Actually my understanding is that they are not treating patients with the full suits on. The decision to just do face masks, gloves, etc. was pretty common it seems now... I think people have gotten more lax with Ebola simply because wearing the full suits is hot and tough to deal with for a long epidemic like we're seeing. It sounds like the nurse in question wasn't in full protective gear. I agree with the idea this shouldn't be happening... How many of these places really have full training for BL-4 diseases though? Last I knew there were only a few labs in the US capable of fully handling diseases like this in the laboratory. (CDC and USAMRID) How is an average hospital set up for this? Hopefully the Dallas one was, but if this trend continues these will not be the last patients we see coming to the US. My guess is this little incident will get in hand just fine, but I doubt that the ones that are likely to come will be as easy to contain.

I grew up in Farmington, near where the station is. Plain and simple the generating station and two other power plants are on Reservation land. For the longest time the tribes chose to ignore improvements to air quality standards. I presume much of the chronic asthma I and others suffered in the area is related to the pollution. On the flip side most of these stacks are being shut down right now and it's killing the local economy. The area has one of the largest available coal deposits that it has been relying on for a long time. It would be nice if there was some sort compromise possible between the industry and pollution... Of course if it was managed more properly it might not be so bad. The amount of corruption on the reservation is amazing...

And opinions like these are the reasons we see legislatures with no teaching experience making policies that leave teachers banging their heads against the wall about the stupidity of the decisions. Personally I'm a teacher and I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in my field. I've had a great deal of success with my students, so I feel qualified to respond to this. Teachers are definitely qualified to make decisions in the classroom about what they teach! More so than most of the people that are in charge of making those decisions.

The best teachers I've seen are the ones that take the time to develop their own Hypothesis about problems in their classroom and have gone on to try new ways to teach. Sure they have some failures, especially as young teachers, but they learn from them and adapt new strategies. That is if they stick around long enough to improve. The biggest problem with education right now is keeping teachers long enough to develop into master teachers. With the average length of career for teachers being about five years... well there are plenty of problems out there.

The pay is addressed all of the time, it's not great. Supposedly there's a three month vacation every year, but if I have two weeks personally I'm having a long break! Between professional development and other expectations, that summer doesn't really exist for anyone but the students. But, most teachers know the pay isn't great going into it. They do it because they have a passion for teaching.

Too many of them see the passion ebb away though thanks to the fact that they are expected to work miracles with students that have no support networks at home. Then they are expected to hold students to a high standard - and then have their jobs threatened when they do so! The levels of paperwork make the Office Space reports seem quick and painless, and they have to keep track of that with each student. Other than in elementary school most teachers are expected to keep track of 100+ students/day with probably at least 20% of those students having modifications that require separate lesson plans for them.

It's all a recipe for burn out! The fear of being held accountable for the students that care doesn't scare most teachers. It's the students that have no support network at home and most likely will not succeed no matter what is done that scares these teachers.

I was thinking of this website as well. This is a CLEAR case of prior art and usage. (BTW thanks for the website name, I could not remember the second word!)

If nothing else I would think this would expedite this to the Supreme Court since there are two conflicting district decisions.

Fixing Mod

Undoing Mod

Glad to see we've finally unleashed the terminators on Mars!

Some of those stadiums actually generate more than enough revenue to fund those programs and more... Not that I think money should be wasted, but in those larger state schools I have no doubt they pay for themselves within ten years or less.

The way it's written will negatively impact a lot of the higher ranked colleges from the past with the financial incentives that are mentioned. For the large private schools they're not going to care so much, but I have to imagine this will be dead in the water from the get go. Too much alumni power in the legislature for this to be something that will ever make its way through!

They didn't have any casino's on the Navajo Nation until about two years ago. It was probably the one that held off the longest on building them, partially because they could never come to an agreement with the State of New Mexico, but mostly due to tribal opposition.

The bigger thing is that it will benefit those that have power... What many people don't realize though is that much of the reservation is like a third world country without running water or electricity!

Some of it isn't even eBooks. The students at my school rarely use textbooks anymore due to the curriculum that's been implemented. Most of the time their reference material and assignments is being given to the teachers in pdf form by the curriculum office. Being able to have the kids just look at it on an iPad as opposed to making lots of copies has some value.

I just wish my district had at least been smart enough to go with iPads. They ended up with some grant and bought Nooks for all of the kids... Great until you realize that B&N is pretty much shutting down with that now or soon. We'll probably have wasted more money in the end by trying to save money!

Is it really? I don't know about your school, but with all of the required training, paperwork, etc. I know quite a few teachers that work some ridiculous hours grading. Personally I spend about 14 hours a day at work in the fall, but I do get paid a bit extra based on the amount of extra time I put in. This 9 months stuff though simply isn't true anymore. The expectation is that teachers spend at least 4 of those weeks doing workshops and training opportunities that mostly don't involve pay to do so. If you're fortunate the district might pay for the training.

Also, 64k is plain and simple not much I'm guessing cost of living wise there. Personally I started in another state at 31k with a Bachelor's Degree just nine years ago. My colleagues in other fields jumped in at similar degrees at 55k+. I had probably 60 more credit hours when I graduated than them too! At this point I'm paid about as well as I could expect at 50k where I'm at. That's with significant extra duty pay amounts built-in, and I feel bad for the teachers without that because they're not being paid well enough.

Oh, and the fact you don't see the homework doesn't mean teachers have nothing to grade. Many of those teachers are teaching seven periods a day with the maximum number of students in each class. Figure roughly 210 students a day with a grade expected from many of them on every assignment. Even if you're just putting a checkmark and marking it in the computer at a rate of .5 minutes per assignment you're talking 105 minutes of work. You figure you get home at five or so, fix dinner, eat, you're up to seven. Let's say you have kids and have to take care of them, some of them don't start grading till nine, and don't finish till nearly eleven at that rate.

Just because you don't see your childs' teachers working does not mean they do nothing. You probably get to leave your work at work. Must be nice?

Personally I saw it take off at my college my last year or so there. It was a university that has many umm... socially awkward... individuals. We also used AIM a lot at that point and I can remember times when we had conversations over it, even though the person was in the same room as us. (Granted that was mostly pure laziness too...) For that kind of setting the idea of being able to 'meet' over Facebook was a lot more comfortable.

The one thing I find myself still on Facebook for more than anything is a professional group that's started up. There are about 10k members and it's a pretty good professional development tool.

The point and problem of this has been known to us as educators for a long time. Other countries do not force everyone into the same mold and test every kid in the end. By the time students reach the test as seniors here, the ones that don't care aren't in the system in other countries. We have a higher populace tested, whereas other countries give up on the lower students earlier. The articles point is if we remove the lower end (like most other countries do) we fair much better than the existing stats. Personally I think we're foolish to continue our existing system. It's not working!