Current Event Connection, Main

11 Things We Learned This Week

This week, we learned …

… teachers work more unpaid overtime than anyone else.

According to the recent UK analysis, teachers work an average of 12.1 hours unpaid every week.
Photograph by Bart Everson, courtesy Flickr. CC-BY-2.0

Tell us something we don’t know! Check out our professional development opportunities to help alleviate unpaid OT.

 

… the Cook Islands may literally redefine themselves.

Te reo Ipukarea, or Cook Islands Maori, is the indigenous language of the Cook Islands. The island nation’s name may soon reflect that.
Consult Cook Islands Languages to learn more.

Where are the Cook Islands? Use our downloadable 1-Page Map to find these Pacific archipelagoes.

 

… Scandinavian Americans are tiring of lutefisk, but African immigrants are eating it up.

Lutefisk is a gelatinous dish made with whitefish (usually cod, hake, or pollock) and lye.
Photograph by Jonathunder, courtesy Wikimedia. GFDL-1.2

What other immigrants adapted their cuisine to their new home?

 

… John Snow wasn’t the only one mapping London’s 19th-century cholera epidemics. Resource of the week!

Map courtesy the Wellcome Collection. CC-BY-4.0

Snow was the most famous cholera-mapper, though. How did he do it? Use our activity to help students understand spatial mapping.

 

… high-paying blue-collar jobs are sitting empty, while students are lining up for college.

We love this photo of a woman and her boyfriend repairing her dump truck in Williston, North Dakota.
Photograph by Eugene Richards, National Geographic

Use our inquiry-based resource to guide a discussion on the “best” jobs in the U.S., and how that determination might be made.

 

… on the rooftop of the world, India and Pakistan are waging the coldest war.

The Kashmiri border dispute, involving not only India and Pakistan but China, is one of the world’s “conflicts without end.”
Photograph by Matthieu Paley, National Geographic

Use our map-based resource to better understand the conflict in Kashmir.

 

… the desert is overtaking Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Photograph by Irenaeus Herok

Get a great introduction to deserts with our reference resource.

 

… India is diverting 30 rivers to address its water crisis.

This beautiful panorama (including the nesting sites of long-billed vultures to the right) will be submerged in the new river management plan.
Photograph by A.J.T. Johnsingh, WWF-India and NCF, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-4.0

Why is Paul Salopek calling this leg of his “Out of Eden” journey “Riverlands”?

 

… archaeologists have discovered an “untouched” Maya cave.

The newly discovered cave is a cenote, or sacred well, beneath the famous ruins of Chichén Itzá. (This is the nearby Holgun cenote.)
Photograph by Paul Nicklen, National Geographic

The archaeologist who discovered the cave is a National Geographic explorer! Meet Guillermo de Anda with our student-friendly article.

 

… how to bring a forest back to life.

“It requires the right incentives, the right stakeholders, the right analysis and sufficient capital, but it can happen.”
Photograph by James P. Blair, National Geographic

Our inquiry-based resource outlines how one country (Iceland) is reviving its forests 1,000 years after they nearly vanished.

 

… ways of seeing nature in Los Angeles.

Don’t count on seeing this.
Photograph by Steve Winter, National Geographic

Our idea set gives a list of ideas about interacting with urban nature.

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