The Truth About Getting Ahead in America
I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, my mind struggling to process the hour of bad news I had just watched. At a loss, I wondered what would happen if I just forced myself to smile. I imagine if anyone had seen me, it would have looked quite ridiculous, as I stared at the ceiling trying to hold a forced smile as long as I could.
The first five seconds were legitimately challenging, perhaps evidence that these muscles had atrophied a bit during these last several months. Eventually, as…
It’s like ”playing a game of 3D chess while standing on one leg in the middle of a hurricane.”
These were the words Richmond Superintendent of Schools and former recipient of the National Teacher of the Year, Jason Kamras, used to describe the process of planning for the opening of schools.
This vivid simile captures the complexity (3D chess), dexterity (standing on one leg) and danger (hurricane), that is inherent in what seems like a near impossible task.…
I find “results” to be a perplexing word.
When you see “results’ in print is your instinct to read it as a noun? As in “I want results.” Or do you read it as a verb — “when I do this, it results in that?”
Its origins date back to the French “resilire” which means “to rebound” and is the root word for resilience. There is a looseness and flexibility in its original meaning that I admire.…
When I think of a line, I typically think of something that is finite in length or duration. We may wait in a line for gas or we may draw a line as part of a picture.
I just learned that in purely math terms, a line actually refers to something that is “a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness and extending infinitely in both directions.”…
Inside Bill’s Brain is a documentary series that invites us to see how Bill Gates thinks. Among the more remarkable practices is his long standing “think weeks,” where perplexed by a particular problem, he loads up a bag of books on that topic and takes off to a secluded cabin where he just thinks about that issue. Returning hopefully with a deeper understanding, a plan of action, perhaps even some solutions worthy of exploration.…
To hear this term is to presume something positive. It implies that things fit with one another, get along, are nice.
Yet in the field of psychology, complementary behavior may not always be as helpful as it sounds. It means you respond back to someone in the same way they did to you. For example, if someone yells at you, you yell at them.
By comparison, non-complementary behavior is responding to someone in a different way from which they acted towards you. …
It is my favorite word. To hear anyone of my three daughters call me “Daddy” is a delight, even when it is to register a complaint or voice frustration. There is an innate tenderness to the term that I never want to go away. I have never heard my daughters call me dad or father, although I’m guessing they use those terms whenever referring to me with their friends or teachers. …
Two weeks ago my daughter asked me for some help on a school math assignment. She was given an imaginary $100,000 to invest in ten stocks and track how they performed over the course of two weeks.
In selecting her stocks, she picked things she believed in or liked. She likes to listen to music, so she chose Spotify. She loves to read, so she chose Scholastic.…
There are so many things about life that are beyond my current understanding. Chief amongst these are the experiences of people whose backgrounds are different from my own.
I do not understand what it feels like to be the victim of an injustice or to perpetrate it.
I do not understand what it is like to be discriminated against daily, to patrol the streets, to fight in a war, to live in fear for myself or my family.…
It happened as the parade of cars drove through our town, our children’s teachers beeping and beaming as we waved.
It happened as I attended the virtual graduation ceremony at City College and read the students and parents’ supportive and proud comments and emojis scroll down the Youtube Live chat box for an hour.
It happened as I watched each episode of Some Good News, as each story chronicled one beautiful act of appreciation after another.…