Amy Cuddy’s research on body language reveals that we can change other people’s perceptions—and even our body chemistry—simply by changing body positions. These hilarious power poses are no joke, though despite how they are presented above. Cuddy’s work is thought-provoking, she teaches at HBS, and you should watch her TED talk (here) if you want to learn more.
Hip hop has been making its way into schools for some time now (both in the US and abroad). Brian Mooney did it last year, even prompting a visit from Kendrick Lamar to his classroom, which you can read more about here and here, as well as on his blog. And long before, Tomas Alvarez III, a social worker in Oakland, California started one of the first programs called Beats Rhymes and Life at Berkeley High School in 2004. Based on a club he launched as part of his dissertation research, Ian Levy has developed a program at New Visions Charter High School for Advanced Math and Science II in the Bronx as part of an expanding education movement to harness the widespread appeal of hip-hop music and culture to promote academic and social goals.
“Hip-hop education is everywhere,” said Christopher Emdin, an associate professor of science education at Teachers College at Columbia University who moderates a weekly chat group on Twitter called #HipHopEd and, along with the artist GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan, sponsors an annual competition for students to rap about science. “There is no school in an urban area that does not know about hip-hop, or that has not experimented with it.”
Read the full article here and check out Mr. Levy’s Donors Choose page here.
Alyza Sebenius’ recent article in the Atlantic that focused on mentors, specifically their role in the lives of students with disadvantages, brought me right back to my dissertation. Although the article discusses the power of mentorship broadly, I was especially excited about the discussion of Robert Putnam’s Our Kid’s (an updated, sharper Bowling Alone), whose work and definition of social capital/social capital theory I use in my dissertation:
Putnam, who in his book notes that privileged youth are two to three times more likely to have an informal mentor outside of their family, said that “kids from working-class homes need more caring adults in their lives.” Disadvantaged students, he said, often lack access to the range of role models available to their more privileged peers—such as coaches, clergy, neighbors, or family friends. Absent these advisors, underprivileged students may be deprived of the kinds of information necessary for navigating and thriving in large institutions like colleges—for exercising what Putnam described as “savvy.”
This information, my dissertation and many other studies found, can be obtained when students develop relationships with not only mentors outside of school but also teachers, counselors and even principals. It is no surprise that this article goes on to discuss school counselors (and college) specifically:
Mentors are just one form of role models on campus that can shape student outcomes. School counselors represent another tier of non-teacher adults who can make a large difference for students: A 2013 study correlated the addition of a single guidance counselor at a given school with a 10 percentage point increase in four-year-college-going rates at the school.
Read the full article here: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/01/mentorship-in-public-schools/423945/
| The institution (Plan) | Applied | Admitted | Rate | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown (ED) | 3,030 | 669 | 22% | Link |
| Columbia (ED) | 3,520 | Link | ||
| Dartmouth (ED) | 1,927 | 494 | 26% | Link |
| Dickinson (ED1) | 251 | 220 | 88% | Link |
| Duke (ED) | 3,455 | 813 | 24% | Link |
| Georgetown (REA) | 7,027 | 892 | 13% | Link |
| Harvard (SCEA) | 6,173 | 918 | 15% | Link |
| Johns Hopkins (ED) | 1,929 | 584 | 30% | Link |
| Middlebury (ED1) | 636 | 338 | 53% | Link |
| MIT (EA) | 7,767 | 656 | 8% | Link |
| Northwestern (ED) | 3,022 | 1,061 | 35% | Link |
| Princeton (SCEA) | 4,229 | 767 | 18% | Link |
| Stanford (REA) | 7,822 | 745 | 10% | Link |
| University of Georgia (EA) | 14,516 | 7,500 | 52% | Link |
| UPenn (ED) | 5,762 | 1,335 | 23% | Link |
| Williams (ED) | 585 | 246 | 42% | Link |
| Yale (SCEA) | 4,662 | 795 | 17% | Link |
For most students, counselors recommend applying to between six and eight colleges, with at least one safety school, one reach school, and a few good fit schools where you feel you’re likely to be admitted. I agree! Too many students today are applying to 10, 12, even 20+ schools. Applying to more schools does not mean, in most cases, getting more acceptances (from my experience). Read more from Money’s Kaitlin Mulhere, here.
As parents and students begin to obsess over admissions decisions here’s some perspective (that I have posted before). It is harder to get a job at Wal-Mart in Washington, DC. Wegman’s in Pennsylvania boasted an acceptance rate of 5% in 2014. And Google only has room for one half of one percent of its job applicants.
The answer is, as you probably guessed, not so well. Read this awesome post by Scott Barry Kaufman, the Scientific Director of The Imagination Institute and a researcher in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, on how current college admissions criteria penalize our most creative students.
“If higher education faculty and administrators seek to develop critical and creative thinkers who can adapt to and innovate in a rapidly changing society, we must identify and develop creativity among our students. Such a goal can mean changing curricula or changing selection practices used for college admission.”
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But what if the richest and best-known colleges and universities don’t provide the highest-quality education? Would the perceived value of degrees from those institutions decline, and would colleges that were shown in fact to provide higher-quality courses be held in more esteem than they are now?
New research raising more interesting questions about how we define quality in higher education. Read more about the research of Corbin M. Campbell and Marisol Jimenez of Teachers College and Christine Arlene N. Arrozal of Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, supported by a fellowship from the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation here.
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MythBusters is and always will be more than good television—Jamie and Adam helped popularize STEM.
If a few more kids today want to grow up to be Elon Musk or settle on Mars or cure cancer, we have Jamie and Adam partly to thank.
Thank you Jamie and Adam!!!
