Daily Reads:
Persistence and luck – Laura Stewart is the grand-daughter of Geoff Stewart, founder of North Flinders Mines. The thrust of this article is how success in businesses is rarely linear (not a surprise for anyone paying attention), that businesses are made up of people (hah, tell that to some execs!), and the benefits of holding high conviction investments through difficult times can be substantial, especially over a multi decade period.
What does it mean when ‘part of a rainbow is missing‘? A beautiful explainer about the wonders of spectroscopy.
A David Bowie story from Neil Gaiman
Churchill’s Never Give In speech from 82 years ago on the 29th October 1941. The link is from Bob Ewing’s post on Churchill’s pile driver idea: “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.”
An American Teacher – I have no idea who wrote this
HERO OF THE WEEK: AN AMERICAN TEACHERÂ
Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.
And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.
Who is not getting requested by anyone else?
Who doesn’t even know who to request?
Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?
Who had a million friends last week and none this week?
Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down — right away — who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.
As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children — I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold — the gold being those little ones who need a little help, who need adults to step in and teach them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot — and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said — the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.
As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea, I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.
Ever since Columbine, she said. Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.
Good Lord. This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that all violence begins with disconnection.  All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy knowing that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.
And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands — is saving lives.
And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything — even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists — she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s math.
Chase’s teacher retires this year — after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day — and altering the trajectory of our world.
QOTD:
“Churchill mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.”
– Edward R. Murrow
Music:
Bob Fulghum has this poem, which to me counts as music for today, with Paganini’s guitar compositions in the background:
YOU ARE READING THIS POEM
You are reading this poem
because you are looking
for something.
Like walking up a dry creek bed
in September looking
for something.
Looking for what the flash floods
of August have
washed down:
Smooth stones, polished sticks,
feathers, bones, seeds
You are walking up the dry bed
of this poem looking for something like that.
To keep, to have, to hold onto.
Stop. Turn back.
Come again when it storms.
Wait here while the flash flood tears through.
Stand in the water as deep as you dare.
Stay until you know what water is.
Keep that.