Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - August 15 Edition

Writing, Creativity

The Author Of "The Artist's Way" On Why You Should Write Every Day

"For more than 25 years, I have faithfully written Morning Pages—three pages of longhand stream of consciousness that serves to unlock my creativity, guiding me a page at a time into my future. The pages, I often say, are like lanterns—illuminating the path ahead. I write them daily, aware that skipping them leads back to blocks. The faithful practice of pages leads to freedom. They bring ease and inspiration to my life.

1. The first thing I've learned is that persistence pays off.

Doing the pages day in and day out, even when they seem dull, boring, or difficult, eventually leads to breakthroughs. Because they can be about anything, pages are like taking a whisk broom to the corners of our consciousness."

To read 2 – 10, click here.

Grief, Kindness

94-year-old puts in pool for neighborhood kids

"MORRIS, Minn. – Peace and quiet seem like a good thing, until you’ve had too much. Keith Davison got his fill in the months that followed the death of his wife Evy.

“You just can’t imagine what it's like,” says Davison, who lost his wife to cancer in 2016 after a marriage of 66 years. “You cry a lot. That's just the way it is, because she's not here.”

But it’s not quiet at Davison’s house anymore.  Late this spring the 94-year-old retired judge installed in his backyard an in-ground pool – then filled it with the neighborhood kids."

Education, Soft Skills

Social And Emotional Skills: Everybody Loves Them, But Still Can't Define Them

"More and more, people in education agree on the importance of schools' paying attention to stuff other than academics.

But still, no one agrees on what to call that "stuff."

I originally published a story on this topic two years ago.

As I reported back then, there were a bunch of overlapping terms in play, from "character" to "grit" to "noncognitive skills."

This bagginess bugged me, as a member of the education media. It bugged researchers and policymakers too. It still does.

If anything, the case for nonacademics has gotten even stronger since then. In fact, it has been enshrined in federal law. The Every Student Succeeds Act mandates that states measure at least one nonacademic indicator of school success.

There is also new research indicating that school-based interventions to promote social and emotional skills have large, and long-term, positive impacts: an average of $11 for every dollar invested, according to an analysis by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (which is a supporter of NPR).

But despite all the hoopla there is still — still! — no consensus on how to define these indicators, or even on what to call them."

Communication, Social Justice

Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People

(This article is from 2016 but definitely worth a read.)

"This is a follow-up to my previous piece entitled Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Social Justice Educators. The latter was written for folks who consider equity work as their core life purpose. I wrote Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People for the folks who consider themselves good people invested in social justice and conversations around equity, but who may show up in the ally role most often. Well-intentioned people make mistakes, lots of them. Mistakes must be expected and being held accountable has to be expected as well. The points below outline some of the common behaviors that show up often in social justice conversations.

I want to be clear that we all participate in some of the following counterproductive acts. We are not all privileged or all oppressed. We are complex people with complex identities that intersect in complex ways. Therefore, we all show up in problematic ways with our privilege. I own that my background is from the higher education setting, but I think the points below can be useful for all folks interested in creating dynamic change in the communities around them. Moreover, this piece was written in the midst of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner non-indictments (many more people could be listed), so some of it may feel specific to race. However, these rules apply beyond the identity of race; in fact, these rules only exist in the dynamic of intersections. Below are ten counterproductive behaviors that people who want to do “good” commit and must actively work to correct: Click here."

Single, Childless, Work-Life Balance

How to say no at work when you don’t have kids

"So, what should single workers do if they feel they’re being singled out because of their personal life choices or situation, yet don’t want to jeopardise their careers and reputations?

“Don’t bitch and moan about your particular circumstances,” is the first advice dished out by UK-based business mentor David Carter.

He argues that “the answer is in the crowd.” Single colleagues should consider clubbing together, he says, to identify and propose changes to company practices that might benefit the organisation more widely, while at the same time demonstrating their own problem-solving skills.

That may be easier to do than ever, as unprecedented numbers of us are settling down later in life or not at all. A 2014 Pew Report study estimated that one in four young adults in the US will have never married by the time they turn 50, while the most common type of household in the European Union in 2016 was that of a single person, according to the EU’s number-crunching agency Eurostat."

Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - July 7 Edition

Refugees

The Montana Moms Who Decided Refugees Will Be Welcome in Their City

Soft Landing’s focus is as much on the Missoula community as on incoming refugees. The organization, which consists of two part-time staff members, coordinates volunteers to support incoming refugees, including families that help orient refugees to their new home and connect them to their neighbors. The organization also promotes dialogue among community members on the sometimes uncomfortable topic of resettlement. Their mission is to ensure the Missoula community is both welcoming and informed.

Before co-founding Soft Landing, Poole says, “I didn’t even know what a refugee was. I didn’t know what resettlement was—I had no context.”

Civics, Education

How to Teach Civics in School

GOVERNMENT and civics classes have a reputation for being dry. This means that too many students forget what they have been taught. Two-thirds of Americans could not name all three branches of government, according to a survey published in 2015. Only one-third could name a single Supreme Court justice, or identify Joe Biden as the then-vice president.

Civics has been in decline in schools for decades, says Peter Levine of the Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. It has been pushed aside by a focus on preparing workers for the marketplace with “core” subjects, especially science, technology, engineering and maths. But the idea that it was the responsibility of schools to teach students about politics and democracy flourished well into the second half of the 20th century. It was based on the belief, as promulgated by Horace Mann, who fought for universal education in the 19th century, that education is "our own political safety". Across the country, pupils took classes like “Problems of Democracy,” a popular post-war civics course in which they were expected to read the newspaper and debate issues in the classroom. But by the 1980s, it had been phased out. Parents and politicians became concerned about schools “politicising” the classroom. Schools, eager to avoid controversy, sanitised their curriculums. Since then courses on government have remained common, but most offer little more than rote study of the structures of government.

Poverty, Development

From their archives: May/June 2014 Issue

Show Them the Money: Why Giving Cash Helps Alleviate Poverty

New research suggests that cash grants to the poor are as good as or better than many traditional forms of aid when it comes to reducing poverty. The process of transferring cash, moreover, is only getting cheaper, thanks to the spread of technologies such as cell phones and satellite signals. And simply asking whether a given program is doing more good than it costs puts pressure on the aid sector to be more transparent and accountable. It’s well past time, then, for donors to stop thinking of unconditional cash payments as an oddball policy and start seeing them for what they are: one of the most sensible tools of poverty alleviation.

Stress, Work-Life Balance

5 Things I Did Before I Completely Burned Out

After seven months at a startup, I was burning out. I wasn’t sleeping. I was constantly working. When I tried to go to bed, my mind would speed up rather than slow down. I gained weight. I realized that I needed to take care of myself before I wasn’t any use to the team.

Startups often make mistakes and then find a way to pivot. I realized that I needed to pivot personally. So I took a step back and thought, What can I do that will have the greatest positive impact on my life in the shortest amount of time possible? 

Cancer

Tackling Cancer-Related Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the most prevalent and troubling side effects cancer survivors face, both during treatment and after treatment ends. Cancer-related fatigue is a distressing, persistent, subjective sense of physical, emotional, or cognitive tiredness that is caused by cancer or its treatment. Unlike the normal tiredness that most people experience from time to time, cancer-related fatigue is not proportional to recent activity, it does not go away with rest, and it interferes with everyday functioning. This type of fatigue can significantly diminish a cancer survivor’s quality of life. 

Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - July 5 Edition

Health care

Shining a Light on Invisible Labor

“Like most people, my own family has a caregiving story. When my grandfather became ill and needed more support, my family didn’t have a plan for his care, and he ended up spending his last days in an isolating nursing home. The thought of it still haunts me. But my grandmother, who is still living and thriving at the age of 92, is able to live at home and be active in her community, in large part because she has the support of a devoted home care worker. She makes it possible for my grandmother to live on her own terms.

Their vastly different experiences inform my work to elevate caregiving. I began organizing with domestic workers in New York City in the 1990s, and saw how critical their work was to the families who employed them, caring for the most precious elements of their lives — their children, loved ones with disabilities, parents and grandparents, or their homes. Care work makes all other work possible. Yet in far too many cases, these women were undervalued and vulnerable to abuse. It’s a workforce that works hard and struggles to make ends meet. Their economic insecurity is not only a profound moral dilemma, it makes it hard for the families they support to be secure. People like my grandmother, and someday my parents and myself — we will all need a strong care workforce to live well as we age.” 

~ Ai-jen Poo is executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the co-director of the Caring Across generations campaign.

Family Leave, Work-life Balance

  

Policy Paper:

Paid Family Leave: How Much Time is Enough?

“The United States remains one of the few countries on earth—along with Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Tonga—with no national paid family leave policy, despite the fact that a majority of women and mothers work outside the home, that a majority of children are being raised in families where all parents work, and that an aging population is increasing caregiving demands on working age men and women.

With families under intensifying time pressure and stress, growing economic inequality, and widespread public support for paid family leave, more policymakers on the federal and state level and individual companies and organizations are grappling with how to craft paid family and medical leave policies that will support individuals and families, and work for businesses and the economy.

But how long should those leaves last? How much time is enough? And for whom?” 

Dance,  Arts in Small Communities

Escaping to Dance Haven

I recently read about this dance school/program in my hometown newspaper. I wish there had been a business like this in Tell City, Indiana, when I was a young girl. Small communities across the country should embrace arts programs. It is one way to revitalize them. Dance Haven looks like a success story. Congratulations, Heather Cross.

“Classes at Dance Haven started last August with three teachers and just the one classroom at their Main Street Studio. But word spread quickly, as Cross said “our phone was just blowing up,” and the second classroom was in service by October.

Cross said that when they opened shop they hoped to have about 75 participants, but “blew that out of the water” with about 115.

This fall, when classes get back into full swing, there will be six instructors on hand, guiding the footwork in everything from jazz to ballroom, and adding gymnastics and acro dance.

Cross went on to explain that the longstanding Main Event gymnastics program will shift into The Dance Haven studios, making it a “one stop shop” for such training.”

Refugees, Education

How to Fund a Refugee Camp School

“There are no well-ordered, state-run refugee camps in Lebanon; everything is haphazard. The tent encampments are built on private land, placing the refugees at the mercy of landlords, and scattered at random across the eastern Bekaa Valley, making it difficult for humanitarian organizations to coordinate support. Many of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees in the country live in conditions like this. It is as if an entire nation deposited itself in an area where one would expect to find nothing but agricultural land or the odd farmer tending his sheep.

A cluster of buildings, the largest of which is perhaps the size of a small barn, sits on the edge of the tent camp surrounded by a chain-link fence. This is the Kayany Foundation’s Telyani School, where children 6 to 13 attend classes in subjects such as English, Arabic, and math. The outer walls are adorned with cardboard cutouts of pink, red, and blue flowers. “Welcome Spring” reads a rainbow-colored sign. Children line up excitedly each morning outside the classrooms, a cheery contrast with the drab life outside the school.”

Environment

  

Listen:

It's Not Easy But Aspen Moves Toward 100 Percent Renewable Energy

“Today, only a few cities besides Aspen have achieved 100 percent renewable electricity or energy: Georgetown, Texas, Burlington, Vt., Greensburg, Kan., and Rockport, Mo. Kodiak Island, Alaska, is 99 percent renewable energy but uses small amounts of diesel as a back-up fuel source.

Van Horn says the Sierra Club pushes cities to create their own renewable energy. But even when they buy it from far-away places, like Aspen does, it has a wider impact.

"That city is helping to shift not just the electrons consumed within that community but really helping ... the grid move toward cleaner ... sources of energy like wind and solar," she says. The Sierra Club hopes all this will add up to lower carbon emissions for cities, and the country.

In Aspen, that's still a challenge.”