United in Change
"The 2016 election laid bare how divided our country was, each side seemingly incapable of seeing the others' viewpoints. News reports were filled with stories about the raging poles of the political spectrum, no room any longer for the middle, on climate or anything else. The months leading up to the election and the time since had left me feeling beaten down, like a child of parents on the verge... posted on Jan 27 2020, 4,993 reads

Understanding King's Nonviolence
"In Kingian Nonviolence, a philosophy developed out of the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., there is a distinction made between nonviolence spelled with a hyphen, and nonviolence spelled without a hyphen. 'Non-violence' is essentially two words: 'without' 'violence.' When spelled this way, it only describes the absence of violence. As long as I am "not being violent," I am practicing non-viole... posted on Jan 26 2020, 3,677 reads

Serotiny: The Story of Lead to Life
Serotiny refers to the process of seeds using the destructive power of fire to trigger the germination of new growth. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the organization Lead to Life gathered in Atlanta to honor the life of gun victims by putting weapons of killing through fire to forge shovels; plant trees to honor those lives with shovels created from that process... posted on Jan 25 2020, 1,744 reads

Treatable Deaths are Also Violence
"In 2009, after completing my medical residency at a county hospital in Los Angeles I signed up to split my time between San Francisco and some of the most economically destitute parts of the planet. It was a simple calculation about where to best use my skills. In an academic medical center in San Francisco, there could be 50 doctors on one floor. If I disappeared hardly anyone would notice. In r... posted on Jan 24 2020, 3,385 reads

The Artist's Way for Parents
The artist way movement began more than two decades ago as author Julia Cameron shared her ideas with a few friends in her living room. Since then, Julia's instruction through books and courses has helped millions of people around the world discover - and recover their creativity, including parents.... posted on Jan 22 2020, 4,979 reads

I Wish My Teacher Knew...
"One day, third-grade teacher Kyle Schwartz asked her students to fill in the blank in this sentence: "I wish my teacher knew _____ ." The results astounded her. Some answers were humorous; others were heartbreaking. All were profoundly moving and enlightening. The results opened her eyes to the need for educators to understand the unique realities their students face in order to create an open, s... posted on Jan 21 2020, 16,611 reads

How to Overcome a False Growth Mindset
"It all started when my Australian colleague Susan Mackie informed me that she was seeing more and more false growth mindset. This is when educators think and do all sorts of things that they simply call growth mindset. And then I started noticing it, too. Here's what I saw." Pioneering researcher and author of "Mindset: the New Psychology of Success, " Carol Dweck shares more about some of the mo... posted on Jan 20 2020, 6,995 reads

Speaking of Nature
"We have a special grammar for personhood. We would never say of our late neighbor, "It is buried in Oakwood Cemetery." Such language would be deeply disrespectful and would rob him of his humanity. We use instead a special grammar for humans: we distinguish them with the use of he or she, a grammar of personhood for both living and dead Homo sapiens. Yet we say of the oriole warbling comfort to m... posted on Jan 19 2020, 5,989 reads

Shaped by a Silky Attention
"A request for concentration isn't always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady prese... posted on Jan 18 2020, 5,461 reads

Overcoming the Brain's Negativity Bias
Why are we waylaid by criticism or unable to get past a minor snub from our best friend? Thats our negativity bias. We humans have a propensity to give more weight in our minds to things that go wrong than to things that go rightso much so that just one negative event can hijack our minds in ways that can be detrimental to our work, relationships, health, and happiness. Overcoming our negativity b... posted on Jan 17 2020, 15,878 reads