The school year has begun, with fresh faces entering my team's classrooms for the first time. This being my sixth year, I've noticed a few things about what happens when you remain in one place for awhile. For one, you establish a reputation, good or bad. Far less of me was known to my first homeroom and to my fellow teachers than is true now. One of the first comments from a student this year related to what others have said about me. Happily, they were good things. In the same way, my fellow teachers know me enough to involve me in some tasks and not in others. The same is true of the other teachers on the team, the "youngest" of whom-- in terms of time on our team-- has been here a year. For that reason, there is a set of definite (though unwritten) expectations placed on each member of the team, wherein we take on roles that pertain to our skill sets. This now happens naturally: while once it was unclear who would do what, it is now clear who will do what. This has led to a much greater measure of stability on the team and-- crucially-- in our respective classrooms, as well. By now, most of us know who we are in the classroom, and why we're there. The more stable the team, the more stable the classrooms that team leads. I suppose this is true for all professions. It's just nice to notice it personally.
At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
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