The Story Behind TIME’s ‘Resilience of Ukraine’ Cover

(Artwork by JR; Photograph by Artem Iurchenko. A drone was used to capture the cover image on March 14 in Lviv.)

    Since Russia’s invasion began, dozens of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children have been killed and thousands of others have fled in search of safety. Among those thousands is 5-year-old Valeriia from Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine. Her image – a smiling child – appears on one of this issue’s covers.

    If you met Valeriia, you might think she’s shy, her mother Taisiia told TIME, but don’t be fooled; at home, she commands attention. She loves the same things as many little girls – her stuffed bunny; her Elsa doll fromCold Heart(which English speakers know as Frozen); and her pink backpack, which she had to leave behind as she ran off her country. Valeriia also has big dreams: in particular, starting her first year of school on Sept. 1. Now, it’s hard to say when and where Valeriia will be able to do so. On March 9, mother and daughter fled to Poland; for safety, they asked that TIME use only their first names. In an interview, Taisiia explained her decision to leave home to keep her child safe. “She is my sunshine, my joy.”

    According to Taisiia they woke up early in the morning of Feb. 24 to learn the occupying army had started bombing military bases. “I thought about my daughter, Valeriia; for her safety, I knew we had to go. We left Ukraine before we were bombarded, so we had a chance.” Even though Valeriia is with her now, husband and son stayed in Ukraine and therefore, it was very hard to leave. The day they left, the lines for buses and trainsstretched 3 km, mostly women and children, she says, “We were packed together and had to stand for 18 hours on the train to Lviv”.

    The Russians still haven’t come to their city. The people from Kryvyi Rih have fought them off. But they are closer and closer, and you can see them approaching. In the media, Russia says they aren’t at war in Ukraine. But the war is real. People are dying for real. “And here I am, with my sister, my nephew, and my mother in Poland, in a hotel near Warsaw. They take care of us and even in this difficult situation, it was a warm reception. I cannot find the words to express how grateful I am to everyone who has helped”, ends up a crying Taisiia.

(Available: https://time.com/magazine/europe. Adapted.)

Cybersecurity: An overview of cyber challenges facing the nation, and actions needed

Federal agencies and the nation’s critical infrastructure — such as energy, transportation systems, communications, and financial services — depend on Information Technology (IT) systems to carry out operations and process essential data. However, the risks to these IT systems are increasing—including insider threats from witting or unwitting employees, escalating and emerging threats from around the globe, and the emergence of new and more destructive attacks. Rapid developments in new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and ubiquitous Internet and cellular connectivity, can also introduce security issues. Over 28,000 security incidents were reported by federal civilian agencies to the Department of Homeland Security in FY 2019.

Additionally, since many government IT systems contain vast amounts of personally identifiable information (PII), federal agencies must protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of this information—and effectively respond to data breaches and security incidents. Likewise, the trend in the private sector of collecting extensive and detailed information about individuals needs appropriate limits.

To highlight the importance of these issues, Government Accountability Office (GAO) has designated information security as a government-wide high-risk area since 1997. This high-risk area was expanded in 2003 to include the protection of critical cyber infrastructure and, in 2015, to include protecting the privacy of PII.

GAO has made about 3,300 recommendations to federal agencies to address cybersecurity shortcomings—and we reported that more than 750 of these had not been fully implemented as of December 2020. We designated 67 as priority, meaning that we believe they warrant priority attention from heads of key departments and agencies.

Adapted from: https://www.gao.gov/cybersecurity. Available on November 16th, 2022

Why can group work be a challenge in monolingual classes?

[1] Firstly, and most obviously, the lack of a need to communicate in English means that any communication between learners in that language will seem artificial and arguably even unnecessary. Secondly, the fact that all the learners in the class share a common culture (and are often all from the same age group) will mean that there will often be a lack of curiosity about what other class members do or think, thus making questionnaire-based activities superfluous. Thirdly, there is the paradox that the more interesting and motivating the activity is (and particularly if it involves a competitive element of some sort), the more likely the learners are to use their mother tongue in order to complete the task successfully or to finish first. Finally, the very fact that more effort is involved to communicate in a foreign language when the same task may be performed with much less effort in the mother tongue will also tend to ensure that very little English is used.

Is group work worth the effort?

[2] Taken as a whole, these factors will probably convince many teachers that it is simply not worth bothering with pair and group work in monolingual classes. This, however, would be to exclude from one’s teaching a whole range of potentially motivating and useful activities and to deny learners the opportunity to communicate in English in class time with anyone but the teacher.

[3] Simple mathematics will tell us that in a one-hour lesson with 20 learners, each learner will speak for just 90 seconds if the teacher speaks for half the lesson. In order to encourage learners in a monolingual class to participate in pair and group work, it might be worth asking them whether they regard speaking for just three per cent of the lesson to be good value and point out that they can increase that percentage substantially if they try to use English in group activities.

[4] At first, learners may find it strange to use English when communicating with their peers but this is, first and foremost, a question of habit and it is a gradual process. For the teacher to insist that English is used may well be counter-productive and may provoke active resistance. If the task is in English, on the other hand, and learners have to communicate with each other about the task, some English will inevitably be used. It may be very little at first but, as with any habit, it should increase noticeably as time goes by. Indeed, it is not unusual to hear more motivated learners in a monolingual situation communicating with each other in English outside the classroom. 

Conclusion

[5] If the benefits of using English to perform purposeful communicative tasks are clearly explained to the class and if the teacher is not excessively authoritarian in insisting that English must be used, a modest and increasing success rate can be achieved. It is far too much to expect that all learners will immediately begin using English to communicate with their peers all the time. But, if at least some of the class use English some of the time, that should be regarded as a significant step on the road to promoting greater use of English in pair and group work in the monolingual classroom.

Available at: https://www.onestopenglish.com/methodologytips-for-teachers/classroom-management-pair-and-group-workin-efl/esol/146454.article. Accessed on: April 26, 2022.