Free Educational Topics in Chicago
It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: Browse for a topic, Click the orange request button, Fill out the contact form.
Now the speaker will contact you in the next few days to coordinate details.
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Congress Doesn’t Care What You Think
Ed Spire, Co-lead, Restore our Democracy Project, NWSOFA-Indivisible
Request This Free Speechthis presentation addresses the problem of unlimited political money corrupting our democracy. We explain the problem clearly, and discuss the causes and possible solutions, including steps that we can take in our own communities to begin addressing this structural problem in our country. The presentation is non-partisan and brings issues to light which are of concern across the aisle. MORE >
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Demonstrating and Teaching Mental Math Methods
Cliff Petrak, Retired Teacher, Brother Rice High School
Request This Free SpeechLearn to master a multitude of little-known, super-shortcut computational methods involving addition, subtraction, fractions, squaring and multiplication. Unfortunately, our country consistently finishes among the bottom third of industrialized countries in the annual mental math competition for students. Learning these strategies and methods will leave your calculator-dependent friends in the dust!
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Targeting Colleges for Affordability
Joseph Orsolini, President, College Aid Planners, Inc.
Request This Free SpeechThe presentation will focus on strategies to target colleges for merit-based financial aid. Armed with this understanding and knowledge of the college aid process, a college education may become more affordable.
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Creating A Private Sector: Contract Law & The Constitutional Protection of the Right of Conscience
Mark McGarvie, J.D., Ph.D.,, Retired Professor of History and Law, College of William and Mary
Request This Free SpeechProfessor McGarvie is considered one of our leading authorities on the separation of church and state. His ground-breaking thesis articulated in 2004 with the publication of One Nation Under Law has gained tremendous support and led to invitations to write successor volumes and essays for both Oxford and Cambridge University Presses and to speak on the subject across the country. MORE >
In this presentation, Professor McGarvie will explain how the separation of church and state resulted from the Founders' creation of a private sector through the contract clause of the Constitution. Contract law revolutionized the relationships between citizens and their governments. Placing religion in the private sector required its separation from government and the removal of churches from performing public functions in education, poor relief, and record keeping, for which they had responsibility in the colonial era. -
Increasing Political Polarization and what we can do about it
Ed Spire, Co-lead, Restore our Democracy Project, NWSOFA-Indivisible
Request This Free SpeechEvery decade, increasing gerrymandering has created more and more "safe seats", which have resulted in more and more extreme legislators on both sides of the aisle - creating a legislature where compromise is impossible, and very little legislative progress ensures. This presentation shows why this happens, and what we can do about it, using the recent example of the Alaska special election, utilizing a nonpartisan primary and a ranked choice voting general election, as an example of how to promote more moderate legislators and a more productive legislature. MORE >
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Long Term Care: Don’t Go Broke!
Tom Kedzie CFP®, MBA, Financial Planner, RetireWell
Request This Free SpeechIn this presentation you will learn:
* How to protect your house and income.
* What Medicare and Medicaid cover.
* Types of care: home, assisted living, and nursing home.
* How to pay for long term care without paying annual premiums. -
How to Create Resilient Equitable Communities in a COVID-19 World
Kelwin Harris, Urban Planning, Race, Civic Engagement Speaker
Request This Free SpeechOur cities face serious threats; growth is uneven; neighborhoods are struggling; and streets are erupting in protest as COVID-19 has made existing inequalities worse. Now more than ever, we must address racial equity and provide strategies for prosperity for the good of everyone. Drawing from his experience as a community leader on the South Side of Chicago and as an urban planner, Kelwin Harris uses an equity lens to discuss multiple facets of systemic racism that persist and offers strategies and interventions for the road ahead. MORE >
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Rising Economic Inequality: how much, why it happens, why it matters, and what we can do about it.
Ed Spire, Co-lead, Restore our Democracy Project, NWSOFA-Indivisible
Request This Free SpeechEconomic inequality has been rising in the US for decades, damaging our economy and society in the process. This presentation will discuss how high it has become, why it happens, how it damages our country, and what we can do about it.
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Rethinking the Colonizing of North America
Mark McGarvie, J.D., Ph.D.,, Retired Professor of History and Law, College of William and Mary
Request This Free SpeechEuropean colonialism recently has been presented, both popularly and scholastically, as an evil that decimated native populations, destroyed native cultures, precipitated extensive wars, and caused irreparable environmental harm. Avoiding judgment in favor of understanding, Professor McGarvie will develop the context for European discovery of the New World in the intellectual, technological, political, and cultural contexts of both the Native Americans and the European explorers in the 16th - 18th centuries. MORE >
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School board disinformation
Ed Spire, Co-lead, Restore our Democracy Project, NWSOFA-Indivisible
Request This Free SpeechOur public school boards are under attack. Responsible school board members are being threatened, and reasonable school policies are being dismantled. We'll help you understand why, who is doing it, and what we can do about it.