Global Digital Store – Ebooks and Softwares

Tag: Students

  • Some universities have closed their campus, switched to online lecturing

    Some universities have closed their campus, switched to online lecturing

    Some universities have closed their campus, switched to online lecturing 1

    PETALING JAYA: A number of universities have closed their campuses and instructed their staff to give lectures online to curb the spread of Covid-19.

    Among them is Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), which closed its branch campus in Pagoh from today for decontamination after a UTHM staff tested positive for novel coronavirus.

    According to a circular from UTHM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Wahid Razzaly, which was uploaded on the university’s official Facebook page on Sunday night, the branch campus will be closed until March 19 to facilitate comprehensive decontamination of the premises.

    He said the closure involves the entire academic and non-academic staff, except for employees of the university’s health centre, development and maintenance office, including the security and college residence division.

    Quarantine and screening operations will continuously be conducted in line with existing procedures.

    “All academic and administrative staff are allowed to work from home and attendance will not be recorded at the campus. The attendance record for all staff involved will be updated automatically by the Registrar’s Office,” Wahid added.

    In George Town, Universiti Sains Malaysia announced that it is conducting all lectures online from Sunday.

    Its vice-chancellor Prof Dr Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan said the dean will inform students on the online learning process.

    Some universities have closed their campus, switched to online lecturing
    Read More
    https://www.thesundaily.my/local/some-universities-have-closed-their-campus-switched-to-online-lecturing-CC2136532

    Views: 0

  • COVID-19: IFRC, UNICEF and WHO issue guidance to protect children and support safe school operations

    GENEVA/NEW YORK – The International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO) today issued new guidance to help protect children and schools from transmission of the COVID-19 virus. The guidance provides critical considerations and practical checklists to keep schools safe. It also advises national and local authorities on how to adapt and implement emergency plans for educational facilities. 

    In the event of school closures, the guidance includes recommendations to mitigate against the possible negative impacts on children’s learning and wellbeing. This means having solid plans in place to ensure the continuity of learning, including remote learning options such as online education strategies and radio broadcasts of academic content, and access to essential services for all children. These plans should also include necessary steps for the eventual safe reopening of schools.

    Where schools remain open, and to make sure that children and their families remain protected and informed, the guidance calls for:

    • Providing children with information about how to protect themselves;
    • Promoting best handwashing and hygiene practices and providing hygiene supplies;
    • Cleaning and disinfecting school buildings, especially water and sanitation facilities; and
    • Increasing airflow and ventilation.

    The guidance, while specific to countries that have already confirmed the transmission of COVID-19, is still relevant in all other contexts. Education can encourage students to become advocates for disease prevention and control at home, in school, and in their community by talking to others about how to prevent the spread of viruses. Maintaining safe school operations or reopening schools after a closure, requires many considerations, but if done well, can promote public health.

    For example, safe school guidelines implemented in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone during the outbreak of Ebola virus disease from 2014 to 2016 helped prevent school-based transmissions of the virus.

    UNICEF is urging schools – whether open or helping students through remote learning – to provide students with holistic support. Schools should provide children with vital information on handwashing and other measures to protect themselves and their families; facilitate mental health support; and help to prevent stigma and discrimination by encouraging students to be kind to each other and avoid stereotypes when talking about the virus.

    The new guidance also offers helpful tips and checklists for parents and caregivers, as well as children and students themselves. These actions include:

    • Monitoring children’s health and keeping them home from school if they are ill;
    • Encouraging children to ask questions and express their concerns; and
    • Coughing or sneezing into a tissue or your elbow and avoid touching your face, eyes, mouth and nose.

    Read More
    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/10-03-2020-covid-19-ifrc-unicef-and-who-issue-guidance-to-protect-children-and-support-safe-school-operations

    Views: 0

  • LSU professor relaunches fake news and disinformation resource website

    LSU professor relaunches fake news and disinformation resource website

    LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communication professor Leonard Apcar is relaunching a website designed to aggregate news, analysis and research about fake news and disinformation for students, academics and citizens to defend themselves against misinformation.

    Read More

    Views: 1

  • Secrets of the Piggyback Marketer

    [ad_1]

    Owner/Producer of SIMPLEnetworking, Chi Chi Okezie is an expert in piggyback marketing and uses other people’s resources to grow her business, credibility and brand-name. Never stingy with information, Chi Chi has graciously enlightened us with five points on piggyback marketing as follows…

    #1 “Civil Servant”

    Golden Rule in Piggyback Marketing, “You keep what you give away.”

    Volunteering is the biggest, best and most effective tool in Piggyback Marketing. When you volunteer with a big company or organization, doors swing open in your favor. Whether you are donating money, time or services, you position yourself into a group of like minded, generous and business oriented “do-gooders”. Latching onto a credible name or brand will drastically increase your visibility and add dimension to your efforts.

    #2 “Moonlighting”

    Start teaching a continuing education class or an evening course at a well known state or private institution. Pick a course or topic in which you are an expert. By teaching the class, you are building your credibility and developing great skills in research, communication and public speaking. You are automatically associated with the state or private institution and can leverage that for business. The class becomes another product which you can market to your clients and potential customers.

    #3 “Club Hopping”

    Join a club, chamber of commerce, business organization etc. and become an active member. Usually, clubs/organizations are members of bigger clubs and organizations. You can approach the director/president of your group and ask to be a representative of that group or organization which is a member of a bigger group, organization or chamber of commerce. Next thing you know, you will be seated or rubbing elbows with board members and significant decision makers!

    #4 “Show Your School Spirit”

    Get involved in your school alumni chapter and attend events or join a committee. Your position within the chapter can be a direct link in marketing your business to fellow alumni as well as school departments and students. Also offer to do class presentations, mentor students or be a recruiter/liaison. If there is not a chapter in your city, contact the alumni dept. and suggest one – you can be the President!

    5# “Half Time Show”

    Do you know any colleagues, entrepreneurs or other professionals who present seminars, classes, workshops or talks? If so, offer to do a quick presentation during their breaks to promote your brand, industry, products or services. Or you can opt to introduce the speaker/lecturer at an event. If you can make a dynamic introduction or pull off a great presentation during a break, potential customers will flock to you for business!

    [ad_2]

    Source by Chi Chi Okezie

    Views: 0

  • Combine Language Learning and Technology to Explode Your Teaching and Learning Success

    [ad_1]

    Are you looking to boost your English language teaching or learning skills to yet ever higher levels? Would you like to stimulate more interest in your language classes or break out of a slump or plateau? Combine the use of a variety of language learning techniques with continually developing technology to spur your successes. Here are some useful ideas and web sites to get you started.

    BLOGS

    A Web Log or Blog, is not unlike a dairy you keep online. You can write instructions, an essay or post any type of information you want. Graphics and images can be included to illustrate the written material. Sound and audio-visual files can also be placed into a blog for added impact. A teacher can post a reading or assignment where students can comment right online. No papers, no clutter and you can view it almost any time. Blogs are becoming easier to use and access and many sites allow you to set one up for free.

    ONLINE VIDEO / AUDIO

    Most professionals have an e-mail address or two. Your e-mail can now become a communicative tool between you and the learners. E-mail can now also include the use of images and sound or audio-visual clips, as well as the message text. Learners can send in assignments as attachments or pasted into the body of the e-mail. They can ask questions and receive timely feedback without waiting for the next class session. Teachers can send out instructions, updates or other information to learners individually, or as a group also without having to wait for the next scheduled class session.

    No computer? No problem. In many parts of the world e-cafes are so cheap they’re actually a viable alternative that students can easily afford. Whole “communities” of young learners are based on hangouts at e-cafes in some cultures. Talk to your students about it. You might be surprised.

    USE OF ONLINE RESOURCES for TEACHING / LEARNING

    The use of online games, EFL practice sites student and teacher forums, communities and activities has exploded in recent months in many parts of the world. Virtual communities and online reference libraries now enable learners to problem-solve, research a paper or to more quickly complete assignments that formerly would have taken disproportionately large amounts of time to complete. For example, a few sites worth mentioning include:

    o http://www.books.google.com/

    A web site which offers free access to books that can be read on-screen

    o http://www.universia.net.co

    This is a site which has a lengthy listing of virtual libraries in almost any genre and connects more than 900 mostly Spanish language libraries

    o http://www.redclara.net

    This site interconnects an advanced academic network of Latin American libraries

    o http://www.lablaa.org

    This site allows you access and read a large number of its collected works online and contains exposition pages

    o The official Project Gutenburg web site contains an extensive listing of literary works in English which have entered the Public Domain. It’s online at: [http://promo.net/pg/]

    Try some of these useful ideas and web sites to get you started in combining the use of a variety of language learning techniques with continually developing technology to explode your English language teaching and learning successes. If you need to know more about using these or other new technologies to boost student interest and motivation making your English language teaching more effective, feel free to e-mail me at the address below with questions or comments.

    [ad_2]

    Source by Larry M. Lynch

    Views: 0

  • Concierge Medicine – Is it For You?

    [ad_1]

    The last time you called your doctor’s office, how long did you have to wait for a reply? How long do you usually have to wait to get an appointment or wait for a prescription to be called in? When you get to the office, how long do you spend in the waiting room and how much time does the doctor spend with you?

    Did you get all your questions answered? How many seconds do you have in the beginning of your appointment to explain your symptoms before you are interrupted? Do the nurses and doctors seem to be more interested in their computers or their charts than they are to you?

    If your experiences are like most people, your answers to these questions are not very flattering to the medical profession and to the health care system in general. Most doctors don’t really want their practices to be like this, but they don’t have much choice. They have to have a high volume of patients in order to make ends meet financially. The high volume makes the clinic a very busy place and most patients don’t feel like they get much attention.

    In 1996 in Seattle, a doctor named Howard Moran thought there should be a better way to do this. He pioneered the concept of having a lower volume practice with highly attentive medical care provided as a service for patients in return for a retainer fee, much like many attorneys or accountants use. This fee may be in addition to, or in lieu of, the regular office fees that are billed to insurance companies. This concept allows the practice to remain financially solvent while providing better, more attentive medical service to its low volume of patients (usually keeping the patient count down to about one tenth of the number in a typical traditional primary care practice).

    Unfortunately, health insurance companies currently don’t pay for this type of service, so that means the patients have to pay this out of pocket, but if the service is good, it may be worth it. Patients who join these practices are encouraged to keep their usual insurance which they will need for visits to other specialists, laboratory testing, radiological testing and/or hospital services if needed.

    Many concierge practices offer same or next day appointments, no long waits for appointments or prescription refills, direct access to your personal physician day or night, house calls if necessary, continuing care if hospitalized, complete physical examinations, audiometry screening, cardiovascular and cancer risk screening, more attention to preventive care, unrushed appointments, all questions answered, family meetings if needed, coordination of care with specialists, provision of personal health records on CDs or flash drives, etc., etc.

    Depending on the type and number of services that are provided, the flat retainer fee can vary widely from one area to the next ranging from $100 to $20,000/ year, most probably averaging around $1500-3000/year. There were only a few hundred of these physicians a few years ago, but there are over 5000 of them now all over the country. Many of them, but not all, are listed at the main website for the American Academy of Private Physicians – http://www.aapp.org/. Patients may be able to find a concierge physician in their area on this site.

    There has been some controversy surrounding some of these practices because some authorities feel the growth of concierge medicine will lead to a 2-tiered medical system in this country – one for the wealthy and one for the not-so-wealthy. Also, with the current shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs), with increasing numbers of concierge practices, the number of PCPs available for traditional offices will be even smaller, and access to care for patients served by those practices will suffer. On the other hand, more medical students may become interested in primary care if opportunities in concierge medicine are available to them when they finish their residencies.

    Some of these practices have come under fire from insurance companies who say that concierge physicians are basically providing an insurance plan for their patients without having an insurance license to do so. The practices must therefore be legally and financially structured in such a way that avoids this criticism.

    Overall, the concept of concierge medicine provides a good alternative to the currently unsatisfying traditional model of medical practice. The fee may seem high to some, but in most instances, it probably isn’t much higher than the cost of the local cable or telephone bill, or about the same as what a family would spend eating out at a restaurant once a week. 

    [ad_2]

    Source by Greg Warth, M.D.

    Views: 0

  • Caribbean Medical School: Fastest Way to Be a Doctor?

    [ad_1]

    Caribbean medical schools have long been the butt of jokes but their graduates are the ones having the last laugh. There are thousands of licensed physicians from Caribbean schools practicing all across the country. Over 25% of all doctors in the US are from international schools. Do you know where your primary care physician went to medical school? This is the field where Caribbean graduates are expected to dominate with a large percentage of graduates training in Internal and Family Medicine. They are expected to fill a nationwide shortage that is currently occupied by Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners.

    Picture this. A 17 year old high school graduate enrolls in a pre-medical program at a Caribbean university. Schools will automatically accept students to their medical programs as long as they maintain a certain GPA in the pre-program. This means there is no need to take the MCAT so you can save yourself the headaches from preparing for that. The program is completed in 2 years and the student enrolls in the first year of the medical degree program at 19 years old.

    Numerous Caribbean schools offer an accelerated curriculum that divide the year into trimesters. Students attend school year round and are able to complete their M.D. in less than 36 months. Not to mention you only spend 18 months studying on the island. The clinical years are spent training alongside American medical student at hospitals in the US. St. George’s medical school has hospital affiliations that match any US school. Our fictional student graduates with his Doctorate in Medicine at the ripe age of 22 (going on 23).

    Our new graduate is eligible to practice in any state in the country as long as he attended one of the “Big 4” Caribbean medical schools (St. George’s University, Saba University, Ross University and American University of the Caribbean). Internal Medicine residencies last 3 years so we have a residency trained physician ready for board exams, licenses and employment at a mere 25 years old. Not quite Doogie Howser but it’s impressive to say the least.

    This accelerated path also benefits those seeking a new career or chasing their dream of being a doctor. Time is of the essence and wasting summers off in the traditional semester system is not time well spent. Caribbean medical schools are littered with nurses, pharmacists, dentists, chiropractors and many other health care practitioners. Many schools offer several different entrance times during the year giving flexibility for students who want to begin their medical education immediately.

    There is risk involved in attending a medical school overseas but there have been thousands who have blazed the trail before you and set the precedent. Caribbean medical schools produce capable physicians and fill an integral need in the health care system of the US.

    [ad_2]

    Source by Greg Andrew Park

    Views: 0

  • Welding Jobs: Ideas You Can Use At Home To Make Money Welding (No Boss While You Make $100,000)

    [ad_1]

    What if you could make $100,000 a year welding from home?

    What if you could make even an extra $500 a month from home, using your current skills? If you are a welder with basic welding skills and you are between jobs or you are being under paid in your current job, it might be worth your time to read this article – let’s think outside the box for just a minute on how you can make money welding from home.

    From Home Welding # 1:

    Teaching or tutoring any skill is a very profitable business. In any town of any size you’ll see at least one tutoring business in a strip mall brick and mortar location. In that same town will be at least a dozen other tutors working from home, making good money.

    Yes, most of the time they are tutoring math and reading to students. Lean back and think about what skills you have that can also be used in a tutoring business you can set up and milk cash from, like milk from a cow.

    Let’s say you are good enough with TIG to weld razor blades or pop can butts.

    If you can teach a non welder to operate a TIG torch good enough to go on and practice on their own at their home in about 3 hours of your hands on theirs – they will pay up to $100 an hour for 3 hours of TIG instruction. Just 2 students a day would bring you $100,000 a year. If you think I’m kidding I’m NOT! There are many reasons why education is so valuable – and that includes intense, focused tutoring in welding.

    6G pipe welding is the highest paid of all welding certifications – most 6G welders make $100k to $300k a year – and demand is crazy. However, if you are a 6G welder and you want to stay home, you can set up and teach 6G in your garage. Let’s say you do this with 7 students, each paying you $10,000 for a 3 month course. Yes, they will pay it – especially if you show them how they will have more time with your hand on theirs (the #1 secret to learning 6G fast).

    From Home Welding # 2:

    I was in Palm Springs the other day. I have been in and around the trades for 30 years… and when you see a tradesman’s truck and it is late model without dents or many scratches, clean, organized and well equipped, it means (99% of the time) that guy is making money.

    I pulled up to a light behind just such a truck – “Joe’s BBQ Service and Repair.” That’s it – that is all Joe does. He will weld cast aluminum or steel. He’ll clean and polish. He’ll replace a burner or a control. OR he’ll buy your old unit and sell / or sell you a new one.

    Yes, you need a town with a lot of high end BBQs. Other than that, go get it.

    From Home Welding # 3:

    Large steel cut outs. In art of all kinds, size matters. For example, 20 years ago we purchased two 4′ long coat racks – each is a piece of 1.5″ x 1.5″ x 1/8″ angle 4′ long with 6 horse shoes welded to the angle to hang the coats.

    On the horizontal surface of the angle is welded a scene made of 7 horse and 7 tree cut-outs. We paid $185 for each of these 20 years ago… that would be about $300 a piece in today’s dollars.

    The problem with you making these is that the 14 cut outs on each unit are too small too many to cut by hand – you need a computerized plasma table to make these.

    Here is where the magic of size makes all the difference.

    The artist who drew the cut outs on our coat rack was good. Each of the 7 horses is different and beautiful, as well as the trees. Any – or all of these – cut outs can be scaled up with chalk onto a sheet of say 4′ x 8′ x 3/16″ steel. Now, all you need is a plasma or an oxy torch to create the large version.

    What would a horse cut from a 4′ x 8′ sheet sell for?

    $300 to $700. It would depend on where you are and how you market it. Marketing is a large part of any business. Good marketing is not hard – you can do it.

    You can see, if you could get a “business pipe” full of inventory and sales and you were delivering 2 horses a day, you could easily make $100k. The other major opportunity with big cut outs is gates. The key to all of this stuff in the art category is beautiful line drawings. If you are not an artist, hire one on the condition that they sign the copyright to you.

    There are endless ideas to utilize even your most basic welding skills from home to make an excellent living or just extra money. The trick is:

    Step A:

    Find what will work best for you.

    Step B:

    Write out a simple plan of attack. Don’t put the cart before the horse. Many small businesses fail because the owner gets all wrapped up in the details and loses site of what is important. Here is what is important: Don’t spend money – MAKE MONEY!

    Step C:

    The first rule of business is to GET NOTICED. That is also the end goal of all marketing – once you have enough eyeballs on you, you will succeed. The common mistake is to leave marketing for last while concentrating on every little rule and piece of paper. A business license will do you no good if you don’t make money! Save your money and get it (if you really need one) when you make some money. Towns and cities will simply say, “do you have a business license?” When they ask, say: “I’m getting one now.”

    Conclusion:

    You are blessed to live in a country where you can go from nothing to something in a hurry. However, to get anywhere in a hurry requires running hard. You’ll never regret it.

    What should you do next?

    [ad_2]

    Source by Scott R. Linden

    Views: 0

  • Teaching Entrepreneurship To Children: Should We Do It?

    [ad_1]

    Should we be teaching entrepreneurship to children? When you were a child did you ever have a stand where you sold soft drinks like sodas? Did you ever offer cakes and candy to other students at school in order to make some money?

    Not everybody is bitten by the entrepreneurial bug when they are kids however. I truly believe that it’s vital teaching entrepreneurship to children. The harsh realities of entering into the workforce in a difficult economy presents a lot of challenges. The alternative of being an entrepreneur and working for yourself is something that should be explained to children and young people.

    Making then Aware of an Alternative

    The main thing working against our children having an entrepreneurial mindset is our education system. With only a few exceptions, most of the teaching we get from the time we are in kindergarten to the day we graduate from college is…

    * Make sure you get a good education

    * Study hard and graduate with your degree

    * Get a wonderful job with great additional benefits and you’re set for life!

    There are a number of issues with this.

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with working and getting a good job with for a terrific company. A lot of people end up doing this and a some enjoy it and make a huge contribution to their company.

    The real truth is that there is a HUGE portion of people who are not pleased with their jobs and are in fact totally dissatisfied. This can be due to the fact that they either do not like the work they do, who they actually work with or they may not get paid enough being just one paycheck away from being broke.

    The Second problem is that it is very RARE in these modern times to find anybody that works at one specific job for more than 3 to 5 years. Switching between jobs regularly has actually become the “brand-new standard”.

    That’s why it’s so essential in teaching entrepreneurship to children and revealing to them that there is an option to having to go out into the workforce to make a living. Would it not make more sense to instruct children about entrepreneurship and show them a that there is a very real alternative to living a life in the corporate world.

    Teaching them about things like beginning their own home-business… particularly an online business. We have to remember that the younger generation now invest most of their time online nowadays. So,when they are young, why not instruct them about how to make money with a medium like the internet that they are so comfortable using.

    Keeping it Real

    Understanding that children these days can truly benefit from finding out how to begin their own business, how do we begin teaching them about it?

    I think it’s extremely important to set the right expectations early on. Having your own business can be an amazing experience, however children should be taught that it does also include hard work and dedication. This is something that children (and adults) in some cases choose to skip over.

    The reality is beginning an online business has the possibility to make you a lot more money than most everyday jobs.

    It’s essential to offer children choices. Make them understand the benefits and challenges of working in the “Rat Race” and the alternative of working for themselves in their own business.

    To be really practical we have to remember that children will regularly want to select the most simple and “Safest” method rather than something that might present a greater challenge and require a little additional effort even though in the long-term they could be much better off.

    Keep Their Dreams Alive

    The last thing to keep in mind is to be supportive of children who wish to start their own company. You see most children still have dreams and goals when they are young.

    As time goes and life presents some obstacles to their dreams in various forms, children then start to lower their goals and become more willing to settle for mediocrity. That is unless they have someone to look up to and admire and to learn from. Be the kind of individual who motivates and supports those children to dream big and work hard to realise their ambitions.

    With it becoming harder to find a good job nowadays, young children (and lots of grownups) need to be aware of the option of a home based business as a vehicle to achieve their dreams and objectives. Teaching entrepreneurship to children and assisting them in preserving their dreams can help pave a path on their journey to financial freedom and a life filled with passion.

    [ad_2]

    Source by Merv Stevens

    Views: 0

  • Business Ethics for the Mindful Dance Professional

    [ad_1]

    Once upon a time, a dance teacher opened her own studio down the road from her former employer’s school, taking advantage of her former teaching position to start her own studio. Sound familiar? This is an all too common story in the dance studio business and unfortunately, this is no fairy-tale.

    We have all heard a version of this story or perhaps experienced it first-hand. Poaching students–direct or indirect solicitation of another’s students–is a practice that mindlessly fragments and divides the dance community. In addition to poaching students, other subtle, but just as divisive, practices include: making negative remarks about other teachers/schools, misrepresentation of the self by making false, exaggerated, or ambiguous claims, and making disparaging comparisons or references about others.

    What drives otherwise enterprising individuals to engage in business practices that burn bridges, sow the seeds of deceit, and model mindless behavior?

    Darwin. You heard me–Darwin is to blame. Well, not really Darwin himself, but the misinterpretation of his theories into a business context is at the root of this dilemma. When the business world adopted the neo-Darwinian philosophy of “survival of the fittest”, they unleashed a ready-made excuse for unethical action.

    As a culture that witnessed the “cola wars” first hand, we picked up the idea that anything goes when it comes to business and marketing. Ethics and morals need not apply. “That’s business” they say while defending their actions. They fail to see the big picture: to look mindfully at the situation. They unknowingly hurt the larger dance profession and therefore themselves. It is a case of one’s right hand shooting one’s left and thinking this is good.

    What makes one feel justified in approaching the business of dance studios in this mindless manner?

    At the root of the neo-Darwinian business approach is a sense of isolation and scarcity. These teachers believe that it is “them against the world”–or, more directly, “them against the other local studios/teachers.” Add to this sense of isolation a sense of scarcity–that there are not enough students to go around–and you start to understand how one begins to rationalize why stealing students is necessary for survival. However, these twin concepts–isolation and scarcity–are illusions in the dance world.

    Studios fighting over the same group of students create a negative atmosphere in the community. Parents sense this negativity and choose alternative activities for their children because they seem more wholesome: the potential young dancer takes up soccer. However, in a community where more than one dance school thrives without negativity, a greater number of students enjoy dance as an activity. This greater number of students translates down the road into a greater number of future dancers, dance teachers, and, most importantly, audience members. If dance studios stopped seeing each other so much as competitors and more as colleagues, the entire dance profession would benefit.

    The solution starts as simply as making replacements: replacing mindless competition with mindful collegiality, mindless isolation with mindful interconnectedness, and mindless scarcity with mindful abundance. We must realize that the dance profession, from the smallest recreational dance class to the largest professional company, is interconnected. The entire web of the dance world is vitally linked.

    For example, the dance community is rather small in comparison with the larger world of sports. There are many more children participating in sports than the arts. Rather than interpreting this as a reason to fight for resources, we should embrace a sense of abundance. There are more than enough potential students out there to sustain every school if we focus on bringing more students into dance rather than fighting over those already there. It is to the benefit of the dance profession at every level to include more of the non-dance world inside our walls rather than put up walls within our own.

    So, how can we begin to break down the twin illusions of isolation and scarcity in the dance studio world and open our eyes to interconnectedness and abundance?

    We need to base our actions and practices on ideals that reflect the dance world as a healthy and vibrant community rather than a dire and hopeless one that lends itself to mindless behavior. Adopting a code of ethics that reinforces a mindful and wholesome outlook will not just serve as guidelines, but also help promote a positive environment for those whom they effect.

    Going forward, we all need to embrace a code of ethics that addresses these issues. The following list is nowhere near complete, but it is a place to start.

    Business Ethics for the Mindful Dance Professional

    In all professional and business relations, the dance professional shall exhibit respect, honesty, and integrity for themselves, clients, and colleagues.

    A. Respect

    A dance professional shall refrain from making negative remarks that may discredit, malign, or in any way cast reflection on the professional standing of another school/studio or teacher.

    A dance professional shall refrain from making any disparaging references to, or disparaging comparisons with, the services of others

    A dance professional shall refrain from publishing, or causing to be published, any notice, newspaper advertisement, or any other matter likely to damage or depreciate the reputation of any colleague.

    B. Honesty

    A dance professional shall accurately portray his or her qualifications or affiliations to the public especially in advertising material and avoid any ambiguity or exaggeration.

    A dance professional shall refrain from portraying his or her qualifications or affiliations to the public in a way intended to deceive the uninitiated. For example: having danced a child role in the Nutcracker with a professional company and listing it as to portray having danced professionally with the company.

    C. Integrity

    A dance professional shall refrain from directly soliciting business from another teacher or studio by approaching, in any manner the pupil, pupils or employees of another teacher and, for any reason at all, to try to induce them to join his/her school.

    A dance professional shall refrain from indirectly soliciting business from another teacher or studio by making adverse criticism against other teachers’ methods, by offering free coaching, by citing the advantages to be gained by the pupil from the change (e.g. offering roles/parts), or other similar methods.

    With each of us taking responsibility for our own actions by embracing a mindful ethical base, we can co-create a healthier, connected, and abundant environment in the business of dance schools. Moreover, with all we have in common, we might just discover we make better friends than enemies.

    [ad_2]

    Source by James Robey

    Views: 0