Mi heroe

This unit is designed for high school. It attempts to have students reflect on what they value in a hero and what they choose to imitate. Students learn vocabulary to describe physical traits and personality characteristics of a hero/heroine. The students will engage in conversations and reflective writing about heroes in the target language of Spanish. The assessments include an interpersonal piece and a presentational writing assessment. As much as possible, I incorporated references to authentic resources such as, videos, music, infographics, and articles in Spanish

Some Basic Marxist Concepts to Help Understand Income Tax

The paper introduces readers to some basic Marxist concepts to give us the building blocks for an alternative understanding of tax and perhaps even to inspire some to use these concepts and ideas in their future research. It argues that the tax system reflects the phenomena of wealth and income and that there is a deeper reality obscured and ignored by the income tax system as an outcrop of a capitalist system which does the same. This deeper reality is that capital exploits workers and that profit, rent, interest and the like are the money form of the unpaid labour of workers, what Marx called surplus value. Tax is a deduction from that surplus value

Food and food history

David R. Blanks, associate professor in the history department in the American University in Cairo talks about the course he is teaching on food history, the weekly column he writes in the Caravan about food titled Bite Me and on food, it\u27s history, and the Egyptian food culture

Exploring the key elements required for midwives to develop a new model of postnatal care within an acute care setting

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health.Aim This research aimed to explore the key elements to improve the quality of postnatal care provided to women in a public hospital postnatal ward in Sydney and to attempt to implement a new model of postnatal care. Background Reports, internationally and nationally, indicate that women are least satisfied with hospital-based postnatal care when compared with antenatal, labour and birth care. Many researchers have identified the components of postnatal care that women find most helpful however, there continues to be barriers to develop and test innovative approaches or models of postnatal care within hospital settings. The focus of this project was to try to move the postnatal ward to a culture that is woman and baby centred rather than illness or institution-centred. The development process drew on Practice Development approaches that would enable midwives to facilitate change in the environment and culture of the postnatal ward with a view to improving postnatal care for women and their families. Method A qualitative descriptive study, using a three phased approach, was adopted for this research. Phase one was to identify the issues and concerns by conducting focus groups with staff. Phase two challenged usual practices and explored new ways of providing care in the postnatal ward. This phase incorporated working with the staff utilising Practice Development approaches. The third phase explored with key stakeholders the outcomes and issues of phase two including the barriers and limitations to enable midwives to implement a new model of postnatal care. Findings There were a number of barriers for change to occur including the current system of maternity care provided to women. This has also been reported by others over the past few decades. Within an acute care hospital environment, the midwives struggled to provide quality midwifery care with a philosophy of care counter to that which had been imbedded over many years. Midwives were caught up managing the day to day issues and most were unable to reflect on the care women received or to have the time to contemplate changes. Challenging the usual rituals and routines with the midwives generated some attainable changes that included providing women with more information about what to expect following birth and updated policies for healthy women and babies. The policies reflect the latest evidence and a more woman and baby centred approach to a daily assessment. This research also explored ways for midwives to be able to spend more time with women, and included challenging the everyday non-midwifery tasks undertaken by midwives working within the hospital system. These non-midwifery tasks included managing administration, security, catering and domestic duties. Barriers towards providing a more woman and baby centred way of providing postnatal care included the need for further professional development of the midwives and more professional support. There was also a need for role modelling of womancentred approaches to care and the development of a different way of providing care that included midwifery continuity of care. Conclusion Maternity services in hospitals have been subsumed into the general wards often governed by sickness priorities and it is acknowledged changing to a more womancentred approach was challenging. Without support from leaders, the change towards a woman-centred approach may not happen within the constraints of the medicalised model. Implications for Practice My research found a number of implications for others planning improved postnatal care for women in an acute care setting. Key elements included the need for midwives to have a clear articulation of their vision for the ward. Change may not happen if midwives do not believe the benefits of providing individualised care that meets the needs of the women. For this to be realistic and achievable, strong visionary leadership is key to moving the ward vision forward and implementing a new model of care. The timing for change in this setting is critical. It is unreasonable to implement change with midwives during a period of restructure. This can have a negative impact on successful change by threatening the midwives personal sense of control. In summary, this research found that effective leadership, adopting a shared vision, providing high support and high challenge were all important elements to support moving towards a more woman-centred care approach. Threatening the midwives sense of control over their professional world was also found to be an important factor when attempting to bring about change and will be discussed in this thesis

Barriers towards employees\u27 structural and psychological empowerment: A study of non-managerial employees in governmental service organizations in Cairo

The aim of this thesis is to pave the way for non-managerial employees’ empowerment in governmental service organizations in Egypt. Based on a review of previous studies that discussed the Egyptian bureaucracy, this study hypothesized that all the structural and psychological empowerment barriers - namely the organizational cultures and work context factors, managerial employees’ leadership style, and non-managerial employees’ readiness level and personalities - do exist within the governmental service organizations. Questionnaires were distributed to 223 non-managerial employees in Real Estate offices, Social Insurance and Pension offices, Traffic Services offices, Civil Registry offices, Health offices (Ministry of Health), Tax offices, and Courts’ Registry and Record offices all over Cairo. Statistical analyses of the findings of 183 eligible questionnaires reveal that ‘non-managerial employees’ inability to be empowered’ is the only empowerment barrier that does exist within governmental service organizations. Results have been inconclusive for the organizational cultures. The thesis concludes by providing recommendations for facilitating non-managerial employees’ empowerment, and offering suggestions for future research based on the limitations identified in this study

Tax and the Forgotten Classes: from the Magna Carta to the English Revolution

This paper looks at three key early events in English tax history, the 1215 Magna Carta, the Peasants\u27 Revolt of 1381 and the English Revolution from 1640 to 1649. It uses these events to explore the relationship between tax, war, democracy and rebellion. Tax is both an expression of and a cause of class divisions that is can, and does as these events show, spark revolts against the state imposing the taxes. These revolts can be between members of the ruling elite, or between the people outside the ruling elite and that group of rulers both political and economic, or a mixture of both. The aim is to reintroduce class into tax history and show over time the crucial role ordinary people (for example peasants, artisans and workers) play in the history of taxation. Thus the people of London played a role in the successful rebellion of the Barons against the kings\u27 imposition of excessive tax and the establishment of a common counsel of the elite to approve future extractions. This gain became the bedrock for future democratic demands, for example no taxation without representation. Peasants drove the revolt of 1381 against poll taxes but could not make demands that transcended their particular class position although they gave hints of an alternative non-class divided society. In 1629 Ship Money enabled the King to rule without parliamentary approval and this eventually sparked the rebellion and then revolution from 1640 in the context of a society changing from feudal to capitalist relations. In all three cases the actions of the masses of ordinary people are a key to understanding the events and the intertwining of war, tax, democracy and rebellion that becomes evident during this investigation