Book World: A debut at crossroads of Mideast conflict
Porter Shreve, The Washington Post
Feb. 4, 2021
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By Rebecca Sacks
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There s a moment in Rebecca Sacks kaleidoscopic debut novel, City of a Thousand Gates, where a foreign dignitary visiting a government office in Ramallah laments the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has gripped the region for more than half a century: Both sides have suffered. But you know what they say. An eye for an eye, until the whole world is blind. And when will it end? His comment follows the series of tragic events around which the book revolves: After the Israelis announced an expansion of several settlements, a Hamas terrorist slipped through the open window of a 14-year-old settlement girl named Yael and stabbed her to death. Days later, in retaliation, a mob of young Jewish men surrounded Salem, a random Arab teenager, and beat him so badly that he lies comatose, near death, in a hospital bed in East Jerusalem.
Michigan Community College Cancels Sports Seasons Kellogg Community College, in Michigan, on Wednesday became the fifth two-year college in the state to cease competition in several sports, given the impact of COVID-19 in its region. The college announced that it would opt out of league competition in men's and women's basketball and volleyball, joining several peers that have
This week:
I describe how hiring a former student to observe his course helped one professor adjust to teaching online.
I invite you to share your experience with student course evaluations during the pandemic.
I pass along some words of encouragement from a teaching expert.
A Different Kind of Student Feedback
As Joel Brewster Lewis worked last semester to adapt his linear-algebra course for math majors to an online format, he had some extra help. Mehr Rai, a senior who’d taken the course two years before, sat in on class sessions, met with Lewis to provide feedback, and held drop-in hours when students could get extra help.
Young People Spreading Covid a Concern in Rapidly Aging Japan
Bloomberg 1/28/2021 Shiho Takezawa and Marika Katanuma
(Bloomberg) The world’s most rapidly aging society has long struggled to talk to its youth. That’s a disconnect that’s turning deadly in the pandemic.
The difficulty in persuading young adults to upend their lifestyles to prevent Covid-19’s spread has challenged countries across the globe. Yet nowhere are the stakes higher than in Japan, where nearly a third of residents are over the age of 65, and the virus response depends on voluntary cooperation.
The nation has so far relied on people changing their behavior in its largely successful fight against the virus, as authorities lack the legal ability to enforce lockdowns. But while calling for cooperation worked in the early days of fighting an unknown pathogen, like their global peers younger Japanese are increasingly hit with virus fatigue. That’s left officials struggling to persu