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Category: Middle School

  • Rubin Adds New Ethics Unit to Emerge Curriculum

    Rubin Adds New Ethics Unit to Emerge Curriculum

    In fall 2022, the Rubin team developed a new series focused on ethical discussions as they relate to employability skills.

    As the leader in online resources for employability and work readiness, we built an 11-part series that challenges students to think, “What would I do?” across several real-world scenarios.

    Alexis Kruemcke, an implementation specialist at Rubin and former classroom teacher, led the project.

    All eleven ethical scenarios are now inside our Emerge curriculum, a robust library of activities, videos, readings and assessments for employability skills.

    The ethical scenarios align with existing units in Emerge and are as follows:

    • Email etiquette
    • Phone and video etiquette
    • Networking
    • “Storytelling” cover letters
    • Internships
    • Job interviews
    • Resumes
    • Student leadership
    • Report writing
    • Writing to clients
    • LinkedIn outreach

    See a sample ethical discussion below. Want to view all 11 scenarios and our full Emerge library of 200+ instructional items?

    Request a 30-day free trial today, and our team will be in touch to set up the trial!

    Ethical discussion for resumes: What would you do?

     

    Scenario:

    Over the summer, you were an intern at an environmental non-profit. One of the main projects was a river clean-up outside of the city. Your supervisor was the project manager, but he put you in charge of most aspects of the project.

    Your tasks included:

    • Create a schedule for the clean-up process
    • Assign roles for the project
    • Coordinate with city officials
    • Obtain and manage supplies

    On your resume, you decide to list yourself as the project manager even though the title is technically your supervisor’s role. However, you did most of the work and feel “project manager” title is more appropriate than “intern.”

    Discuss the scenario with your classmates and answer the following question:

    Is it fair and truthful to say you were the project manager because your supervisor put you in charge of the project? Why or why not?

    What would you do?

  • Remote Community in Alaska Teaches Rubin Lessons in One-Room School

    Remote Community in Alaska Teaches Rubin Lessons in One-Room School

    Megan Gatlin is a principal teacher.

    That’s right. She’s the principal. And the teacher.

    The only teacher.

    In False Pass, a town of 40 people in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska (200 total during the “busy” summer season), Gatlin has only nine students between grades 1 and 11. Everyone learns in the same room, and most of the students are cousins to each other. Many people in False Pass work in the fishing industry or at the local grocery.

    Originally from Utah, Gatlin and her husband moved to False Pass two years ago to live closer to nature and enjoy the strikingly beautiful terrain.

    At False Pass School, Gatlin teaches, well, everything. Subjects include chemistry, algebra II, language arts, food science, healthy living and whatever else the students would like to explore.

    And in the 2022-2023 academic year, Gatlin will share lessons from our Emerge curriculum for college and career opportunities like how to shake hands, write an email, hold a networking conversation and more.

    “My students may only leave False Pass a couple of times a year and many have never stepped foot out of Alaska,” Gatlin said. “The Rubin lessons will give them real-world practice on how to talk to new people and explore their own talents and interests.”

    Emerge is trusted by middle school, high school and college educators nationwide. The program is a blend of ebooks, self-paced assignments, videos and quizzes that give students age-appropriate instruction on how to write, speak and lead with confidence.

    Instructors and students can log onto a password-protected website or access the career readiness material through single sign-on on any device. Emerge integrates and syncs grades with common LMS like Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, Sakai and Schoology. We also provide single sign-on with Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams.

    Rubin works with large school divisions like Philadelphia and Las Vegas, but we also take pride in delivering lessons to rural or remote communities.

    Everyone deserves the chance to learn important college and career (employability or work readiness) skills, from the bustling avenues of South Street Philly to the rambling roads of False Pass, a city just two miles wide nestled between the Pacific Ocean and Bering Strait.

    Thank you, Principal Teacher Gatlin, for the important work you do.

    9 students between grades 1 and 11

  • Deerfield USD 216 (Kansas) Adopts Rubin Emerge as Employability Curriculum

    Deerfield USD 216 (Kansas) Adopts Rubin Emerge as Employability Curriculum

    Deerfield USD 216 (Deerfield, Kansas) has formally adopted Emerge, to satisfy the postsecondary and college and career readiness component of the Kansas Education Systems Accreditation (KESA), the state’s K-12 accrediting model.

    Deerfield, under the direction of teacher Jennifer Wieberg, uses Emerge for grades 6-12 to teach valuable skills like email writing, phone etiquette and conversation techniques.

    See Emerge in action with Deerfield students here.

    “Deerfield’s decision to adopt Emerge is a big step in Kansas and elsewhere to show that Emerge can be a cornerstone resource for how students learn employability skills,” said Danny Rubin, the founder of Rubin. “We want to be a trusted, year over year tool that educators can depend on as we navigate the digital age and ensure our students know how to communicate with professionalism, grace and humility.”

    Want to try Emerge for yourself? Request a 30-day free trial here!

    Indispensable resource.

  • Kansas CTE Students in Grades 6-12 Explore Emerge to Learn Life Skills

    Kansas CTE Students in Grades 6-12 Explore Emerge to Learn Life Skills

    At Deerfield USD 216 in southwest Kansas, students in grades 6-12 sit at tables to practice cursive signatures and how to address an envelope — and then pop up to shake hands with classmates with steady eye contact and firm grasps.

    What’s going on?

    Each week, CTE Coordinator Jennifer Wieberg dives into the Rubin Emerge curriculum, an online library of practical lessons for employability, and then delivers each lesson to her students in middle and high school.

    Emerge is designed as a comprehensive resource to help students become stronger writers and speakers as they pursue college and career opportunities.

    “Last year, I was up late many nights scouring Pinterest for career resources and even paying for curricula out of my own pocket,” said Wieberg. “Emerge has everything I need in one place with activities, lesson plans and discussion questions for critical life and career skills. I love it.”

    Check out scenes from Wieberg’s classroom!

    Hands shakes, mailing letters and so much more

  • Middle School Teachers Employ Rubin Emerge to Help Students “Rise Above”

    Middle School Teachers Employ Rubin Emerge to Help Students “Rise Above”

    Above: Trevon James (left) and Mary Lynn Thurman hold copies of three books of writing/speaking templates provided in the Rubin Education All Access online program, a resource they use to teach employability skills to 6th, 7th and 8th graders in Northern Virginia.

    A sixth grader deep in a networking conversation?

    For teachers Mary Lynn Thurman and Trevon James, it’s a beautiful sight.

    The two educators teach at George M. Hampton Middle School in Dale City, Virginia. The school is part of Prince William County Public Schools, among the largest schools systems in the state.

    Since the start of the academic year, Thurman and James have incorporated readings, videos and short activities from the Emerge online program.

    The face-to-face networking exercise was a highlight for Thurman. In the activity, students paired off and learned to ask each other questions that began with who, what, where, when, why and how.

    In doing so, students understood the power of being selfless and allowing others to share their stories.

    Thurman led the activity with 6th, 7th and 8th graders, all of whom grasped the objectives and participated.

    “Rubin Education helps students to rise above,” said Thurman. “My kids may not know it yet, but these lessons will give them a foundation in employability skills they will need in high school and beyond.”

    Thurman and James have also shown Rubin Education instructional videos in which young adults demonstrate wrong and right behavior for professional skills like phone calls, job interviews and leadership situations.

    “Rubin Education material is modern and current,” said James. “It shows my students what employers will one day expect of them.”

    If employability skills are part of lifelong learning, then 6th grade seems the perfect place to start.

    Click here to request your free 3o-day trial!

    Networking as a 6th grader? Believe it.

  • In Same Week, Rubin Partners with Middle School and Four-Year University

    In Same Week, Rubin Partners with Middle School and Four-Year University

    At Rubin Education, we believe students at every learning stage need to practice proper writing/speaking skills.

    That’s why we’re excited to provide age-appropriate resources to select 8th graders at Thomas Harrison Middle School (Harrisonburg, VA) and select sophomores at the University of Toronto (Canada) in a learning community through the department of psychology.

    Instructors in both educational environments will use Rubin Education exercises for email etiquette, networking, public speaking and even resumes (yes, many 8th graders learn to create a resume).

    The Emerge online program also contains instructional videos, ebooks of writing/speaking templates, discussion questions and unique rubrics connected to each of our 100+ assignments.

    Middle school teachers in Virginia and across the nation are often required to teach “employability skills,” and in that way Rubin Education is the perfect supplemental resource.

    With an enrollment of 71,000 students, the University of Toronto is the largest university in Canada.

    Rubin Education also works with faculty at Texas A&M, Michigan State, Florida, Va Tech, Providence, St. John’s and others.

    Stay tuned for updates from the classroom as the fall semester rolls along!

    For learners at every stage.