Community Forum - Investing in Education: The Dialogue Continues (Updated: 5pm-6pm!)

Updated time: 5pm-6pm!

"Arizona teachers did not walk out on you; they walked out for you" By MEC Youth Advisory Council

"Arizona teachers did not walk out on you; they walked out for you," By MEC Youth Advisory Council Special to the Arizona Daily Star"



This week, May 7-11, is Teacher Appreciation Week, and for Arizona this has a greater meaning this year. Over the past few weeks, we have witnessed a historic movement — #RedForEd — where Arizona teachers, school personnel, parents, students and community members joined forces to advocate for a quality education for Arizona students. Our teachers took the lead and put themselves on the frontline to advocate not only for themselves, but for their students. Read Full article here: http://tucson.com/opinion/local/we-must-join-with-teachers-in-fighting-for-education/article_9c19aba4-deb8-59e0-9f87-42219df28f53.html

Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards

Scholarship is open to graduating high school seniors (2017) of Hispanic/Latino descent who have demonstrated leadership in the classroom and community and for their focus in various categories including: Business & Entrepreneurship, Community Service, Education, Engineering, Healthcare & Science, and Mathematical Science.

Award: Up to $3,000

Deadline: October 2, 2016

More info: https://app.reviewr.com/hispanicheritage/site/hispanicheritage

LeafFilter Gutter Protection Scholarship

Scholarship is open to all students enrolled in a full-time undergraduate degree program for the 2016-2017 school year. Applicant must submit a personal essay about success, education, and their future.

Award: $500

Deadline: July 29, 2016

More info: http://www.leaffilter.com/leaffilter-gutter-protection-scholarship/

JAM Paper Teacher Scholarship

Scholarship is open to any student who is pursuing a career in Education. Applicant must submit an essay on why they want to become a teacher.

Award: $500

Deadline: July 15, 2016

More info: http://www.jampaper.com/scholarships.asp

Bookoo Scholarship

Scholarship is open to graduating high school seniors and current college students attending an accredited college or university. Applicant must submit an application and answer questions related to the applicant’s educational plans.

Award: $1,000

Deadline: July 1, 2016

More info: http://www.bookoo.com/scholarships

Bruce Lee Scholarship Program DEADLINE: June 10th!!

The BLF Scholarship program provides financial support to students pursuing a higher education who understand, appreciate, and exemplify Bruce Lee’s passion for education, self-actualization, and honest self-expression.

Award: $2500-$10,000

Deadline: June 10, 2016

More info: http://bruceleefoundation.org/scholarships/

2016 Kahn Roven LLP Scholarship

Scholarship is open to graduating high school seniors in good standing who hold a minimum 3.0 GPA and are planning on attending an accredited post-secondary institution. Applicant must submit an essay on what post-secondary education means to them.

Award: $500

Deadline: April 15, 2016

More info: http://www.kahnroven.com/scholarship.html

Education Matters Scholarship

Scholarship is open to students 13 years of age or older who are legal residents of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia who are currently enrolled (or will enroll no later than the fall of 2021) in an accredited post-secondary institution of higher education. Applicant will need to submit a short response to a given prompt.

Award: $5,000

Deadline: Nov. 30, 2015

More info: https://www.unigo.com/scholarships/our-scholarships/education-matters-scholarship

JEN Scholarships

Scholarship is open to high school and university students with talent and potential in jazz performance and/or education or industry. Multiple scholarships available with different requirements. Applicants should see website for details.

Amount: Varies

Deadline: Oct. 15, 2015

More info: http://www.jazzednet.org/node/1300

Checks SuperStore Scholarship

Scholarship is open to U.S. citizens who will be attending full-time student an at institution of higher education in the fall. Applicant must submit an essay on a given topic related to education.

Award: $1000

Deadline: Aug. 15, 2015

More info: http://www.checks-superstore.com/scholarship.aspx

Kelly Lynn Lutz Memorial Scholarship

Kelly Lynn Lutz Foundation

This scholarship is for students who lost the life of at least one parent (biological or non) to cancer before the age of 22. To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must attend a two- or four-year (minimum) higher education establishment; have an interest in education, arts, environment, math, or science; show service involvement in the community, church, school, or other non-curricular activity; demonstrate financial need; and be US citizens.

Award: $1500

Deadline: Jan. 10, 2015

More info: http://tinyurl.com/nzehf69

MESBEC Scholarship

Catching the Dream

This scholarship is for students who are at least one-quarter American Indian and are enrolled members of a US tribe that is federally recognized, state-recognized, or terminated. To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must have high GPA and test scores and be enrolled in an accredited US college/university on a full-time basis. The six priority majors are math majors, engineering majors, science majors, business majors, education majors, and computer science majors.

Award: $500 - $5,000

Deadline: March 15, 2015

More info: http://catchingthedream.org/category/scholarship-requirements/

Khan Academy - A free world-class education for anyone anywhere - Plus free SAT test prep

Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. They're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

Check it out here: https://www.khanacademy.org/

DoSomething.org's The Hunt

Seven days. Seven causes. Seven challenges. Every day from August 4 to August 10, DoSomething will reveal a new mystery challenge around a different cause. Applicants must complete each challenge to make a serious impact in their community. Challenges relate to the environment, animals, bullying & discrimination, physical & mental health, poverty & homelessness, and education. If you sign up early, you'll get exclusive info and pro tips before the campaign begins. The contest is open to US and Canadian citizens, regardless of residency, and residents of the 50 United States, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, or Canada (excluding Quebec), regardless of citizenship. All applicants must be 25 years of age or younger as of the last date of entry. Scholarships may be used at any two- or four-year college or graduate school.

Award: $10,000

Deadline: August 4, 2014

More info: https://www.dosomething.org/volunteer/hunt

APS Hopi Scholars Program

This scholarship is for American Indians who are enrolled members of the Hopi Tribe. To qualify, applicants must be high school graduates/GED recipients and be full-time sophomores, juniors, or seniors admitted to a regionally accredited college or university. Applicants must be pursuing an AAS, AS, BA, or BS in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering, or math), nursing, or education, and have a minimum cumulative 2.5 GPA.

Award: $2000-$4000

Deadline: August 1,  2014

More info: http://www.hopieducationfund.org/

Google’s Dead-Simple Formula for a Perfect Resume

Link to article: http://time.com/70430/this-is-googles-dead-simple-formula-for-a-perfect-resume/

By Victor Luckerson

For soon-to-be college graduates or anyone else currently on the job hunt, Google’s head of human resources has some advice for impressing potential employers. Laszlo Bock, who oversees the hiring of 100 new Google employees each week, offered some more morsels of wisdom to the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman this weekend (a conversation earlier this year between Bock and Friedman touched on the same topic). Here’s a quick breakdown of his key insights.

Be specific on resumes: Bock points out that many people’s resumes are overly vague. Instead a resume should offer specific details about a worker’s job experience that help contextualize his accomplishments. Bock explains: “Most people would write a résumé like this: ‘Wrote editorials for The New York Times.’ Better would be to say: ‘Had 50 op-eds published compared to average of 6 by most op-ed [writers] as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.’” 

Choose hard courses over straight A’s: Bock says a lower grade in a more challenging course can be more impressive to employers than a stellar performance in an easier class. He said a B in computer science could be more significant than an A+ in English “because it signals a rigor in your thinking and a more challenging course load.”

Explain your thought process in job interviews: Much like resumes, Bock says that specificity here is important. Employers want to know how a potential worker thinks to see whether they will be good at solving problems on the job. He recommends using this structure to explain your experiences to an employer: “What you want to do is say: ‘Here’s the attribute I’m going to demonstrate; here’s the story demonstrating it; here’s how that story demonstrated that attribute.’ ” Using this method shows a worker’s ability to think logically and evaluate their own performance in a critical way.

How to Get a Job at Google

Link: http://nyti.ms/1hXL3IS

By Thomas L. Friedman

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — HOW’S my kid going to get a job? There are few questions I hear more often than that one. In February, I interviewed Laszlo Bock, who is in charge of all hiring at Google — about 100 new hires a week — to try to understand what an employer like Google was looking for and why it was increasingly ready to hire people with no college degrees. Bock’s remarks generated a lot of reader response, particularly his point that prospective bosses today care less about what you know or where you learned it — the Google machine knows everything now — than what value you can create with what you know. With graduations approaching, I went back to Google to ask Bock to share his best advice for job-seekers anywhere, not just at Google. Here is a condensed version of our conversations:

You’re not saying college education is worthless?

“My belief is not that one shouldn’t go to college,” said Bock. It is that among 18- to 22-year-olds — or people returning to school years later — “most don’t put enough thought into why they’re going, and what they want to get out of it.” Of course, we want an informed citizenry, where everyone has a baseline of knowledge from which to build skills. That is a social good. But, he added, don’t just go to college because you think it is the right thing to do and that any bachelor’s degree will suffice. “The first and most important thing is to be explicit and willful in making the decisions about what you want to get out of this investment in your education.” It’s a huge investment of time, effort and money and people should think “incredibly hard about what they’re getting in return.”

Once there, said Bock, make sure that you’re getting out of it not only a broadening of your knowledge but skills that will be valued in today’s workplace. Your college degree is not a proxy anymore for having the skills or traits to do any job.

What are those traits? One is grit, he said. Shuffling through résumés of some of Google’s 100 hires that week, Bock explained: “I was on campus speaking to a student who was a computer science and math double major, who was thinking of shifting to an economics major because the computer science courses were too difficult. I told that student they are much better off being a B student in computer science than an A+ student in English because it signals a rigor in your thinking and a more challenging course load. That student will be one of our interns this summer.”

Or, he added, think of this headline from The Wall Street Journal in 2011: “Students Pick Easier Majors Despite Less Pay.” This was an article about a student who switched from electrical and computer engineering to a major in psychology. She said she just found the former too difficult and would focus instead on a career in public relations and human resources. “I think this student was making a mistake,” said Bock, even if it meant lower grades. “She was moving out of a major where she would have been differentiated in the labor force” and “out of classes that would have made her better qualified for other jobs because of the training.”

This is key for Bock because the first thing Google looks for “is general cognitive ability — the ability to learn things and solve problems,” he said. In that vein, “a knowledge set that will be invaluable is the ability to understand and apply information — so, basic computer science skills. I’m not saying you have to be some terrific coder, but to just understand how [these] things work you have to be able to think in a formal and logical and structured way.” But that kind of thinking doesn’t have to come from a computer science degree. “I took statistics at business school, and it was transformative for my career. Analytical training gives you a skill set that differentiates you from most people in the labor market.”

A lot of work, he added, is no longer tied to location. “So if you want your job tied to where you are, you need to be: A) quite good at it; and B) you need to be very adaptable so that you have a baseline skill set that allows you to be a call center operator today and tomorrow be able to interpret MRI scans. To have built the skill set that allows you to do both things requires a baseline capability that’s analytical.”

Well, what about creativity?

Bock: “Humans are by nature creative beings, but not by nature logical, structured-thinking beings. Those are skills you have to learn. One of the things that makes people more effective is if you can do both. ... If you’re great on both attributes, you’ll have a lot more options. If you have just one, that’s fine, too.” But a lot fewer people have this kind of structured thought process and creativity.

Are the liberal arts still important?

They are “phenomenally important,” he said, especially when you combine them with other disciplines. “Ten years ago behavioral economics was rarely referenced. But [then] you apply social science to economics and suddenly there’s this whole new field. I think a lot about how the most interesting things are happening at the intersection of two fields. To pursue that, you need expertise in both fields. You have to understand economics and psychology or statistics and physics [and] bring them together. You need some people who are holistic thinkers and have liberal arts backgrounds and some who are deep functional experts. Building that balance is hard, but that’s where you end up building great societies, great organizations.”

How do you write a good résumé?

“The key,” he said, “is to frame your strengths as: ‘I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.’ Most people would write a résumé like this: ‘Wrote editorials for The New York Times.’ Better would be to say: ‘Had 50 op-eds published compared to average of 6 by most op-ed [writers] as a result of providing deep insight into the following area for three years.’ Most people don’t put the right content on their résumés.”

What’s your best advice for job interviews?

“What you want to do is say: ‘Here’s the attribute I’m going to demonstrate; here’s the story demonstrating it; here’s how that story demonstrated that attribute.’ ” And here is how it can create value. “Most people in an interview don’t make explicit their thought process behind how or why they did something and, even if they are able to come up with a compelling story, they are unable to explain their thought process.”

For parents, new grads and those too long out of work, I hope some of this helps.

Math, Engineering, Science, Business, Education, and Computers (MESBEC) Scholarship

This scholarship is for students who are at least one-quarter American Indian and are enrolled members of a US tribe that is federally recognized, state-recognized, or terminated. To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must have high GPA and test scores and be enrolled in an accredited US college/university on a full-time basis. The six priority majors are math majors, engineering majors, science majors, business majors, education majors, and computer science majors.

Award: $500-$5000

Deadline: March 15, 2014

More info: http://www.catchingthedream.org/Scholarship.htm

Harry S. Truman Scholarship

This scholarship is for full-time students who are pursuing a bachelor's degree. To qualify for this scholarship, applicants must be juniors; seniors in their third year of college; or seniors who are residents of Puerto Rico, the Virgin islands, or a Pacific Island. Applicants must be US citizens or US nationals from a Pacific Island. Applicants should have a career or graduate study interest in public service, education, the nonprofit sector, or the public interest/advocacy sector, and have a history of community service and/or involvement in relevant organizations and/or activities.

Award: $30,000

Deadline: Feb. 4, 2014 

More info: http://www.truman.gov/

Gates Millennium Scholars Program

African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American or Hispanic American; 3.3 GPA, demonstrated leadership, qualify for and receive a Pell Grant (determined by submission of FAFSA in January 2014 )

Requirements: Nominating form from professional educator based on outstanding academic qualifications; likely to succeed in math, science, education, engineering or library science; strong leadership potential and demonstrated commitment to community service. Recommender form from adult familiar with non - academic, community and work leadership activities.

Award: Covers all unmet financial needs to attend college

Deadline: Jan. 15, 2014

More info: http://www.gmsp.org/