There is so much on our kids' plates, it's no wonder that often times grades suffer. Here are some tips to help your High School student have a great school year.

1. Go to School

News Flash: Attendance in high school counts for 3 very good reasons...
A) They'll get better grades and learn more if they actually attend class- everyday if possible.
B) hey need to take school seriously and get in the habit of attending regularly in order to qualify for graduation.
C) A poor attendance record will follow them for a long time. Colleges and employers will look at this very important statistic.

2. Get Organized

It doesn't need to be fancy, hi-tech equipment. Students should take the time to learn organizational skills if they don't already have them. It will be crucial for success in college, in the work force, and in everyday life. It is a must!

3. Do Homework

There is a reason it's called "Homework." It's not meant to be crammed in on the school bus, or in a noisy study hall - Homework should be done at home in a quiet environment if possible. There is no question that grades will suffer if homework is not completed every time.

4. Rise to the Challenge

They should challenge themselves. Colleges advice taking the most challenging courses they can. Challenging courses reap big rewards. Many high schools offer college credit in high school for advanced courses.

5. Get Help

If they are worried about grades or test scores, don't wait--- Ask for Help! At the first sign of trouble they should talk to their teachers. Remember, if they wait and wait to deal with a problem - chances are that it will be more difficult to fix.

If these simple steps are followed, their chances for a successful school year will be greatly improved. Just use common sense. Try and remember what it was like to be in their shoes.

Several avid readers might be highly surprised and even out-raged at some of the unusual places that used books, even old classics, have been found in the past. There are some people who really have no respect for literature and the variety of ways that some individuals dispose of their used books that they have around there homes proves this point.

Classic literature titles have been found in such places as dumpsters and the individuals that find these used books simply wonder how they happened to get here. Individuals will often clean out their attics, basements, garages, or homes and come across these books and no longer have any use for them. Instead of taking the time to take them to a thrift store or a used book store, the individual will simply toss the used books into the trash like they are an old watermelon rind.

Unfortunately and surprisingly, an individual was dumpster diving in a dumpster at a school and came up with perfectly good copies of classic literature of titles that included Little Women and Treasure Island. The really sad thing is that not only did these books still make noise as you opened them, which meant they were relatively new, but schools should know better. I am sure that there were students at that school that would have loved to have had those books to own for themselves. The school did not even consider give the books away nor did they consider have any type of book drive either.

One question I have wondered about for a long time is do publishers always destroy every single recalled book or are these books simple passed off to the public at a later date. A book gets recalled when authors claim that they events they write about in their memoirs are true, but actually they have been fictionalized instead. It seems as if this is happening a lot lately and it makes one wonder if this is a simple publicity stunt by the publisher or are these authors simply getting lazy. This is exactly what happened to the original edition of the O. J. book that is known as his confession book if you remember, because it was recalled and then later the price of the book skyrocketed.

An even more shocking fact has been found that public libraries have been known to toss books into their dumpsters as well and the latest of this occurrence that I could locate was in February of 2008, which was to say the very least shocking. In fact, a full blown investigation was completed by the local news station and found that several trash bags had in deed been tossed into area dumpsters within particular branch libraries and these are books that were paid for with the taxes of the residents of that county.

These books included books for children, CD books, text books, magazines, and several other used books. The amazing thing was that several of these books were still in fabulous condition and the library was continuing to toss the books away weekly, which was such a loss to the entirely community. The real disappointment was that the books were being paid for with the tax dollars by the residents of the county and then simply being trashed weekly, which were ending up in a landfill.

There are thousands upon thousands of individuals around the world that love every thing there is about books and they enjoy sharing them with others. They feel there is no better way to share their love of books with others than by being able to share these wonderful experiences by exchanging them, which also keep used books in circulation.

One individual may have thousands of books stacked upon their shelves that they have read within their life time, but are now just gathering dust as they sit there waiting to be read once more. Area used book stores seem to only be interested in few of them and if they would take these few, then the individual would only receive next to nothing for them. Avid readers would never consider throwing the books away simply because no matter what shape they may be in they are still in good enough condition to read many more times. Finally, the individual comes to the concussion to simply give the books away to some other individual that will want them and that will treasure them as they have.

Today with the advancement in technology there are now a few web sites were individuals are able to join so that they can have the chance to exchange books with other book lovers around the world. Some of these web sites do charge for each transaction, but they also get involved within the mailing procedure between each member. On the other hand, some of the other web sites simply offer the service for either a monthly or yearly membership cost, then the posting cost is simply paid for by the receiver of the books. Either way, these are services that are provided to enhance the relationship between avid readers all over the world by building a community of book lovers where they have the ability to exchange their used books.

Why should any lover of books let books set on the shelves within our homes and gather dust to possibly be never read again? Would you not trade one of your used books with a friend or an acquaintance for a chance to read another used book that you have not read yet? There are many used books that are no longer in print and as being so are know being harder to find, but this makes finding those hard to find books that you have been wanting to read easier. Many individuals, like myself, feel good about themselves when ever they recommend or pass a used book on to some one that they have really enjoyed reading themselves.

It really is a complete shame that there is no real cash value for used books, but this is simply because of the lack of any type of affective marketing for them. Of course, these web sites are at least a way for these individuals to exchange their books. One other way to get rid of used books is to simply develop a monthly book swap between you and as many of your friends as you can get together, who will be willing to meet once a month to exchange books with one another. This is a great way to communicate with your friends and get new reading material as well.

The concept of water skiing dates back to at least the mid-nineteenth century when a man from Sweden began the patenting process, but the concept never came to fruition. Very little is known about the true beginnings of the sport, though the term can be found in the Swedish dictionary dating back to 1921 - vattenskida, which translates to ski on a body of water.

It was approximately a year later when light was seriously shown on the idea. It was on June 28, 1922 when an eighteen-year-old young man named Ralph Samuelson made the realization that if you could ski on snow, then it was not farfetched to believe you could ski on water. The first time he attempted to see if his concept held any water, so to speak, was on Lake Pepin in Lake City, Minnesota.

Using curved barrel staves bound to his feet with leather straps and towed by his brother Ben by simple clothesline, he was off! The brothers experimented for several days until July 2, 1922 when Ralph discovered that leaning backwards with the tips of the skis up proved for successful water skiing.

Several claims have been made as to who first came up with the concept of water skiing, although the American Water Ski Association (AWSA) formally accepted Samuelson as the first on record in 1966 from his attempts in 1922.

Samuelson started taking his water skiing stunts on the road, traveling all of the East coast of the United States where large bodies of water could be found.

Samuelson never patented any of his equipment - he was too busy having fun and showing off his discovery. A man by the name of Fred Waller patented the first water skis, calling them "Dolphin Akwa-Skees."

Soon after Waller's patented equipment made its way into the market, water skiing became a largely popular exhibition game By the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1939, the first national water skiing championship was held at Jones Beach in Long Island, New York.

Over time, as the concept of water skiing became more and more popular, it started evolving, and becoming trickier and more advanced. Three different divisions were created - slalom, trick, and jump. Competitors were grouped usually into gender and age.

Slalom courses started out as a simple row of buoys in a line, which the skier had to ski in and out of, much like an obstacle course. Slalom courses have a sequence of buoys set in a straight line eight feet apart from each other and a sequence of six prearranged buoys, which constitutes the entrance and exiting gates. The boat towing the skier travels down the middle of the buoys at a specified speed and the skier goes in and out of the buoys to get around them. The driver of the boat needs to be quite a bit of focused too - his job is to keep a straight path while keeping within a half-mile an hour of the chosen speed. The skiers can hit speeds up to 70 miles per hour and slow to around 20 miles per hour up to six times within a seventeen-second time-frame!

Trick skiing usually is where the skier holds their rope by one of their feet using a special harness. They do jumps and flips where points are awarded based on the difficulty of their tricks they perform. The skier has 20 seconds to perform as many tricks as possible and is allowed two trick runs.

Jump skiing seems to bring the in the largest. The jump ramp heights can be between 2 1/2 to 5 1/2 feet with a maximum boat speed of 36mph. With these factors, the skier can jump over 200 feet!

Water skiing became an exhibition sport at the 1972 Olympic Games in Kiel, West Germany. Today, there are over 650 water skiing clubs with over 11 million participants just in the United States alone with millions more worldwide.

On August 8, 2000, a crowd gathered at Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. They were there to watch the recovery of a vessel that had been underwater for 136 years, a vessel that had been touted as the most important underwater archaeological find of the 20th century.

The crowd was awaiting the recovery of the H.L. Hunley, the Civil War-era submarine that is widely recognized as the first submarine to actually sink a warship. While the excavation of the Hunley was an important and exciting event, the history of the ship is just as intriguing and significant.

While submarines already boasted nearly 100 years of history in the United States, the first being used during the American Revolution, the Confederate Hunley was the first submarine that could truly be considered a precursor to the modern submarine.

The story of the Hunley begins in New Orleans in 1862. Horace Lawson Hunley, James McClintock, and Baxter Watson began work on a small submarine dubbed the Pioneer. Although the Pioneer was tested in the Mississippi River, work on the small submarine was abandoned when the Union Army began to converge on New Orleans.

Hunley, McClintock, and Watson moved on to Mobile, Alabama, where they began to work with machinists Thomas Park and Thomas Lyons. Another submarine, American Diver, was constructed and abandoned as too slow before the men began construction on what would become the Hunley.

Known during development and construction as "the porpoise," the Hunley lived up to her nickname; a sleek design with an appearance years ahead of her time, the Hunley was a 40 foot long watercraft made especially for subverting and destroying Union boats.

The Hunley was a relatively small watercraft, with a hull height of only a little over four feet, designed to be manned by a crew of eight - seven to turn the hand-cranked propeller, one to direct and steer her. At each end of the vessel were ballast tanks that could be flooded by valves to allow the vessel to travel underwater or pumped dry by hand pumps when the vessel needed to come to the surface. These ballast tanks were supported by iron weights that were bolted to the underside of the Hunley; if the vessel needed to rise to the surface quickly, these ballasts could be dropped from inside the vessel.

After a successful demonstration, the Hunley was shipped to Charleston by rail and drafted into service by the Confederate Navy, with decidedly mixed results; two test runs of the vessel claimed the lives of thirteen men, including her inventor, Horace Lawson Hunley.

Undaunted by the Hunley's less-than-stellar record, the Confederate Navy charged on ahead with plans for the vessel, and on February 17, 1864, the submarine was employed in her first - and only - mission: the sinking of the USS Housatonic.

The Union blockade of southern ports had paralyzed the South, particularly the blockade on Charleston. The Housatonic, 1240-ton steam-powered warship, equipped with a dozen large cannons, was employed in the blockade of Charleston Harbor.

Confederate Naval Lieutenant George E. Dixon, along with a crew of seven men who'd volunteered for the Hunley's first mission, attacked the Housatonic, and managed to bring the ship down with a torpedo to the hull. The Housatonic and five of her crew were at the bottom of the harbor in a matter of minutes; the Hunley was to meet a similar fate.

The reasons for the Hunley's sinking are unclear. It has been theorized that the torpedo that sunk the Housatonic also damaged the Hunley, as well, or that the torpedo actually misfired, taking the submarine down along with the Housatonic. Whatever the reason, the submarine sunk in the Charleston Harbor with all eight of her crew inside.

Irregardless of her tragic fate, the Hunley proved to naval engineers that a submarine watercraft could indeed be created for destruction of enemy ships, changing modern naval warfare forever.

After her excavation in 2000, the Hunley was taken to the Warren Lasch Conservation Center at the decommissioned Charleston Navy Yard, where the she now rests in a specially designed water tank while she is under the process of conservation. In 2004, her crew, identified by DNA testing, was laid to rest with full military honors at Charleston's Magnolia Cemetary.

These days, it is nearly impossible to find someone who has a lot of time on their hands. For most people, a 24 hour day seems insufficient to get all the work done and to fit in other activities that one would like to do. When you think about the amount of time you spend traveling to and from work, you probably have so little left to unwind and do things you enjoy when you are at home. You most likely miss relaxing things like snuggling with a good book at the end of your day.

Now, thanks to modern technology and the wonders of portable music devices like the iPod, you can now enjoy the luxury of a good book and the latest news, even when you're on the go. The Apple iPod has definitely revolutionized the digital audio industry, bringing out versions like the Shuffle, Nano, and the iPod Touch. Music is not the only thing you can listen to, but even news, podcasts, and audio books.

Learning while on the go, now that sounds like a nifty idea! Even if you're riding the train to work, working out while jogging, or driving on those long trips, audio books in your iPod Nano will be more than just a source of info, but even entertainment. What's great about downloading audio books to listen to is that you don't have to carry your book around, and your hands are free to do other things. There are tons of other great benefits to getting audio books for your mp3 player or CD player.

For kids, audio books can help them enrich their vocabulary, learn the pronunciation and diction of new words, and even leave room for their imagination. Think of it as interactive story telling, without having a story book on hand. Plus, for busy people, audio books keep them up to date on the latest novels, or even on instructional language packs, even when they are out doing other things.

For visually impaired persons, audio books are ideal educational tools, too. Also, imagine how much paper you save by not having to print thousands of copies of a book! Storage of audio books is in digital format, and you can download them on your hard drive to listen to from your PC, burn them on CD's to give to friends, and even upload them into your iPod Nano or any other mp3 player for listening while on the move.

Educators looking for constitution activities for children ages 9-12 may get inspired by this approach. It is a provocative inroad to the study of the constitution with a fun and practical outplay. Here are a few questions to consider in preparing your constitution activities:

We the People

Who are "We the People"?
Who did the founding fathers mean by "We the People"?
How has the definition "the People" changed since 1787?
The Three Branches of Government
What is the structure of the federal government?
What did the founding fathers mean by "checks and balances?
How are we protected from misuse of power in our government?

Politics without politics

Politics is defined as the science and art of government. The constitution process is meant to be unbiased and neutral. How have current world affairs affected your view of the constitution?
What is the best cure for apathy or cynicism? How to pro-actively prevent apathy and cynicism in your students?
What activities demonstrate CARE for the integrity of the constitution?

Now you have a premise for planning your constitution activities. Here are a few suggestions for projects and activities that affirm our value for the U.S. Constitution: activities that can all lead to and support learning a powerful and evocative song called "We the People".

Visit your state capitol.
Visit your town or city"s courts of justice.
Visit the police department.
Visit the department of education.
Find out what environmental laws exist in your state.
Who protects the planet?
Who protects the air and water?
Write a congressman/woman.
Write the mayor.
Create a government for a day in your classroom.
Clean up a street.
Clean up a hallway.
Clean up a park

ASK THE BIG QUESTIONS!

Now, these are few starter constitution activities for you and the children in your care. And finally, here is a gift from our school to your school, from our community to your community, from our hearts and minds to yours. It is a song written with the help of a group of 4th and 5th graders in a public school in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a result of their own constitution activities. We hope you enjoy it! We're making it available at: http://www.constitution-activity.com.

Listen to the song and follow along with the lyrics provided.

Sing along with the song (in various groupings) using the lyrics provided.

Take some time to open up these questions, the children will give their own examples that can be written on the board:

Who are we the people? (our true democracy)
What do we say no to? (our moral compass)
What are we free to do? (our rights)

Re-look at the lyrics of the song and have the children find movements that work with the song (can be full body or just hand movements). You can look at the YouTube video of "We the People" for ideas; (insert link)
Sing the song again with the added movements.

What you are going to find when you search for the history of email is that no one seems to agree on when it began or when the first message was sent. There are some common stories that tell the same tale, but other sources seem to believe otherwise. Whatever the case, email started out small, and was not thought to be what it would become in our modern times. It was a convenient way for a few to get in touch easily though their computers when the Internet as we know it was pretty much nothing more than a concept, if that.

Compatible Time Sharing System (or CTSS) was first used at MIT in the year 1961, according to some online sources. Others claim that email did not come into being until 1965, and some put the date in the 1970s. Whatever the case, early email was a simple message sent with a variety of commands to send such a message to someone on another computer. Some say the first person to do this was Ray Tomlinson and his first message was not sent until 1972.

Mr. Tomlinson was the person that decided that the @ symbol was what could tell a computer that the message within the email was mail, and where it should be sent. You can think of the information after the @ as the way to tell to which computer system the message should be sent, and the letters or numbers before that symbol specify a person or a specific computer terminal.

You may not have dealt with spam email until the Internet was becoming more widespread, (some time in the 1990s), but it has actually been around since the 1970s. The first spam-like emails sent were not about Viagra, but they were unsolicited none the less. The messages were more benign, but unwelcome all the same. Today, this is one of the biggest problems we have with electronic mail.

Today, email is used everywhere and by almost everyone with access to a computer. Spam emails are everywhere, and so are emails meant to scam you or even to scare you. Though in the early days there was no reason to hide the origin of any message, many try to do that today. If you have a problem figuring out who sent something, use a free email lookup to see what you can find out about the sender.

When trying to find a tutor for your student, you are bombarded by an astonishing number of choices. Evaluating some of the value a tutoring company provides over an individual.will illustrate that a tutoring company offers many advantages.

1.) Fit with the Student: A tutoring company has a variety of tutors. This allows them to match your student to a tutor who has the necessary subject knowledge, tutoring experience, and a complementary personality to the student. A personal connection is a very important, often overlooked key to a successful tutor/student relationship. Having many different tutors allows a company to provide your student with tutors in different subjects and to be flexible with your scheduled sessions.

2.) Quality: A tutor has to go through a number of steps to gain employment with a good tutoring company. At The Way to A, tutors submit resumes. We interview the most promising of these candidates; then we call personal and professional references of the best tutors we interviewed. If they are highly recommended, we perform criminal background checks on each prospective tutor. If the background check is clear, we bring in the tutor for an orientation and example tutoring session. Each tutor must demonstrate the ability to tutor effectively at the interview level and the orientation level before they will actually be placed with a student. When you hire an individual tutor, you have 2 options: you can do all of that yourself, or you can risk it.

3.) Professionalism: A tutoring company has established methods of doing business. Companies have systems of invoicing their customers and paying their tutors. This allows the tutor to focus on what they do best: teaching. Additionally, tutoring companies have a code of conduct and a level of professional behavior they expect from their tutors.

4.) Reliability: Unexpected things happen to people. People move, retire, get sick, etc. If you are working with a tutoring company, they have another tutor that they can pair with your student to make sure that the test is still studied for, even though the regular tutor is sick. If a tutor moves away, the company can provide a new tutor and already be familiar with the situation, as opposed to you trying to find a new individual on your own.

5.) Accountability: Tutoring companies have invested in their reputation. Their tutors work with multiple students, not just yours. They are known entities in the community. A tutoring company has more to lose and consequently more motivation to make you happy by going above and beyond to give you and your student a great experience.

Since Malcolm Knowles pioneered the study of adult learners, studies have been done to determine the best approach to teaching adult students in a classroom environment. One way of learning that's not often talked about is tutoring, rather than classroom teaching, for adults. In this article, I will reveal a few practical tips for working with adult students from a tutoring approach.

The motivation for adult students to learn is usually to attain knowledge to achieve some sort of goal. Whether this goal is personal or professional, the adult learner has a practical use in mind. Having a tutor can help an adult student take the knowledge being learned in the classroom and apply it to their particular situation or goal. A student struggling with statistics, for example, might benefit from a tutor who could show them how the principles of statistics could be used in their current field.

The self-image of an adult is usually based, at least in part, on their intelligence and knowledge. Consequently, the ego of adults can interfere with their ability to deal with the frustration of confusing material. If an adult learner becomes too frustrated, many times they will quit rather than allow their self-esteem to be damaged. A tutor can support the adult learner in privacy and help them assimilate the new material into their existing knowledge base.

Adult students are usually busy; demands of family, work, church or other social commitments are frequently competing with schoolwork for the attention of adult students. Hiring a tutor who will work around the schedule of adults allows the student to plan for and budget a set block of time where they will focus all of their attention on studying or completing assignments.

Adults bring life experience to the classroom, which can be a great aid to learning. However, it can also make it difficult to accept new ideas. It takes time and focused attention to integrate new knowledge with old. A tutor can aid an adult in getting the practice they need with new material to meld it to the knowledge they already possess.

There are several different options when it comes to choosing a tutor for your student. The choice I want to focus on in this article is the choice between a tutoring facility and a tutor who comes to your home. There are advantages and disadvantages to each for you to weigh before making a decision.

Cost: There are several different factors that affect pricing for tutoring companies. Tutoring facilities have to charge enough to cover the rent or mortgage on their building, upkeep, equipment and staff. In-home tutoring companies do not have these expenses, as they come to your home. In-home tutoring is often less expensive than a tutoring center. Make sure you find out the hourly rate and the length of commitment before choosing a tutor in Dallas, Texas.

Convenience: It's hard to beat an in-home tutor for convenience; they come to you at the time you appoint. If you do not live near a tutoring facility, this may be a big advantage for you. There may also be some reservations about having a stranger in your home - before hiring a in-home tutor, make sure the company does criminal background checks on all tutors.

Content: In-home tutors usually use the content provided by your student's classroom teacher. Their goal is to help explain the concepts to help your student in their current class and to give your student the necessary tools they will need to succeed academically in the future. A tutoring facility may use this same approach, or they may have their own material that they work from. If the goal is to increase your student's grades in a class, make sure the tutor is using the material from that class.

Comfort: What is the best learning environment for your student? Different people learn in different ways. Studies have shown that students learn best in a physically and psychologically comfortable place. That would indicate that an in-home tutor is most effective, but you know your student best. Focus is important - is there a place in your home where your student can focus? If not, creating such a space is important not just to provide a place for in home tutoring to be most effective, but also for the student to complete studies effectively on their own.

These are some of the factors to evaluate when choosing a tutoring situation for your child. There are a variety of different options in the Dallas Metroplex. I hope these guidelines help you make an informed decision.