~~~~~The College Board said it would implement what it calls the "Environmental Context Dashboard," which would measure factors like the crime rate and poverty levels of a student's neighborhood, to better capture their "resourcefulness to overcome challenges and achieve more with less." https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/16/us/sat-adversity-score/index.html
***Also noting "achieve more with less." means you are set up for failure. You get less done faster or half ass but faster. Like the time I told the Walmart support manger "I can only work faster at one place at one time, I will work faster over there when I am done working faster over here!" I ended up doing two pallets at the same time every 5 mins so I could get evenly not done! But you see the point!
***In my college days I won the prank of the year before class officially started. It was a $500 class high at the time. So me and my friend thought it would be funny if I dressed up like a redneck on the first day of class. My friend let me borrow his grandmas, boyfriends rodeo belt, hat etc and we found a huge brown bag at a store then went to Walmart to get a jar of pickled pigs feet. And on the day of my class my friend sat down in class with it not even being his class with the professor looking at him like WTF you doing? Then I walked in sitting down looking around looking stupid. A girl in class looked at me with hate looking like the weight of the world was on her. She told me in a female grunt "You look like a idiot!" So I quoited a part of upright citizen brigade TV show. "I brought my lunch today, sassafras, molasses and pickled pigs feet!" Then I opened the big paper bag pulling out the pigs feet putting it on my desk popping the lid open. It pissed off a hothead that was in class known for crying over kids that would hold back the whole class. He jumped up and after saying a few unkind words to me he ran out of the room. My professor told me "He's going to the Dean!" So I took off after him letting him know it was only a prank, it's only a prank! After all that my professor said "That a good one and a first time in his time teaching at the college that a prank was done before class and the semester started, so now we got that out of the way."
So the point is the Environmental Context Dashboard has issues!
~~~~~The Absolute Worst Way to Start the Semester
There’s a reason that Syllabus Day has become a hallowed tradition and a nearly ironclad rule: So often, that’s all that happens when a class meets for the first time. Whether by accident or design, the pedagogical decisions we collectively make about the first day of our classes have conditioned students to expect nothing more than a syllabus (which they will likely leave unexamined for the rest of the semester), a few perfunctory introductions, a word or two about classroom conduct, and an early exit after about 15 minutes.
That’s the absolute worst way to begin a semester. Like the cliché says, we never get a second chance for a first impression. And in our courses, first impressions go a long way. If we lament that students never check the syllabus during the semester, well, what was their first impression of that document? If we are frustrated that students don’t take class discussion seriously, did we convey its importance when we introduced the class?
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1498-the-absolute-worst-way-to-start-the-semester
