Major businesses around the world have been trying to reduce the total cost and wastes across their supply chain to remain competitive in the expanding global market. Hence, a collection of reliable tools and techniques are vital for decreasing costs and wastes and for providing effective services for customer demands. Given that lean concept attempts to decrease costs and wastes, this study aims to identify the effective lean tools required for eliminating wastes in the supply chain. Because of the large number of consumers and the global market of Halal products, this study focuses on Halal food supply chains. Out of the questionnaires distributed to 300 Halal food firms in Malaysia, only 61 usable replies were obtained. The results showed that demand collaboration, continuous improvement, and inventory management practices are the most important tools in Lean Supply Chain (LSC) implementation. In addition, the results indicated that only a small percentage of Halal food companies are implementing LSC. Malaysia is an important Halal food producer in the word, but has low level of LSC implementation among its Halal food producers. LSC is a new concept that needs more effort to be understood and implemented.

As a teacher, my experiences revealed that although most Iranian new immigrant high school students had an excellent mathematical background, they faced difficulties in learning math after relocating to a school in Vancouver, BC. There are several reasons for this, and this article focuses on one of those. I conducted two series of interviews with seven Iranian new immigrant high school students to collect data. They studied in a Canadian school and had also learned math in an Iranian high school. Participants pointed to different math teachers' methods as a reason why learning math in Canada differs from Iran. Canadian math teachers give students the authority to decide on how and when to finish their math work. These students are not familiar with this authority, and they do not know how to plan for their math education. They need support as they learn how to make decisions and be more autonomous.