As the title implies, social studies class is the first introduction a student has to the world around them as it pertains to government, economy and world news. Back in the day (and when I say back in the day I mean way back) a typical social studies assignment would be to read the evening newspaper and report back to the class about the news article. Well, they don’t do many evening newspapers anymore. Enter the internet.

CNN Student News puts together a daily ten minute news block gear specifically for high school students. The stories are basic yet informative and produced with the professional standards you would expect from the network. There is also a daily shout out question that your class can be recognized with. Best of all, there are no commercials.

There are also some productive supplemental resources like a daily discussion and news quiz. You can request transcripts of the show as well as other course materials. Who knows, you might even be inspired to let your kids create their own news broadcast.

Check out the CNN Student News and let us know if it works for you.

— Meyer

From the outbox of Meyer’s inbox:

It’s always encouraging to find a story that can best be summed up as “they get it.” If the children are our future then we can rest assured that the student featured in this article from Atlantic City “get it” when it comes to learning the trades. If only we lived in a world where nothing had to be built or fixed. Luckily for us, these kids are going to be taking care of business.

High School Career, Tech Classes Let Students Try Out Fields by Edward Van Embden writing for Press of Atlantic City

Nate Norcross, 18, suggested they remove the relevant coil, clean it, put it back in and then run the diagnostics to see if anything had changed. Norcross is not a mechanic – yet. He’s a student in Millville Senior High School’s auto shop program.

Auto shop is one of 18 Career and Technical Education courses serving more than 400 students at the school.

Diane Garrison, CTE Department chairwoman, said the programs in Millville have grown and evolved to meet student interest and local job demands. Courses such as Web page design, nursing and even entrepreneurship have been added in the past few years.

“This is not just for students who are going right into a career,” she said. “This is for the students who are pursuing post-secondary education as well.”

As the academic demands of high school have increased, and budgets have been squeezed, many vocational or technical programs have been eliminated or relegated to county vocational high schools.

Each of the state’s 21 counties has a separate vocational high school, but Cumberland County’s still operates on a shared-time basis, with students attending half the day at their local high school for academic courses and half at the at Technical Education Center. Not all students can manage the split schedule, so local high schools have tried to maintain vocational programs.

Check out the rest of the article here.