focus on the most important subjects to members: Money, Everyday Living, Health and Wellness, Professional Resources and Travel and Leisure.

“Our goal is to partner with the best programs and services to engage and support our members,” said Mark Stevens, vice president of Professional & Web Solutions, NEA Member Benefits. “Partnering with TeachAde will help educators connect with one another on a personal and immediate level about important topical issues such as National Board Certification, 21st-century skills and curriculum and instruction. TeachAde provides our members with a means to easily share their expertise, resources and tools with colleagues across the county.”

TeachAde, which currently has over 17,000 educator participants, enables educators to collaborate within grades and subjects and across schools, districts and states. For example, through TeachAde, the best math teacher in California is able to connect with and help a new math teacher in central Ohio. Once a teacher specifies their subject/grade, TeachAde’s robust database regularly sends useful and customized teacher-created resources directly to the educator. The NEA MB-TeachAde partnership provides NEA members access to a vast database of proven resources overnight and will ensure courses remain rigorous and engaging.

“As a special education teacher, I have found TeachAde to be an invaluable support tool, allowing me to reach out to other teachers in my school district as well as communicating with my students’ parents to keep them updated on their child’s progress,” said Donna Meyerhoeffer, special education teacher at Staunton River High School in Moneta, VA.

“Because each feature was designed and tested by educators, TeachAde’s interface is easy to use and intuitive,” said Michael Pearce, founding partner of TeachAde. “Collaborating with NEA MB allows us to go further to reach greater numbers of educators, which will increase the services to existing and future TeachAde members and demonstrates our commitment to improving teaching and learning.”

NEA members can access TeachAde through the new NEA MB Web site.

President Barack Obama will deliver a speech about education to students tomorrow. Broadcasting live from noon onwards, Obama’s plan to speak to the students has already stirred up quite a controversy among both schools and parents. Some are calling it a valuable classroom lesson while others fear that the president may be using this as an opportunity for propaganda.

In order to quell this tide of controversy, the White House has announced it will release the transcript of the Obama school speech text on its website (http://www.whitehouse.gov) today to allow teachers and parents a chance to review it.  The hope is to allow them time to decide for themselves if it is suitable for their classes or children to listen to the Education Speech.

So what is Environmental Education Week?

The goal of Environmental Education Week is to increase the number of environmental education hours that K-12th grade students receive in both formal and non-formal educational settings.  In 2008, over 1,850 schools and non-formal educational institutions across the country organized Environmental Education Week events.  Collectively these organizations served millions of students with environmentally-themed lessons and activities that positively impacted the environment and encouraged environmental stewardship among young people.

TutorMatch is proud to be a sponsor and partner of EE Week.  Why not help us out?  There’s a number of ways you can take action during EE Week:

Join with NEEF, EPA and other teens to do your part for climate change and children’s health.

Do you know a teacher who stands out among the rest? Someone who takes their passion for the environment and brings it into the classroom, inspiring students to learn and engage in environmental issues? Consider nominating the outstanding teacher for a Richard C. Bartlett Award. 

Be part of the nation’s largest single day for improving and enhancing the public lands we enjoy through our National Public Lands Day home page.

According to the report, the rising cost of college, even before the recession, threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans.  Published college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007 (adjusted for inflation) while median family income rose 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last 10 years, and students from lower-income families (on average) get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

The report, Measuring Up 2008, is one of the few to compare net college costs — that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family income.

“This study reveals that higher education is becoming a roadblock, not a gateway, to success for low-income and middle-class students,” says Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., chair of the National Center For Public Policy And Higher Education board of directors and former four-term governor of North Carolina. “States must confront these roadblocks to ensure that the United States can remain competitive with other industrialized nations that have made expansion of opportunity and affordable higher education national priorities.”

Math Anxiety

Nationwide statistics shows that math scores have been dropping year after year for all grade levels. Students of this tech savvy generation start to fear math as early as the beginning of middle school level. Being the world leader in science, technology and innovation, this country cannot afford to have its next generation so detached from math. It seems as if unlike other countries such as China and India, the society here as a whole is not laying enough emphasis on the importance of math. Students that perform well in school are considered geeky and “uncool”, adding to the already mounting isolation from math as a subject of choice.

A recent article in the NY Times outlines results of most difficult math competitions for young people, including the American and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. The results show that American students that excel in these competitions are immigrants from other countries. People in countries like India and China still consider math to be imperative for growth, both academically and professionally. It’s no wonder that teachers from India are now teaching students here in the U.S. online. More and more online math tutoring companies are hiring tutors in India to teach U.S. students online. Providing low cost one-on-one tutoring services serves the dual purpose of effectiveness and affordability.

Parents, teachers and educators all around should start emphasizing the importance of math in real life and make learning math easy and fun by providing individual attention whenever possible.

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Aish Agrawal is a math tutor in Boston, MA on Tutormatch.com.  He also works with http://www.clickandclimb.com which provides live online math tutoring to students in grades 3-12. For the latest information about online math tutoring and to solve the problem of the day visit http://blogs.clickandclimb.com

Early hands on research experiences are, nowadays, absolutely necessary.  If you begin to develop such an interest, offer to work in a research lab for a few hours a week during the academic year and full time during the post freshman and post sophomore summers as well.  At first you will probably just be doing busy work.  Don’t fret, you will be able to talk with other lab members and you can begin to find out what research is all about.  You may have to volunteer in order to get your foot in the door, but if you are reliable and do a good job, you may be able to negotiate a modest wage for your work.  The main goal though is not the income….it is the experience which you definitely need for your graduate school application.  As your plans mature and if graduate school is a serious option, then you will need to increase the amount of research exposure at a later stage in your undergraduate career (see below).

What about later in your university career?  Assuming that late in the sophomore year or at the beginning of the junior year you will likely begin to crystallize your plans for a major and for possible career paths.  If you are seriously beginning to think about graduate school in the biosciences, then this is the time to focus your plans.

You should try to take as many upper level courses in your major area as it is possible in your junior and senior years.  Admissions committees look for a broad repertoire of course exposures. Graduate level courses will be less of a challenge if your background is that much broader.  If you are a Biology major, definitely take biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, microbiology, physiology and any other upper level courses that you can fit in your schedule.  Do not take these courses just for the sake of taking courses but really delve into the material, and at this point some decent grades won’t come amiss.  If you are a chemistry or physics major who is thinking of going for a career in biomedical research, then plan on taking some upper level biology courses in your junior and senior years.  Students who have majored in chemistry or physics and have also had Biochemistry are highly sought after these days. 

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Dr. Felicity U. is the Director of the Felicity Motivational Group in Nashville, Tennessee, who offers their professional english, math and science tutoring services on TutorMatch.com.

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The benefits to hiring a native speaker of the language are the influence that culture will have in the teachings. This tutor has more than likely been exposed to cultural occurrences like food, songs, and beliefs that can enrich the tutoring environment. This information, along with the natural ability to teach dialect and proper pronunciation of the words, combined with the natural phrases used in everyday conversation, are the reasons that many choose to enlist a native speaker of the second language in which they are trying to learn.

Contrary to these thoughts, there are many benefits to choosing a professional tutor that has been educated in the second language to teach the student. Technical aspects of the language will be covered with concise curriculums, and the lessons will come with the expertise of teaching techniques that are shown to these tutors through the course of their education.
 
Using a post-secondary educated tutor will ensure that the basics of the language, the foundation, will be taught before the knowledge is expanded upon and grown into phrases. This technique for learning languages is most effective for those looking to grasp the concept of the language from the bottom up. Although it may take longer to speak as a native, the teachings will remain in the mind solidified as knowledge.

Find an online tutor to teach you a langauge over the internet:

• Online German Tutors
• Online French Tutors
• Online Spanish Tutors

To make the choice, consider the following aspects:

• What are the reasons that the tutor is being hired?
• How long does the student have to learn the language?
• What does the student expect to learn in this time period?

It may be quicker to learn the essentials from a native speaker of the language, rather than to begin with the foundation.
 
Regardless of the choices, speak with the tutor in the initial meeting to discuss the plan of action, curriculum and objectives of the tutoring sessions. Creating a plan of action and practice are two of the essential counterparts to learning a second language.

Your child’s education is important. Use the summer months when school is out to help improve your child’s education, rather than give them a chance to fall further behind in their studies.

If your child has been struggling in school over the past year, summer is not the time to let him or her forget everything they learned. Many parents don’t capitalize on the summer months when school is out, but this is the best time to continue your child’s education with either personal, face-to-face tutoring, or an online tutor.

I would hate to suggest you curtail any kid’s highly anticipated summer vacation, so we’re not talking about summer school here. But if your child has been having a hard time in math, or english, or any subject over the past academic period, then summer is the best time to bolster their education and prepare them for the upcoming school year with a professional tutor.

There are some factors to consider when looking for the right tutor for your child:

1. Does your child have a short attention span? If so, then working with an online tutor may prove quite difficult. You might want to consider a more personal approach with a tutor located near you that can work with your child in person. Most tutors are very flexible, and will either come to your home, or meet with you and your child in the local public library.
2. Does your child have special needs? If so, you may not be able to find someone appropriately qualified close to your home. If this is the case, consider an online tutor. An online tutor can work with your child right at your home computer with you right next to them. Often online tutors will use email, chat rooms, digital whiteboards, or even voice internet phone services such as Skype, which will allow you to converse with them over your computer’s microphone without having to pay any long distance phone bills.
3. Is it difficult to schedule time for tutoring? If you’re busy, and are away from home working quite a bit, there are even some tutors who will offer themselves as babysitters. You may pay them to tutor your child for an hour or so, and then pay a decreased rate to have them babysit your child for the rest of the day.

Of course, whenever you are looking for someone to work with your children, make sure you research and interview them thoroughly.

So don’t let the summer go by without taking this opportunity to improve your child’s education. You’ll be thankful you did come September.

Tutor Match Tutoring and Homework Help, http://www.TutorMatch.com, is a free service which lets parents and students search for both online and personal, face-to-face tutors. You can find tutors for just about any subject, including (but not limited to) English and Reading, Math, Science, History, and Foreign Languages such as Spanish, French and German.

Tutor Match Tutoring and Homework Help is a free service which lets parents and students search for both online and personal, face-to-face tutors. You can find tutors for just about any subject, including (but not limited to) English and Reading, Math, Science, Social Sciences, and Foreign Languages.