Salam alaykum dear viewers, peace be upon you all, welcome to our show discussing the different aspects that we can learn from the Day of Ashura. Today's topic is of the vital institution of marriage in Islam.  Islam emphasises this very much so as with other teachings. On the Day of Ashura there were several deaths taking place. One of the things we sometimes neglect is that the topic of marriage was brought up in Ashura. To discuss this topic we're going to have our esteemed guest Sheikh Ali Masha. We've got Sayed Mohsin Shah, we've got Imran Dado and brother Dahir Adil. Sheikh before we get into how marriage was maybe shown in Ashura through the figure of perhaps Qasim ibn al-Hassan. Why does Islam emphasise getting married versus having a monastic life or being a monk where one can dedicate themselves to God purely through an individual way? Why with another person? In one of the narrations about marriage we have that it states that one of the best establishments in Islam is the establishment of marriage. One of the best in which the Islam has since it was established in Medina 14 centuries ago that when the Holy Prophet ﷺ came to Medina he tried to overcome the issue of being single and those who for example didn't have any means of financial support or in other words they were poor he would offer them marriage. And of course the narration the prophetic narration states that man tazawwaja faqat ahraza nasfah deenah the one who gets married he has achieved attained half of his religion half of his belief then let him or her protect herself or himself on the second half of his religion which is in terms of aqidah and so forth. So you can see how important marriage is that the Islam causes half of the religion and today in the world stay in age we see that the crimes you know atrocities for example those who commit these crimes just recently in the U.S. the shootings killing innocent people in their shopping malls and markets and schools and so forth it was done by young men under the age of 25 and were single seems to be the majority so marriage offers protection immunity from the mischief and wrong doings in all aspects of life be it adultery be it crime be it financial for example fraud and so forth it provides that immunity that individual would not even think about doing something wrong unless there's exceptions for some who would for example go to the wrong path but in overall it brings full protection for the individual in another hadith from al-sadaq that encourages marriage he says that two rak'a a married person a praise is greater than 70 rak'a a single praise so imagine the one who prays while he's married gets more reward than a single person who has no wife or wife's personal husband by praying 70 those two rak'a for married would be more than 70 rak'a of the non-married so this is the greatness of Islam that protects the individual as a whole not just as a single person but as a family thank you um say the most in good discussing uh earlier off the camera the idea of um Ghassan ibn al-Hassan um and as i mentioned in the intro when we look at al-shura there are several things obviously many deaths took place and the topic of marriage you don't think ever comes up in this story because we focus on the way um the people died and the brotherhood shown and and so on and so forth and there's been i've never knew Ghassan was possibly married or going to get married um have you did you have you ever heard of this and did you ever come across any such such yes i mean um when i was growing up um we were under the impression that uh well i was under the impression that Ghassan didn't get married however recently a couple years ago i've had the discussions i mean discussion circles and there is some evidence to say that no he was married personally i don't think it's important to me i don't think it's important whether he was married or not married what is important is that his mother wanted him married and his mother was insistent that he should be married uh you know before he goes for battle um so there is some sort of importance put on you know marriage and importance on the man's status when he's married and then for a man if he is to die to die a married man um maybe it was some may argue always just his mother's dream that he'd be married and he was of the age but we know also he was very young he was you know uh you know he didn't even have a full beard probably what 13 14 maybe uh so he also shows that what age one should be getting married and i think there's a lot of Islamic values in Ashura marriage is one of them and also another one is also Salah that war was stopped for Salah as well yeah so there's many many you know uh practices and and many many ideas and we could take from Ashura differently as a as custom as you mentioned was was was a youth and when we at this age of 13 slash 14 we always look towards the future towards what is our family life going to be like when i get married when i have kids and so on and so with god god all these blessings but Qasim seemed to abandon that he said that famous phrase that death is sweeter than honey in in the way of imam um how does Qasim show um brother Tahir and brother Imran how does Qasim show the idea of putting desires to one side and obeying your imam is is is above my desires i think that's specific age and as as boys and teenagers we want to walk through that phase of being distracted by the world and not really focusing on your deen your faith your piety and what not so when you have that example of Qasim and the way he prioritized not even his religion death of death itself on top of the desire not even desire as in the wildly uh distractions it gives examples for the youth and not just youth but adults as well and that age right i think of it i know person that age thinks of death they think of prolonging their life as much as possible and uh having the aspirations yet he says that what about you brother Imran yeah i mean i think just uh mirroring what brother Tahir said that it just shows the the taqwa he had the yakeen he has um has Qasim has in his faith that um you know whatever the imam said at the time whatever it said that is the dual and end all you know you just kind of ignore everything that you need and you know it's a lot easier said than done we're saying it now like so easily like yeah Shah Qasim just put his desires to one side put the world the affairs to one side and he went to die but it's you know like you know we hear a lot of even in the the maulanas and the lecturers they say what if we were there in Karbala what would genuinely what would we do it's a hard one it's extremely difficult extremely difficult to then say oh yeah yeah you know i'll just go to die it's not like that you need to have a certain level of taqwa a certain level of yakeen in your faith in your religion in your lord to know that you know this is what will satisfy you this is what will satisfy your soul so and that that's what as Qasim displays and it's it's um very admirable to actually that that question starting it's not just that's the maturity element to it absolutely yeah when growing up our fathers would be like you know let him play with the e-ports let him enjoy his life by that point he was thinking of things far greater than things that were eternal one doesn't child even look at yeah something that's bigger than himself at that age it's beyond imagination yeah a stripe of that mature yeah i think that the point you made about asking ourselves the question would i be there it's actually a very uncomfortable question um it actually makes you humble yourself and it's quite a scary question if you ask yourself but truly truly it's very easy to say in retrospect what would you what would you do back then and shake i want to um just extract a point that you said that you said that perhaps getting married safeguards you from other evils not just um illegitimate acts regarding marriage but stuff around that why does islam say that doing an act of worship is better when you're sharing it with another person versus the single person because surely if i'm you i'm just putting it out there surely if i'm single i can concentrate more on my relationship with god if i add another person to the to the equation if i can say that surely that makes it even more difficult or why does islam oppose this you see the life of the singles i'm sure you went through this situation in your youth teenage and and so forth onwards it's a bit awkward it's an unstable stage of life you know there are a lot of temptations lost a lot of attractions around especially with today's social media satellites tv and so forth that promotes indecency promotes images and films and so forth so if that youth or that individual single man or woman would be exposed to these indecencies now the blood they would have now you know the consequence would be very i mean grave so with regard to the marriage it protects immune from the first day so that teenager or that youth that man or woman won't think about anything else except to build their life and to keep it going on so they won't be looking at the let's say images or videos and so forth just to quench their desires so that's why you see that encouragement is for the marriage and even the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa la ilah he said and the marriage is my sunnah and the one who neglects or rejects it then he's not part of me alaysa minni is not part of my nation so imagine how emphasizing on the marriage just avoid the fact of corruption and deviation within the moral aspect thank you we'll talk more about this in the next part but as per the format of the show we are going to break for a bit of poetry regarding this phenomenal figure although youth a phenomenal huge figure of qasem ibn al-hassan by brother tyre so this poem about qasem it's quite different it follows him it's like a time i've followed him throughout the day of ashura and up until his martyrdom so it starts with him being faced with a letter written by his father goes ink forming letters and words forming tears that once unfolded from under the fingertips of my father i need not read the words to understand if i have understood enough through the eyes of hosay beneath these hidden stars i declare my uncle and master to me and what is death to me but sweeter than honey warmer than the embrace of sunlight and the testimony of the beauty of the night my death is molded on the waves of sacrifice sacrificed my life young but an endless sea in its message so when qasem approaches his uncle he says i heard a tremor in his voice i felt a shiver in his embrace my uncle's sorrowful words have flooded my heart sure his eyes as heavy as clouds today waiting to spill away he welcomed me back into his arm then i remembered your warmth but what embrace would bury my wounds later but the swords timeless counted visions soar about in my mind images painted pictures of my legacy perfectly but none could picture leaving my mother behind what greater parting gift i could extend to her broken hearts than the gift of youthful sacrifice this next passage is about his martyrdom the far horizon of paradise stretches and merges with the redness the angels fluck and compete to call me by my father's name i pride in pride i march forth with armor once adorned by him i'm now ready to fill the many corners of his bleeding heart today hosay's name will not only be the only one sung by the angels hasan el muchtaba will be sung through me and my wounds this honor that i have been seeking lies in the heart of death i shall earn it despite my fragile frame and young age i am a student of hosayne in the art of martyrdom painting an eternal message with an endless sea of love the tide of death comes waning before my eyes as the moon of karbala brings you to me tonight i lay underneath the sky returning the letter to your father written with love and sent with the swords and spears for who am i to sleep eternally like this for i am the son of the fourth of five purified forms ready to lay my life for the stand of the fifth i am the son of the purified ready to sacrifice myself for the pure death why do you kneel kneel down before me gracefully death why do you kneel down before me gracefully for do i remind you of my father or does my father remind you of me shubhan Allah thank you very very powerful thank you moving the discussion forward i think the obviously the big i would say elephant in the room that's always said um in the muslim community is getting married young um we we are told it on the pulpit we are told it by our families sometimes and obviously the word young is relative to you know the time to age to to different communities and cultures um but i want to ask uh say muslim and and the other members of of the panel um why why is it nowadays may do i have to get married young um surely times have changed life is busier and for many people it's hard now to find a spouse because life is very very busy and why is it uh why does islam emphasize marriage young marriage when perhaps it's harder today i think i wasn't looking towards that so i'm going to take this on ask the married man um no so i think um like you said the time is a big factor so you know you see in history with um you know as al-qasim like we said it was so young but that was at that time it was the norm um you know fast forward to 2019 uh we find that yeah people do ask that question do i need to get married young um but there are so many factors that they now have to consider for example um you know the expenses in life you know you want to have a house you want to have a stable job to look after your spouse etc etc so you have to take that into consideration you have to take um and like you said even spouse selection now becomes so tricky because everything's so online and everything you know even um you know there's shia matches shia match websites as well if i'm not mistaken so everything's gone so online that and it and it's following the trend of society that's what we're doing so i think um even though our traditional methods are good like you know like recommending family map people know each other they say these two would be good together yeah etc etc but following the trend every you know that kind of method is being you know it it goes to say oh it's too awkward you know we don't we can maybe avoid this kind of method etc etc so you know that trend is being followed as well which potentially um you know delays that marriage when necessarily it shouldn't you should kind of embrace it like you said it's a sunnah for us all and it's the marriage has a very high status sometimes i think now that again through society we lower the rank of marriage that oh you know even um the engagement period like in some cultures like with us we have that period of engagement and sometimes that lasts for a couple of years and it's like you know get it done this right to avoid coming too much sin etc and i think one thing i noticed as well we we were we're focusing a lot on how it marriage protects um us from committing sin which absolutely it does but we also have to know that um together one of the main aims of marriage is to get closer to Allah that is something you also have to achieve um one of the aims of marriages to kind of find a spouse who will get you closer to Allah swt get that takhwa stronger whether it's through a different aamal for example i mean my own example i had like a weakness um and you know alhamdulillah my spouse is she helped me with this too you know it's something small but it does help it does help in your faith um so it's it's it's important to know that um you know even though it protects you from the sins and it does also help you get closer to god and getting married young is when you and in the young age you do tend to commit the most sin so it's um it's and you know now also nowadays actually you see a lot of people with society not being too attached to any religion we go to colleagues and stuff you know a lot of people are atheists now they're like what's god so you know to kind of get you back on that track to strengthen your iman it's another a good reason to get married young but yeah there are a lot of factors that are in 2019 now where the reasons why marriage is delayed i mean i mean tahir looking at the we age is one thing what's the importance of being ready though and readiness i think you can't really be ready for marriage at any point so i got married really young uh was never really ready i'll probably i'll be not ready now uh but i could see the argument of should you get married at young age or should you wait until you're more stable financially stable more mature uh and then get married uh or until you find the right person sometimes it's not about maturity it's about finding that person that's compatible with you uh so i i'm from the school of thought of get married if you find that right person even if it's a struggles financially still get married um i know it's uh it's a hard point to engulf for some people as in you know how can you get married when you're so young but you know we've got examples out there through scripture and around the verses where you know if you do have the right intentions then Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala does help you yeah uh so being ready i think that's a subjective uh element here because you're not really ready i'm going to tiptoe just in case my wife is back at home uh but you've also got the mental health aspect so yeah like uh chef uh the chef mentioned safeguarding is one thing safeguarding from the obvious uh but marriage also safeguards you from a lot of mental health issues and that's uh uh that's been you know vanted around a lot now uh so you know having that peace and tranquility at home having another person to you know relay problems relay opinion do you think that if you get married a little later yeah you kind of miss out on the adventure and so growth yeah and yeah so i've i don't i've got anecdotal experience of growing up with my spouse because we're both relatively young uh and that's kind of strengthened up on but you also have you know on the on the flip side of coin is uh you marry somebody that's compatible with the sorry you know set up and mature in that and yeah so the argument works both ways but yeah that element of growing up the adventure of growing up is certainly something that very relative yeah it's very relative and i suppose it is finding the right it's not like shopping you have to find the right person so it's a mistake you want to make um before you wrap up the show with the utility shake i want to just uh go back to carvalar because i mentioned at the start of the show um and in the indopak community we uh when we hear the the the mucktl of of ashura we are told there was a desire for kasm to get married from his mother but not that she was actually married but then there are some um historical reports of him perhaps marrying sokena just before the marriage can you shed light upon this uh the historical aspect of ashura yes basically there is a difference in opinions of the allama of the regard to the this event particularly that did the marriage took place oh no um some allama would mention in their books such as allama darbandi he mentions that such event took place and it was just the akad contract the marriage nikah contract it wasn't wedding and ceremony and and so forth it's just the contract and by itself in in sharia it's mustahab to have this contract to be done between a boy and a girl even if they're young it's mustahab and uh of course those who reject basically because of uh you know the the actual uh some might argue that for example you know he was too young how could you have a marriage contract and especially in in war zone for example but ashura is exception and anything took place in ashura was exceptional and even this marriage contract that took place was exceptional it was a message to our youth that get married don't neglect the issue of marriage otherwise we see today in our society i don't want to speak about it i'm sure you know you've seen things happen and especially the issue of um of divorce which has a background before marriage you know uh relationships between the the immoral in terms of immoral relation with via the facebook or twitter and so forth social media that's why it ends up with divorce um but anyhow we have ulama who uh accept the issue of uh or the um the story of the uh the marriage and of course um as i've mentioned the message from ashura or from al-qaas i think i've mentioned two messages from him salam alayhi that's number one bravery that i mean he was 30 and he fought like a brave man the enemies and also chastity by the marriage contract by the nikah contract you have placed yourself in the right path and route because otherwise according to hadith that says uh you know the example is brought as if the fruit if it's ready to be picked from the tree if that is left on the tree then the sun and the air would destroy and ruin that fruit likewise the biker those who are um you know young or virgin in other words if they're left over without the marriage then you have to expect the consequences thank you um thank you very much for joining us for today's show and several lessons can be learned from the story of qasim um yes we know the bravery yes we know the loyalty and we know his quasheng of the desire to grow up um to die for his imam but perhaps perhaps one of the messages we forget from his story is the importance of the institution of marriage and several ideas and theories were given today about when is the right time and uh how to go about this we'd like to thank you at home for watching and as per usual we will close with some eulogy about qasem el-hassan so and just again to give a quick brief um this is this poem is about a con the conversation that qasem's mother has with him as he prepares to go to the battle field inshallah today is the day that you go and fight today is the day that you go to die you look so handsome standing tall in your armor i raised you for this one moment and no other with my prayers i send you to the battlefield with my prayers i send you to the battlefield i want you to send salams to your father he'll take you in his arms and this will last forever qasem go and fight like how abbas taught you qasem your bravery exists only in a few qasem i promise i won't weep upon your death qasem i promise i won't weep upon your death to call you my shahid takes me over with pride but my heart bleeds for your loss deep down inside qasem qasem oh qasem my soldier go and ask hossain to let you go your uncle will refuse but don't give up on your goal show him the letter your father had left for you show him the letter your father had left for you my love go and represent hossain your father his wish can be fulfilled by no other qasem qasem oh qasem my eyes fill with tears as i see you get on your horse my heart desires that you stay there and keep on course but then in front of my own eyes i see my worst nightmare but then in front of my own eyes i see my worst nightmare qasem you fall and are now helpless on the ground qasem you fall and qasem you fall and are now helpless on the ground the horses trample your body their hooves in your blood drown qasem qasem oh qasem today is the day that you go and fight today is the day that you go to die


My name is Will Alden. I live here in South Boston, Massachusetts. I went to Bentley University. I work at Dell Technologies out in Hopkinson, Massachusetts, which is approximately 26.2 miles away from here. I went to Bentley University. I played baseball there for some of the best four years of my life, and then I moved on to my career. But still love baseball, still play baseball, still watching the Red Sox on TV and all the New England sports teams. And I'm just so excited to run the Boston Marathon this year. Growing up in the Boston area, the Boston Marathon's always just something that is there and you know about it. And then as you get older, you start to realize how special it is and how the opportunity to run the Boston Marathon is such just like an incredible opportunity that not a lot of people get to take. I started looking around online as to what charities had bibs that I could run for and a charity that I would have some sort of connection to. I don't necessarily want to just run for a charity. That means nothing to me. So I started looking around and a lot of the Boston sports athletes have teams that run for their charities. But Pedro's obviously stuck out right away to me just because of my love for him for pretty much my whole life. Sent in my application, you know, the explanation as to why I'd want to run for Pedro. I got picked and then here we are. So now it's kind of a best of both worlds where I get to run to represent a charity that does such amazing work and is headed up by such an amazing person. And I get to fulfill a bucket list item that I've been hoping to cross off for a long time with running the Boston Marathon. And I've been to the marathon before and it's just like such a, it's like more than an event. Like it is the city of Boston for a day and it really represents the city of Boston for what Boston is. It is just so Boston and it's such a celebration of this city and this state. And then just the, we're so lucky to grow up here to have that right here with us. But really it's just gonna be a moment that I'm gonna cherish and I'm gonna hopefully remember for the rest of my life.


What regrets do you have looking back at your career slash your approach to building it? Woo! How much time do you have? And this is a question I am so thrilled to be answering because I do not want you to make the mistakes that I made. I also want to shout out the sponsor of this video, Privacy. Privacy allows you to buy things online using virtual cards instead of having to use your real ones. Privacy.com has two clutch questions for you. Number one, why give out your real credit card number if you don't have to? And number two, why not have all of your online spending managed in one beautiful, succinct space? They are going to be giving away $5 towards your first purchase when you sign up for a free Privacy.com account. So go to Privacy.com slash Shambly to claim that $5. Hey there, lovers and friends. I'm going to do something that I rarely do and that's get straight to the point. This video I'm going to be answering your questions about my career because I honestly feel worthy of answering them. When people DM me or message me to say I want to be you when I grew up or I aspire to have a career like yours, not only is it one, the most beautiful compliment and something I'm so grateful and humbled by, two, I feel worthy of being looked up to in that way because I genuinely do have a really awesome career. That is massively thanks to all of you. Shannon Boodram's here. Sexologist, author and YouTube star, Shan Boodram. YouTube influencer and relationship expert, Shan Boodram is host. She's back again. We really enjoyed her. She's a sexologist and relationship expert. Please welcome back, Shan Boodram. Advice on how to get started. If you are not sure where to begin, the first thing that you should ask yourself is what can I do right now? Think about all of the various goals and things that you aspire to and then pick the one that there's no barriers or the least amount of barriers to beginning that thing. I think another really important thing to do when you're getting started is to identify two things. One, what is it that you are passionate about? And then two, ask yourself, what is the unique skill set that you have that is going to bring instant value to that thing? How do you build your team? You build your team by having two very clear answers. What do I want to accomplish and what do I have to offer? And these are equally important things. I find that a lot of people try and collaborate with others by leaning into one or the other. They just speak about the exchange and there's no inspiration behind it or they just speak about the inspiration and they don't tell someone else what's in it for them. If you know the answer to those two questions, it becomes very clear on who it is reasonable to ask to align yourself with and who is optimal to be aligned with you. How did you balance security versus risk taking in your field? So I saw the actor Morris Chestnut speak and he said the biggest mistake that he sees young actors make is that they come to the city, they move to LA and then they expect that that big move is supposed to earn them their big dreams. And he said, it's actually just an example of the kinds of moves you must continue to make. So ask yourself, what is the next move to LA risk that I should be investing or setting myself up for?  It is the dumb everyday things that we do that make it impossible for us to align ourselves with our potential because we're so bogged down by working on and fixing silly mistakes. As a loose example, when I moved to Los Angeles, I literally sold everything in Canada. I sold my camera equipment, I sold shoes, whatever it is that I had, I sold to invest in this move. And then when I got here, I made a lot of parking risks, running into stores and not paying the meter, hoping that I could just park in the red zone for a second and I ended up with a lot of parking tickets that I genuinely could not afford to pay at the time.  And if you think about that in terms of some of the things that you're doing in your life, when we say I don't have enough, where are our resources going to?  So that to be said, I really wanna just plug privacy one more time for that reason because this is an example of a way that you can avoid silly risks in your life to make sure that when the time is right and you need that money and you need to be organized financially, you've set yourself up for success. I got this email from this company that said, "'Dear Shannon, you have a balance of $20 "'due for shipping fees. "'I tried processing the payment using the card on file, "'but it was declined. "'If you would like to provide an alternative card, "'please complete the attached credit card authorization form.'" So I call this company up because again, I haven't worked with them in years and it turns out that it was in fact a mistake. And that had me really thinking, what would happen if I didn't happen to change credit card numbers? They would have charged me without clearing it with me first and it's possible that I wouldn't have even noticed at all. And when I thought about all the various places that have my credit card information on file, that thought is kinda scary and that is the exact reason that privacy.com was created. By generating virtual numbers, privacy masks your real bank information so you never have to worry about giving it out to people that you don't know online. You can generate a new card number for each purchase and you can control your reoccurring payments by setting a spending limit that a company can charge you. That way you are never accidentally billed twice or upgraded to a service without your consent. Last thing that I wanna note from my fellow business owners out there, I don't know what this hand's about, but what I do know is that using their shared cards feature, you can easily create and share privacy cards for shared expenses. For example, have a coworker do a purchase on your behalf without any risk of them going over your set spend limits. Also, you can track what their spending is in the dashboard. Speaking of spending and businesses, let's get back to the video. What regrets do you have looking back at your career slash your approach to building it? Woo! How much time do you have? And this is a question I am so thrilled to be answering because I do not want you to make the mistakes that I made. I give myself the grace because again, in 2004 when I started, I didn't necessarily have a clear idea of what this career would look like because no one else had it other than arguably Dr. Ruth and Sue Johansson, but neither of those, you know, I don't really strongly identify with. But the top three mistakes that I made was, number one, I allowed other people's comfort to dictate my direction and my velocity. I, if someone in my family or somebody around me was uncomfortable with the topic I was talking about, I would scale it back to meet their needs. And I ended up minimizing myself and slowing myself down by years. There's actually a few years in my 20s I referred to as the black hole years that was between my first book, Laid and my second book, The Game of Desire in which I gave up on this career altogether because one, I wasn't moving forward fast enough. And so that was difficult and heartbreaking because I cared so much. And number two, in addition to not moving forward, a lot of people who were close to me were really uncomfortable about what I did for a living. So it just felt easier for everyone to quit altogether. And it took me a few years to realize that it doesn't matter, you know, how I'm doing number one or how that makes other people feel. What matters is that when I talk about this subject, when I learn about it, when I read about it, when I'm engaged in it, I feel plugged into my highest self. I feel on the path to my potential and that's worth pursuing regardless of all the noise around. The second mistake that I made was building an audience and then figuring out the business element of it. I've always known that I wanted to talk about intimacy in public. I never had a desire to be in a brick and mortar clinical one-on-one setting. I always knew that the public was going to be my platform but instead of creating a business model where every new person who I engaged with publicly could possibly become a client of mine in some regard or could interact with my business in a meaningful way, I just sort of collected people and then thought, oh, how do I make money off of all these relationships that I've made with all of you? And if I could go back in time, I would have done it the other way around where I understood the business model first and then brought people to that secondly. And now on to my third regret when it comes to my career which happens to be my biggest regret and that is not making investments in my education sooner, actually from the onset. So I started out in print journalism at Centennial College which I graduated from that program. And when I did that, I put myself on a path to be an expert as a sex and relationship educator because my book Laid came out the exact same year that I graduated from college. And as soon as I put myself on that path to be an expert, the questions of well, what are your credentials obviously came second. I think especially being a young woman of color that question is not even just kind of whispered, it's yelled at you before you're even allowed to get a second sentence out. And I realized that was happening but instead of putting myself back into school, getting a degree in psychology and then pursuing a master's and pursuing a doctorate, I decided to go what I would call like a honest to goodness cheap route. I started getting certifications, I took a lot of workshops, I took a lot of classes. And while many of those things were extremely meaningful and gave me a lot of educational basis, they just didn't have the same cachet that I would have had if I just went the traditional educational route. And it took me all until now to put myself on that path. And I am not ashamed to say that. I only am now pursuing my bachelor's degree and I'll be starting my master's program in September.   What school should I consider? This is a prime example of asking the question to the wrong person. You're asking the wrong person for two reasons and this is a lesson that I had to learn when I first got started. One, don't ask the busiest person in the field. Not that I'm the busiest person but I am one of the busier people who works in the intimacy space. And so you need these questions answered. If you really need to know where to go, where to invest your time and money, this is not something you should be passively throwing out there to individuals. So finding people who you know are going to respond back is clutch. I'm making a video right now so I'm responding to you but even my response is not gonna be what you want to hear. I don't work as a therapist. I don't work in a one-on-one setting and so my opinion on where you should go is probably not all that valuable. You should research a leading expert in your area that ask them specifically where they went to school and what they think that you should do. To get into the education system that I did, I went to the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and the only reason that I chose that program to get certified as a sexologist is because I knew of somebody in Canada who worked in the media as an intimacy expert. I reached out to them several times. They finally responded back to me and then I asked them, you know, I've written a book, I come from a journalistic background, I have a certificate as a sex education counselor but I do want more behind my name without, because at this time I was poor and honestly lazy, without having to go back and get my bachelor's to become a doctor or therapist, what should I do? And that person put me on the education path that I went on. So I found somebody really specific to me. I made sure that was somebody who was one in my lane but too likely to answer and then I kept following up with that person and that's the advice that I want to give to you. Last question I wanna answer on this, how is your schooling now supporting your career, now and future? My education is massively important because I am a young woman of color in this space who is asking people to listen to me and to take my words seriously. I don't need a doctorate or a master's or a bachelor's or any sort of certification to be honest with you to be a public facing expert because I am not diagnosing or prescribing people and because I am not giving out advice that I am toting as a medical and I'm always very clear about that, I'm not crossing any ethical boundaries and there's numerous people, namely white men in this space who don't have a lick of school behind them and still are given a platform and still are given respect. I just have to know myself and not in a bitter way or resentfully but being clear about my profile, it's massively important that I do have education behind me or else I'm giving people an excuse not to listen to me and my existence already has enough excuses as to why people can opt out of listening to me. What part of your profession brings the most joy and inspiration? The part where I see people following in my footsteps. The part where I see people excelling beyond my own wildest dreams of what could be accomplished in this space. Seeing this lane grow, specifically grow for women and more specifically grow for women of color, just, I don't know, it really is the greatest part about what I do. Having people in my audience teach me. Seeing bits of what I've taught them show up in different spaces and I don't know, just I think that I'm so passionate about this topic that the success of the topic brings me joy. And the fact that we now are living in a world that's starting to place more importance on learning about sex and relationship and knowing that I have even a small part in that trend, like that's the most joyful part of my work. And one more thing that I wanna do on these videos is highlight an up and comer in this field who I think is doing incredible things and has next. And this is the first person I wanna highlight. Hi, my name is Mickey Woods. I'm the CEO and founder of Sex Talk, a patent-pending card game for lovers. Years of studying sexuality and exploring my own sexuality taught me that the key to a fulfilling sex life is always communication. Sex Talk is a fabulous tool for expressing your likes, dislikes, desires, preferences in a fun, sexy and approachable way. It's something I wish I had a long time ago. The 69 questions progress in terms of erotic intensity, building on the sexual tension amongst players. It's great for people who are having sex for the first time. It also works for people who have been having sex for a while. Or even people who've been married for decades. It kind of has questions that fit the needs of anyone who plays it. Unpack that self.  Yeah, Lee. Read that motherfucker. I think I... I think I...


How do you engage your audience and bring static concepts to life? How do you tell your company's story? How do you show customers or employees how to use an online software product? With video Hi, I'm Kim Merritt, the URL Doctor. There is no more engaging and effective way to teach, train, market, or advertise than with video. We offer services in animation, promo or YouTube style video using B-roll and stock footage, screen capture, mixed media, and video editing of your raw footage including color grading and graphics animation. Let's take a look at each. Animation is the perfect way to visualize an online course, training event, commercial, or social media post, especially if you either don't want to be on screen yourself or you don't have the equipment or budget for a professional video shoot. We specialize in beyond animation. Simply provide us with a script or have us write one for you.  Our animation features professional voiceover, custom characters, lip sync conversation, background music, and your branding. If you want a more realistic look to your video, then promo or YouTube style video is just what you're looking for. We'll take professionally shot B-roll and stock footage, build custom graphics, text and transitions, add music, and provide you with the perfect commercial video or social media post. Need to show how to use a website or software product? Our screen capture services can demonstrate and explain exactly what your customers, employees, or audience need to know by guiding them through the actual website or program. Our screen capture services also include a cost-effective way to create professional video versions of your PowerPoint or live presentation with professional voiceover or even a live action narrator to create visual engagement for your e-learning courses. We also offer traditional video editing services where we take your raw footage, color correct it, edit it, and add graphics, music, and visual enhancements to make your original content come alive. Need something more specialized?  Finally, elevate your video lessons with interactive quizzes and knowledge checks built directly into the video and test their newfound knowledge on the spot. I'd love to help you with your next video project, schedule a time, and let's talk, and bring your story or e-learning course to life.


How seating arrangement influences learning. From both my experiences as well as what I have learned from this course, I believe seating arrangement in the classroom is very important. I remember always remember one teacher in college, because her class stuck out from all of the others. In her Greek history class, we were forced to place our desks into the form of a circle of vast majority of the time. She warned us from the first day of her class, that this would be a class far different from the normal teaching style. She told us that this style would help ensure we stay engaged, listen to others as well as her, and would help to keep us accountable for our previous reading assignments. Atmosphere. Every student knew. That they were to engage the class at least once every class. Being different from most other class structures, my peers and I looked at each other, thinking how weird this strategy sounded. After a few classes, our opinions on the matter has changed dramatically. We began to become excited to come to the class and talk in groups about the Roman history we had read about. We were kept accountable, because by an almost peer pressure of preparation, at any moment it might be our turn to speak to the class, or we might want to interject our thoughts on the subject discussed. This instilled a belief inside me that classroom seating can change the learning experience greatly. Different positions. This belief was further strengthened by another class I enrolled in the following year. Instead of normal reading assignments in my history of medicine class, we were given reading assignments every night, but instead of the normal classroom seating structure, we were forced to sit in the audience like Rose, with a presenter discussion leader at the front every class meeting. This forced us to engage and listen to the speaker or different classmates every class. Whether because of the guilt of leaving the leader uncomfortable with no one speaking, or fear of being the only one not engaged, my classmates and I engaged much more than normal for a history class. Further education experience. This realization would be future strengthened by experiences during law school as well. Whether the class was of an intimate number or a rather large class, the teacher would strategically place us, so that we would be forced to engage and debate every class. Although very different from college, this quickly became the norm for me. Throughout my entire tenure in law school. I realized that I learned so much so fast, because the seating arrangements increased my likelihood to read beforehand, come to class prepared, and be ready to engage the teacher as well as my classmates. I would like to instill these concepts as a future teacher, so that I can make a genuine, positive impact on my future students. I will take seating arrangement and classroom set up very seriously, as I have seen firsthand the positive effects it can have on the learning experience. I will use all of the skills I have acquired throughout my career and college, as a lawyer and through this course. Thanks so much for watching. We are ITTT the leading provider for TEFL and TESOL training courses. If you like this video, please subscribe by clicking that button down here and click on any of the videos here on the left for more interesting teaching tips for getting certified to teach English abroad and online.


This video is a buster call. To find out more about how you can get me to do a personalized video on a topic of your choosing, head over to patreon.com slash Grand Line Review and scroll down to the admiral tier. But for now, enjoy the video. Hello and welcome to the Grand Line Review, your source for everything one piece. Today we are going to go on a bit of a meta journey through the history of this incredible story, detailing how it went from its humble beginnings to becoming not only the best-selling manga of all time, but one of the best-selling comics in general throughout the world.  Oda was born on the 1st of January in the Kumamoto Prefecture, which is located on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four major islands. Oda's interest in becoming a manga car was solidified by the mere age of four when he resolved to become a manga artist in order to avoid getting a quote-unquote real job. And as someone who has a real job, all I can say is, good on you kid, you had the right idea. Throughout his childhood, Oda had many inspirations for his own story, but the most prominent ones come from Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama, which to this day is the property that essentially defines the entire battle manga genre, as well as Vicky the Viking, which is best described as a German, Austrian, Japanese animated series, which has been hypothesized to be Oda's spark of interest in the world of piracy. And in 1992, at the age of 17, he would take the first step towards putting his career into action by becoming an assistant to three different manga car for the publication Weekly Shonen Jump. During that same year, he was also hard at work on his own one-shot manga called Wanted, which most of you have probably heard about at some stage. This one shot was submitted for the Tezuka Award, a semi-annual manga award instituted by the publisher Shueisha in order to cultivate new manga car, with a first place prize of two million yen and a second place prize of one million yen. This competition is incredibly competitive, but also subject to extraordinary levels of scrutiny, as judges can elect not to award cash prizes if they deem that none of the candidates are worthy of receiving it. With that in mind, Wanted received second place in the contest, setting the stage for Oda to one day become a highly influential manga car in his own right. However, it would still be some time before one piece came to fruition, and so Oda continued working as an assistant for many years, and in 1996 he became an assistant to Nobuhiro Watsuki, manga car of the highly successful Rurouni Kenshin series. However, during this year, Oda would also be hard at work on the true prototype of One Piece, known as Romance Dawn. Now, interestingly enough, this word actually came in two versions, both of which introduced Luffy, the Gomagomonomi, and some other core aspects that would become One Piece. Although radical changes were made between the two, one of which is the character that would eventually become Nami, who was named Shirakuu in version one, and Anne in version two. There was also a much stronger magical element in these prototypes, showing that Oda hadn't quite decided on exactly how this world was going to operate just yet. After creating these one shots, Oda quit his assistant job for Nobuhiro Watsuki to begin working on One Piece, and so One Piece was unleashed properly onto the world in issue 34 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997, with chapter one being titled Romance Dawn. And it began exceptionally strongly claiming the number one spot in the reader feedback polls, and being consistently placed in the top half of the magazine for the remainder of the year, by the end of which the very first Tonkaban volume was published, also entitled Romance Dawn. Now at this stage, Oda had quite an ambitious outline for the series, having already decided on the ending and planning it to last a total of five years. But that was 1997, and as of this recording, it is late, late 2018. So we all know that, uh, things didn't quite go to plan here. But it should be noted that planning a five-year run was still incredibly bold in the hyper-competitive manga industry. Throughout 1998, One Piece continued strong, taking readers through East Blue, and delivering them to the Arlong Arc by December that year. As a result of this strong performance, it was being scouted by the animation company Toei, and in October of 1999, the very first episode of One Piece aired on the Fuji Network system. By this time in the manga, the straw hats had just entered the grand line, and were knee-deep in the events of Whiskey Peak. And the series itself had achieved a mainstream level of popularity in Japan anyway, becoming the third highest-selling manga of 1999, with just under 372,000 volumes sold, putting it behind only Ruroni Kenshin and Detective Conan for that year. This was the first year that One Piece cracked the top three in volume sales, and from this point on, it would never fall out of that top three. On the contrary, from here on, One Piece would experience explosive growth, managing to sell under 872,000 volumes, as well as claim the number one spot in the very next year. And this strong growth would continue, as in 2001, the series managed to crack one million volumes sold, and by 2002, the total yearly volume sales were over two and a half million. By this time, the manga was well into the events of Skypeer, and the anime adaptation wasn't trailing too far behind it, having just entered the Jaya arc. Furthermore, at this point, Three One Piece movies had come out, and although none of them were feature-length, the beast that is this series was spawning more than its fair share of extended media, including cosplay performances at the 2002 Jump Festa, where Oda would meet his future wife, Chiaki Inaba, who was playing the role of Nami in the performance. The two of them were married in 2004, and in that very same year, One Piece was acquired by Four Kids Entertainment, and an English dub distribution of the anime was announced for the United States, Canada, the UK, South Africa, New Zealand, and of course, the ever-wonderful Australia. Sadly, this ended up being a move that would generate extreme criticism, and arguably cause permanent damage to the perception of One Piece in the English-speaking world, due to strong censorship, overt Americanization, and the general strategy of aiming the series at the ever-lucrative 6-11 age bracket. Basically, Four Kids were looking to find their next Pokémon, and in doing so, failed to reach the broader audience that One Piece enjoyed in Japan, with some former Four Kids employees even stating that One Piece is an extreme case that tarred the reputation of the company. But despite what was happening in the English marketplace, One Piece in Japan continued to grow over the next few years, as readers were taken on a grand journey through Water 7, any slobby thriller bark, Sabati Acapelago, Amazon Lily, Impel Down, and in the second half of 2009, Marineford. Now I would personally argue that 2009 was by far the most important year for One Piece as a property, and this is because the end of 2009 saw a culmination of the series on two fronts, the first of which being the manga, which was serializing the aforementioned Marineford arc. This portion of the story was the end of an entire age of One Piece, bringing together characters from throughout the entire history of the series, and placing them in a climactic battle, the likes of which I had never seen in manga before. But the second and more overlooked culmination came in the form of the movie realm. By 2009, One Piece had released a total of nine films, with six of them being full length features, and while these did enjoy a decent amount of general financial success, none of them really stood out to the world. However, all of that was about to change with the release of the tenth film, Strong World. This film was particularly notable because it was being written by Oda himself, leading to a fast superior product, and after a fantastic marketing campaign, Strong World opened on the 12th of December 2009, grossing just over 11.5 million US dollars in its opening weekend, which was more than the previous One Piece film had grossed during its entire theatrical run. But just for further comparison, when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opened in Japan, it grossed 1.2 million US dollars in its opening weekend, so yeah, Strong World was a bit of a big deal. So with the manga reaching its greatest point to date and this new film garnering heavy mainstream attention, the One Piece fanbase absolutely exploded, and for the year of 2009, volume sales totaled over 14 million. But that isn't even the impressive part, because the effects of 2009 would not be seen until the 2010 sales figures were announced, with One Piece managing to sell a truly astonishing 32 million copies. At this stage One Piece was now a behemoth like nothing the manga world had ever seen before, and its mega success grew to selling just under 40 million volumes in a single year in 2011. However, following that there was a steep decline in both 2012 and 2013, although the sales of both of those following years still kept it comfortably in the number one best-selling manga spot. In an effort to combat this decline, 2013 saw some intriguing strategies to try and push One Piece into the international marketplace, the most prominent of which was a full page ad run in two of the top five newspapers in the world, The New York Times and China Daily, with a very bold statement declaring, Hey world, this is manga. Featuring a full coloured illustration of Luffy by Oda himself, and while these ads were very, very cool, they didn't stop the sales decline, and the period of 2014 ended with a total of just under 12 million volume sold, which happens to be the only year in recent history that the number one spot has been threatened with Attack on Titan managing to sell an astoundingly close number, but it still wasn't quite enough. With that said, this sales number only looks low due to the absurd numbers of 2010 and 2011. One Piece was and still is the marketplace leader in the manga world, making Oda a very, very wealthy man. In fact, at your Oda's net worth today is estimated at $200 million, which sounds fantastic, but it's not as if he ever has any time to spend any of it. Oda's work schedule is particularly brutal, as he works seven days a week planning, writing, drawing, inking and colouring. On top of that, his days generally commence with waking up to work at 5am and going to sleep at 2am, and while I never understand being able to pull off that lifestyle myself, all of the effort put into One Piece is more than evident, and the series has still continued strong as the world's best-selling manga, and as of 2018, the series has managed to sell over 440 million copies over its lifetime. This has even resulted in One Piece attaining the Guinness World Record for most copies of a comic book published by the same author, and if that wasn't enough, well, One Piece is currently the third-highest selling comic book in history, poised to surpass Batman in a few years, but still a far cry from the number one spot held by Superman. However, One Piece is a series about constantly battling against the impossible, and making a name for yourself in a massive world full of mammoth contenders, something that is very well reflected in the meta-journey of the manga's publication, and given that we still have no real indication of when One Piece is going to end, it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that when the day of Luffy ascending to the role of Pirate King does finally come, that perhaps that will also be the time when One Piece itself also does the impossible and becomes the best-selling comic book the world has ever seen. But that pretty much does it for this brief history of One Piece. If you enjoyed this video and the content this channel produces in general, then please do consider making a donation to the Grand Line Review Patreon because the support of all the few amazing people is what continues to make this channel possible. Also, feel free to check out my Teespring store if you're interested in shirts, hoodies, and other miscellaneous items, with proceeds also going directly to support the channel. And if you'd like to join the fun, then please do head over to my Discord server where a wide array of shenanigans takes place on a daily basis. And finally, please do comment with your thoughts on One Piece potentially becoming the number one comic book in the world. This has been the Grand Line Review, and I'll see you next time.


All right, for Swarthmore, we have Head Coach Harley Shlostik, sophomore of Merritt Den Robin, and Senior Sarah Wallace. And Coach Shlostik, can you start with an open statement on the match tonight? It was a great defensive match. Kudos to Carnegie Mellon. They've had a fantastic season, and they really came. And our team just came out on fire. We were like no-hold bar. And I just can't believe the effort. We've been working towards this and trying to grow in every moment. And we're still growing. And it's just awesome. Yeah, talk about the defensive. We're really at both sides. You guys had up 98 digs, which were a three-set match. And that's almost unheard of. Just defensive intensity at both sides tonight. Just talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so we really try to tailor our system around our best players and in the back court. And it's a team effort.   And we're such a momentum game that that's our main goal is just to frustrate the other teams. And so we spent a lot of time working on it. And we just out hustled. And it really came together. They were determined in focus from 0.1. And Matt, you kind of follow up with that. You had 24 digs tonight. This should have been 15 kills. You just want to talk a little bit about your team's defensive effort tonight and what your game plan was coming into the match. I think we really wanted to have a lot of fun. We've made it this far. And that's crazy. And we want to build off of what we've done so far. And we feed off of each other's energy. Someone gets this crazy dig.  And that just keeps the ball going. So again, it's a team effort. Sarah, how important was it for you guys to get up? I see you guys off to a quick start in the first step. And you were able to get out in all three sets and kind of get a lead early on. How important was that to be able to get a lead and to be able to kind of maintain that lead as opposed to coming from behind? I think that was really important, especially because Carnegie Mellon is a really strong team, and we knew that going in. They're naturally ranked for a reason. And so having that momentum at the beginning and getting that early lead was definitely very important in order to get our confidence up. And so we could play as a team and have all those great defensive efforts. Yeah, it was super important. And Coach, you just want to talk a little bit about, this is your first trip to the NCAAs and being able to have this momentum now to make the regional final. What it means to be as a coach, obviously, even with the program while and for the program as a whole. It just shows that we can be really smart and be athletic too. I think that that's the number one thing is, when we're in the top liberal arts colleges in the country, these women aren't going to play professional volleyball. They're going to do amazing things. And we're able to balance both and do both and have fun and compete. And it's just amazing. And we've gotten to finally prove it. We work really hard to play a tough schedule without compromising our academics. And they just show that, like I said, they can be great students and great athletes at the same time. Oh, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I have a couple of questions here. I had a little more to ask than yesterday. So first off, congratulations. I'm not going to ask too many, don't worry. So this is the third ranked win for this program. The previous one was actually over number 25, Carnegie Mellon, about two years ago in the EZAC final. Obviously, that team is going to be a little bit different in terms of turnover. The coach is the same and a lot of the players are the same. How did that affect your approach going into this national? For me, like Kim Kelly was at Gettysburg when I came to Swarthmore as a head coach when I was 24. I have a ton of respect for Coach Kelly. She had a fantastic program at Gettysburg and has done amazing things with Carnegie Mellon in such a great conference of the UAA. And I think that being them again, it was a similar approach that we knew we needed to control the momentum. And we just approached again as another conference team. Who do they match up like in our conference? And how can we have that same mentality going into the match? And then I think a big turning point, at least in the second set, we were up 7-6. It was that marathon point back and forth. I'm not sure how many times. Each side had the ball and then you guys came away with the point, if anyone wants to answer, how do you feel during that point? And after that, you carried on and had to look at the stats. But you went on a run. And so what does that do for you when you're in that situation? You guys were on the court. I think for us, it was, again, back to the defensive effort.  Their defense was picking everything up. And the rally just kept going and going. And so as a hitter during that rally, I was trying to work my butt off to get the point for my teammates. And then we finally pulled through and we were able to get the point for our teammates. And then after that, I think we were able to have more confidence and carry that confidence through knowing that we could play a rally like that and still come out winning. Yeah, winning those long rallies really gives you a lot of momentum. And you go into the huddle afterwards, and everyone's like, frick, yeah. Just a lot of fun. Playing great volleyball is a lot of fun. And it really got the crowd into this long run. Is there anything you want to say to them? I just want to thank our fans.  We have art. I mean, both of these are from California. Her parents road tripped it because that's what the Wallises do. Mayor's family isn't here. But it's just so great to have the school support being close enough that people can drive on a Saturday. And the fans, people are really, we're a lot of fun to watch. And that's what the sport of volleyball is all about. And most people miss out on that. So yeah, go volleyball. And looking at the box score today, you guys had 12 service aces with five errors. And then I think you kept off the natural either one or two service aces. And it looked like throughout the whole match, you were kind of keeping them off balance right from the get-go. What was your strategy kind of about that going into the match? Our game is a serve and pass game. It's all about side-outs. And you have to be aggressive in serving tough from the service line. And I give also credit to our conference opponent that's still in the tournament, Johns Hopkins. They're the best serving team in our conference. If not, I think nationally, they're right on there. And we've had that opportunity to play against them and know that we have to be aggressive from the service line. And so that's just one of our game plans to keep attacking as much as we possibly can. And one last question for you. You're going to play the winner of Stevenson and Johns Hopkins tomorrow. These are teams that you're both familiar with having played Stevenson earlier this season than Hopkins countless times over the years. How will that affect your approach, if at all? From the coaching staff is we're just going to keep, we're going to focus on what we did well today and what we can adjust and tweak and do better tomorrow. We played both of them this season. They're losses of ours. And I think we're going to go watch the match and take it like any other match. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. I feel like.


Hello, and welcome to Town Meeting TV's coverage of Town Meeting Day 2023. My name is Bobby Lucia and I'll be your host for tonight's program as we take a look at the proposed budget for the Champlain Valley School District. This program is one of a series of forums we're hosting in advance of Town Meeting Day this year, in which we invite candidates and municipal officials to unpack the items and races that you'll see up and down your ballot this March. So we'll dive in in just a second, but before we get started, if you're tuning in live, just so you know, we welcome your questions anytime at<PHONE_NUMBER>. That's<PHONE_NUMBER>. You can give us a call and we'll hear your question live on air. So with that, I'd now like to introduce our representatives from the Champlain Valley School District who are going to walk us through the proposed budget tonight. Here in the studio we have Gary Marcus, the Chief Operations Officer for the District. We have Rene Sanchez who is the Superintendent of the District and Angela Arsenault who is the Chair of the CVSD Board. So thank you all so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having us. Awesome. And Angela, I'm going to hand it right over to you to tell us a bit about this budget and what voters and families can expect to see this year. All right. Well, thank you. First of all, I do want to say a sincere thank you for having us here. You know, getting the word out about the budget is one of the most important things we do as a board and working with the administration to come up with that budget is, you know, some of our very, it's kind of the foundational work of a school board. So having opportunities like this to talk about it is really important. So thank you for providing that opportunity. I'm not going to do a lot of the talking this evening because we have our experts with us in Superintendent Sanchez and COO Marcus. But I just want to say that we'll be rolling through some slides so that folks will have a couple ways to see and hear the information and, you know, kind of that we'll start with our mission, which is something that we hope people see often in our school district and understand that we work very deeply to live up to this mission and the budget is a reflection of that mission. So you can see it here on your screens. I think the mission is to develop citizens who learn actively and collaboratively, think creatively and critically, live responsibly and respectfully, contribute positively to their community and pursue excellence. We've also got what I would love to have Superintendent Sanchez say a few words about how do you describe this? So these are our priorities. So you'll see in this in this graphic, this is something that we worked on as a leadership team this summer over the course of the year in preparation for going into this year. And so what we recognize is that our priorities really needed to focus on academic growth and belonging. And so academic growth and belonging can mean a lot of things, but we knew that at the core of it is really teaching and learning. And then when it comes to serving all of our students and all of our teachers, we know that we also have to look outside of teaching and learning and take into consideration identity, connection, direction and proficiency so that that way we have some guideposts along the way for these priorities. Yeah and we've been coming back to that, those priorities all year as a board and again an opportunity to share that as often as possible with the community is really helpful. So just a quick, I'll say a little bit behind the budget maybe, what's behind the budget are what we call our board budget goals. We really look to, we task our administrators with developing a budget that first supports the implementation of the mission and vision. The vision both are currently a work in progress, which is a little bit of an aside if you ever want to talk about our strategic plan we can do that too. But if we have time at the end. Yeah that's something we're working on. So the board also focuses on meeting or exceeding education quality standards also known as EQS. We always want to be mindful of implementing any initiatives, new initiatives which we will get to but this year we don't really have so much and we'll just can talk more about why that is. We implement and continue to improve the budget process really with a focus on community input. This has to be our community's budget and sometimes talking about a budget isn't the most interesting thing understandably but it's important for very clear and obvious reasons and we always welcome community input and we want to integrate that community input as much as possible. And finally again focusing on the community we want to do all of this and build a budget that our communities can support. So our budget work really is year-round so we're hoping that common town meeting day that our budget passes but as soon as that budget passes we're on to the next components of next year's budget. So this summer I'm sorry beginning in May and this summer we'll start having meetings aligning our goals to what our expectations are for next year. But within those goals we know that we're we want to be able to measure them meaning we're going to have to figure out are these goals sufficient and if they are then we need to make sure that we're going to fund them properly moving into the future. So we'll take feedback from the principals we'll take feedback from the community we'll make sure that we're monitoring our quarterly statements so that that way we can see if we're on track or if we need to cut back or we're allowed to be able to do a few more things within the budget this year. And then one of the things that we really enjoy is when we have events for the public to provide us the feedback that we need. This year as we were doing our strategic plan feedback sessions we incorporated information about the budget so that that way people could understand that as we were planning for our strategic plan that it was also at the same time you know if this is what we want to do we have to be able to fund it as well. So this next slide talks about the our American Rescue Plan ESSER funding. So due to COVID we received and and lots of other and other districts in Vermont received three distributions of ESSER funds and so we are on ESSER three now and we have that money for one more year and one more summer. And so what we are planning on using this money for is to make sure that we're recovering from the pandemic and the goal is to make sure that we are able to spend this money about four point three million dollars and we want to make sure that we're spending it on the things that the students need whether it's academic recovery or making sure that we have personnel on the campuses to help the students feel like they belong feel like they're able to readjust to coming back to school. So it's not going to recover or the amount of money that we received is not going to cover everything but we're trying to find out what the best practices are so that that way if we need to we can continue it out of our general fund or we can seek other grants. So like every year we're gonna have some components of a budget that are you know kind of good things and some things that aren't so good so and what we've done is we've summed it up this year in our budget headwinds and tailwinds. So the headwinds that we're facing many of which everybody else in Vermont and almost across the country are facing. So inflation, a tight labor market, the rising cost of health care and there's and the disappearance or shrinking of grant funds but at the same time we also have some good things going on as well. So between the strategic plan and an equity audit that we that we had last year and our and our planning for this year we've really begun to align our district goals to create a coherent plan for moving into the future so that that way we are efficient in our spending. We also have a very talented and committed workforce. We're very fortunate that we have wonderful teachers and staff and administrators to help support our students on a daily basis and we're excited that they like to come to work every day and that they that they support our students. And then finally we know that our Act 173 implementation that's effectively where we got our academic growth and belonging language from as we have planned for that already so we are our budget our budget is allocated for it already. So SR3 as I mentioned earlier is currently in effect we're in its last year. We want to make sure that we are utilizing it for the COVID recovery largely through counseling and social work. This year is going to be the last year. We will have a little bit of money in the summer to help support high school and its activities. Act 173 is in effect now so we've transitioned the special-led funding from one of a reimbursement to more of a census funding so we were fortunately positioned well so we didn't have we weren't we are we are not going to lose money we're actually making almost six hundred six hundred thousand dollars as a result of the transition. And then but one of the things that we know that is coming pretty soon is Act 127 which is the the the waiting study that University of Vermont and the legislature did a few years back and so we have to be prepared for that. So we know that going into this year day one after town meeting we will be meeting to discuss what the impact is going to mean for us and it will it will come into implementation in fiscal year 25 which is not this coming year but the year after. So one I guess Angela alluded to it earlier that we didn't really add much. We made sure our school board asked us to you know keep it in this keep it in the same ballpark effectively. Don't add a whole lot if you have to add you're gonna have to find the money within the budget that exists already. So we do have some instructional program budget neutral enhancements so as I mentioned earlier we had an equity audit and our equity audit is recommending that we focus more on data we focus more on communications really make sure that we are aligning what diversity equity and inclusion means to everyone in the district but then also to recruit higher retain and develop a high quality diverse staff. So we know that we're gonna have to do some extra work but in order to meet those expectations but we have it in the budget so that we can. We have reallocated some of our K-8 essential arts programs so that to take into account that essentially equitable funding across the district so if we had a school that had a little bit more another school had a little bit less we want to make sure that based on student population and the demographics of that student population we were able to to make it more equitable and again no significant programmatic or staffing changes as a result. Yeah I think it's important to note that we've kind of shifted into an equality based budget where like each school got this same amount of resources for the number of students that they they had in their school to more of a need-based where we're targeting our resources toward the needs where they are. So our operations budget highlights other than the impact of inflation on the operations budget we we did not increase that part part of our organization's funding. Our operations budget covers facilities you know maintenance and operations of the facilities our transportation system which is quite large and it's we're one of the few districts in regionally that own their own fleet of buses so that's a big big part of that budget our food service technology and the administration of the central office. So this is kind of a year-to-year review this is how we got from from a little over an eighty nine million dollar budget to a just a little over a ninety six million dollar budget and they're broken down by categories. Here SPED means special education and we we kind of separate these out so they're more easy to understand we don't want to double-count things or make things confusing so these the two million dollars listed here is is salaries without special education. Health insurance is another place that increased about a million dollars totally beyond the district control that's a statewide health care system and it increased by twelve point seven percent for fiscal year 24. Other benefits like dental life long-term disability there's a fairly significant increase in costs there. Our supplied materials and energy kind of went up like the CPI did around seven percent as our estimated cost we used six percent where we could and then the actual data for the energy sector to build our budget. Our debt service our annual debt service it went up the short-term borrowing interest rate increase caused that to go up by about sixty two thousand dollars for FY 24 and then special education which is a big part of our increase and that's excluding the health insurance because we included that all in one tranche just for explanation purposes. That went up over two point five million dollars two point six actually and really it's a result of our service plan where we're where we plan a need-based budget for our special education services and we have found for sure statewide that since the pandemic started in 2020 the need for special education and additional supports has increased tremendously. Coming back it was a you know it was a very difficult time for all of America and and our our actually all the world but our children and CVSD are experiencing the challenges of reintegrating and making up for for educational loss. So again we'll look at equalized tax rate this is prior to the common level of appraisal this is some call it the base tax rate so in FY 23 like it was a dollar 39 so and there's a formula by the hundreds dollar hundred dollars of home value you multiply the base tax rate to get your base tax liability so that from 20 FY 23 to FY 24 it actually decreased by 9.3 cents for the Champlain Valley School District. So that's the good news with our expenditures increasing by seven and a half percent with all the factors that we talked about and the headwinds and headwinds part of the previous slide are tax rates still decreased the base tax rate by 9.3 cents. This comparatively the budget from a base tax rate is about 1.2 percent below the statewide average for spending per equalized pupil and about 1 percent below the statewide average for a spending increase. Okay so that that is the that is the positive side of the story the difficulty in the challenging part from from a from a taxpayer from a citizen standpoint property owner standpoint is that the common level of appraisal which the common level appraisal tries to equalize what everybody pays proportionally across the state based on the value of their property that they're paying their tax liability against and that for all of our towns except st. George significantly increased the actual tax rate because the property values have gone up so rapidly especially 21 22 and so far into into 23 the appraised value of those homes are undervalued compared to the sales actual sales in the market across Vermont and across our towns so to equalize that they they put this equalization factor and they decreased significantly from fiscal year 23 to fiscal year 24 so those decreases if your if your home is only worth appraised at 77 78 80 percent of of the actual sales value to equalize that you have to you have to use that percentage as a divisor against that base rate which which increases the base rate so in the end our estimated tax rates you can see them with CLA applied in the in a center column from that $1.30 base rate they've all gone up you know 20 to 40s almost 40 cents so that that equates to in most of our towns we had two towns with a 5% change from fiscal year 23 one Shelburne with a 6% increase from 23 st. George did decline a little a little bit they I believe had an appraisal more recently and then Williston only increased 2% and you can see that translated into the dollar value change per hundred thousand dollars of assessed value on the right hand side so we had some favorable conditions pre CLA but the home values did increase tax rates tax rates in four of the five towns that last column there that's the change in the tax burden or that's the change in the appraisal value no that's the change in the tax burden per hundred thousand dollars of property assessed value so in summary the budget that that we've presented shows our continuation of commitment to our CVSD students and so there are the these factors that we've had to take into consideration for the present the presentation of this budget so we've mentioned that the that there was significant inflation about 7% for energy goods and services the mandated health health insurance increase of about 12.7% and then the competitive labor market driving salary well needed salary increases across all positions and so that's that is the the result of going from eighty nine million dollars to ninety six million dollars that being said with our we used to be a supervisory union prior to 2018 and so we had six or seven districts just within our within our purview since then we've consolidated and each year since 2018 our tax rate has consistently gone down so even though our tax rates are they seem they are significant this year they would be even higher if we were still a supervisory union so we can shift a little bit into the articles that will also appear on on on ballots that people be seeing either in the ballot box or early voting which we can all do now which is really great I guess we always oh we always could but it's more common now and we do have an informational meeting that folks can check out on mark 6th at 5 p.m. that is on zoom I believe and we'll talk about the the articles at that meeting but if we have a couple minutes we can get into them a little bit now so we have article 7 which is the budget that's the big one and there's a it's all it's written out very clearly on the ballot so folks can can be sure what they're voting on and then we have article 8 which is asking the voters if the the if we can spend some of our fun balance to draw down well we have to draw down the fun balance and apply it to revenue which keeps the budget you know just that much lower and then article 9 folks in our district might be very familiar with this I think it's an annual request to purchase school bus replacement school buses this year I believe it's one three three buses see I told you they're the experts but we that is something that we're we have and Gary could talk about this but it's an annual life cycle replacement plan usually around 12 years life cycle replacement plan I like that all right tucking that away and I will let Gary share the good news about the property tax credit so I will say that that many Vermonters don't pay taxes based on the the value of their property or at least the full value of their property so this is last year's data I don't believe that the ceiling has been updated for this year I believe the legislature will set that later in the session but if as a general rule if you make less than a hundred and thirty eight thousand five hundred in household income you're eligible for the Vermont property tax credit program which you pay you pay based on a percentage of your income as opposed to the full value of your property at tax time when you file there there is some required to documents that you have to file my homestead declaration and I can't remember the title of the other one but if you qualify based on income and you file those you can get a credit on your property taxes which can really significantly lower your your tax liability and the link is here for the the property tax credit and it's on the state website and so as I said we do have our annual informational meeting coming up on Monday March 6th which many people will recognize as the day before town meeting it's 5 p.m. at CVU it's hybrid it's hybrid yeah we'll be offering that on zoom as well all of this information is also available on the district website maybe that's how is that coming up CVSDVT.org no harm in saying it twice and as I said you can vote on or before March 7th and if you're interested in requesting a ballot you do have to request a ballot and remember that school budget ballots are separate from town ballots so you have to contact your town clerk or go to mvpvermont.gov to request your ballot online but I think that's an important point to reiterate that there are two separate ballots and in order to get both you have to I believe you have to talk to your town clerk so yeah then I was gonna ask if you wanted to lead us out or absolutely I think that about wraps up we have maybe a couple minutes left if you have anything quickly you'd like to highlight but we're going on the school district otherwise we can wrap it up but I'll share a little bit of space to highlight anything that you're working on right now before we close out sure also on our website if you go to our strategic planning page you'll see that we've got a our draft strategic plan up on the website right now and we're asking for community members and teachers and students to provide us feedback as we as we get closer to presenting it to the school board as a final draft later on this semester so if you have time please go to our website cvcv sdvt.org awesome thank you so much today thank you Gary thank you Angela for joining us tonight and thank you for tuning into town meeting TV's ongoing coverage of town meeting day 2023 or you'll continue to see ongoing coverage of local candidates ballot items and budgets in advance of this year's town meeting day you can find this form and others on our website ch17.tv or on our town meeting TV YouTube channel thanks so much for tuning in and have a wonderful night


Hey guys welcome back to another week of what's for dinner. My name is Andrea with Food and Mentory Adventures in Food in My household. There's me my husband and our adorable one-year-old little boy Hey guys, so Howard and I had to go out of town for a family emergency So we just stopped and got some Chinese food because I didn't feel like cooking so Howard got a I think this is combination lo mein and then I Got hot and spicy chicken and it doesn't look as as fresh as it was because it did get kind of cold in the car But we've got that and then I got some pork fried Wontons and then I got hot and sour soup Howard I'm gonna split that and then I got the crispy noodles to go with the hot and sour soup So this is what we are having for dinner tonight, and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys so for dinner tonight. I had to go to plan B I was planning on trying out a new recipe and when I got ready to cook my ground beef It had a horrible smell. This is the second time that's happened to me in about two months the First time it was I think it was pork that I got from Tom thumb and this time It was ground beef that I got from Kroger So I decided to make my tortellini carbonara, which is a dish that Howard and I really like I do have a video for it And I'll link it in the description box, but the only thing that I was missing was the fresh parsley So but it's still good So I've got that and it's just cheese tortellini and I use this one from Trader Joe's cheese tortellini Parmesan bacon heavy whipping cream, and I think that's it and supposedly fresh parsley And then with it I have these garlic and cheese breadsticks that I picked up from Trader Joe's and We really like them. I just popped them in the air fryer That's what they look like I pop them in the air fryer And then we're also having a little salad on the side and then I am using this table side Caesar It's just a little bit left in there. So I'm also going to give this Vinegretta try that I picked up from all the a while back ago And then Howard is going to have this creamy Caesar So this is what we are having for dinner tonight, and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight, we are eating from our freezer in my freezer I had this frozen tilapia from Kroger and if you've been following our channel for a while You know that Howard and I are not big fish people, but I am trying to eat to Cook a little healthier eat more meatless meals So got some tilapia here, and I just pan fried it in a little bit of ghee and I Used this on some of the fillets and then I like lemon pepper So I used this on my fillet. So I also made some canned corn I just added some butter salt and pepper to it and then I made this nor rice sides Which is this right here use that so this is Howard's plate and his has the buttery steakhouse seasoning on it and this is what it looks like and then this is my plate and it has the Lemon pepper seasoning on it and this is what that looks like So this is what we are having for dinner tonight, and we will see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight. We are having a spaghetti with meat sauce in my refrigerator I had this jar of marinara I had taken a little bit of it out and used it for something else and then I remembered I needed to use it before it went bad So use that and then to that I added these diced tomatoes, and then I just used Italian seasoning and And Italian seasoning garlic salt onion powder, etc, etc So and I did not even feel like making a green vegetable or salad or anything to go with it So this is this is it. So this is what we're having for dinner tonight, and we'll see you guys next time Hey guys, so for dinner tonight. We are having breakfast for dinner So I just made some pre-cooked Hormel bacon I made cheesy eggs so it has cheddar cheese with fresh green onions I've got some buttered toast and then I made these loaded potato tots that I picked up from Aldi during one of my recent Aldi hauls and So it says hash brown potato bites mixed with cheese in a hint of bacon So even though this is the pretty big box You only get about ten tots and they are a lot bigger than the average Tater tot so I opened up one so you guys could see the inside of it So this is what it looks like on the inside. You can see there's a lot of cheese in there, and they're okay They taste pretty good alright, so This is what we are having for dinner tonight, and we'll see you guys next time


I went through the first cartoon with them because I wanted them to be really successful and because the advantage of these two particular cartoons is that they have the same set of symbols. So they fill out a packet and then they have a couple of questions about what do you think the overall opinion that he's trying to say here is. And we did that together, me leading them through it. And then the second part, they were in buddies and we have social studies buddies which are high low pairs. And in buddies they then had the second cartoon and they had to fill out the same kind of table where they pulled out what they see and what they thought it meant and then answer a question about what did they think that the cartoon was telling them at the end. There's a big wave when compared to that, right? The bird is still there. Okay, the boat changed its name, didn't it? He's mad. How do you know he's mad? Okay, his eyebrows, look at his hat. Okay, he looks like he's mad, right? Okay, so we need to write that down, we need to write that on his face and we need to write the man. Good work. What do you say? He's trying to fight the storm. Oh, it looks like he's fighting the storm, doesn't it? What tells you that he's fighting, he's not running away from the storm, is he? Does he look afraid? No. What do you think? He's mad at the storm. He's mad, right? And he's not running away from the storm, what's he doing? He's trying to fight the storm. He is trying to fight the storm, okay? And what's the storm? What's it called? Integration. Yeah, integration. They're like having a war. Okay, it looks like he's fighting. How do you know that he's fighting? Because everything's like all messed up and says integration here. And this is like the Supreme Court. Okay, so here's integration and he looks like he's fighting it. If you saw a big scary storm like that and waves like that, would you fight it like that? What would you do? If you're on that boat and there's a big scary storm, what would you do? Turn your boat around, right? Turn your boat and get out of there, right? Okay, what is he doing? He's keep on going. Yes, right, and look at his body. Remember his body before he was kind of like, what's going on? What's he doing now? Yeah, what's that mean? Yeah, what's he doing? He's fighting. Yeah, he's fighting it and how's he fighting it? It's important to notice that the boat has changed. Look at the other one, okay? The public schools are closing. The storm, you did perfect right here. Storm, and it says with integration, the boat, okay? And what are the other things that you see? Break it all into pieces. The title says writing out the storm. Okay, and you can write down the title. So you can write that down. Okay, first make a list of all the things that you see and then go back and try and figure out what each one means. Okay, you don't have to understand it all right away. They're able to really get that they're both talking about a problem, they're both talking about integration, they're both talking about a problem with integration and that at first they don't know what to do and then they have this idea that they're just going to hold it out. So unlike in other lessons where I had to do a lot more prompting and assisting, I really, I didn't, I mean, there were a couple of times that there were certain groups that were pulling apart wave and lightning and cloud into separate boxes and so I feel like they were missing the point of a storm. So I did for them sort of say, well, I think those things all go together and what do we call that and kind of encourage them in that way. But the things I really wanted them to get, they really looked at his face and his body language and his face tells everything about how Virginia was dealing with this.