Search Results for: blog

Written by Jessica Lahey.

When I look out into my classroom, and take the emotional temperature of my students, I’m usually checking for engagement. I want to make sure they feel supported, are interested in the lesson at hand, and that the lesson is relevant to each student.

But happiness? I stopped looking for happiness long ago. I see it periodically, when the conditions are perfect, and the stars align just so. When happiness strikes in my classroom, I relish it as I would any other rare anomaly, like thundersnow or a two-faced calf. Regular sightings, however, seem too much to hope for given the inhospitable climate in many American classrooms.

Emma Seppala, however, the author of “The Happiness Track,” and science director of Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, has not lost hope. Dr. Seppala admits that yes, happiness can be a rare beast in our classrooms, but we can create and protect learning conditions in which happiness can flourish.

To read the full article, click here.

Written by Holly MacCormick.

Many people think that hard work is the key to success and happiness, yet we all know it’s not possible to work, and work well, 24/7. This realization hit me as I was preparing to interview Emma Seppälä, PhD, associate director of Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, about her new book, The Happiness Track. In it, Seppälä highlights research on the complex relationship between work and happiness and outlines how we can apply these findings to our daily lives to boost our productivity and resilience, reduce stress and enjoy sustainable success and happiness.

I couldn’t wait to read the book, but I seldom allow myself time for such an indulgence – so I bought the audiobook and planned to listen to it during my commute to work. After about 30 minutes of listening, the book’s focus shifted to multitasking. Doing an activity like listening to a book while driving, the narrator said, may seem like a great way to get a lot done, but it’s counterproductive because the listener is neither fully paying attention to the book or their driving.

To read the full article, click here.

The San Antonio Book Festival (SABF) has released their list of more than 85 acclaimed national, regional and local authors who will appear at the 4th annual festival.

SABF is a free, daylong, family-friendly event that draws thousands for author presentations, panel discussions, book sales and signings, recipe demonstrations, children’s and teen activities and food trucks. The Festival will take place on Saturday, April 2 from 10 am to 5 pm at the Central Library and Southwest School of Art. A full schedule of events will be available at saplf.org/festival in March.

Top attractions this year include Stephen Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo), with his latest historical novel A Friend of Mr. Lincoln; Skip Hollandsworth with his new true crime account, The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America’s First Serial Killer; actress Sonia Manzano of Sesame Street fame with her memoir Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx; award-winning journalist Rebecca Traister with her highly anticipated book, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation; and George Hodgman with his memoir Bettyville, which received a National Book Critics Circle nomination and was included in NPR critic Maureen Corrigan’s Best Books of 2015.

To read the full article, click here.

Written by Carolyn Gregoire.

After a coordinated series of horrific terrorist attacks in Paris left at least 129 people dead and 352 wounded on Friday, the world joined together in collective grief and mourning.

The attacks — the deadliest in France since World War II — inspired a massive global outpouring of sadness, anger and solidarity. On the Internet, Facebook launched French flag overlays for users’ profile pictures and safety checks for individuals in Paris, while hashtags like #PrayforParis and #StayStrongParis spread like wildfire across social media. Meanwhile, candlelit vigils took place around the world and international monuments from the Empire State Building to the London Eye to the Tokyo Tower lit up in red, white and blue.

It wasn’t long before global citizens began calling for another prayer — not just for Paris, but for the world. As Delhi blogger Karuna Ezara wrote in a viral Instagram post, “It is a world in which Beirut, reeling from bombings just two days before Paris, is not covered in the press. A world in which a bomb goes off at a funeral in Baghdad and not one person’s status update says ‘Baghdad.’”

Lebanese doctor Elie Fares wrote in his blog, “When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag.”

They’re right. Looking at the average Facebook feed or news site, most people would have no idea that a similar tragedy, also committed at the hands of the Islamic State, occurred just one day before — but this time in Beirut, killing over 40 people and injuring more than 239. Even less attention was paid to the bombing of a funeral in Baghdad on Friday, killing 18 people.

In the wake of horrific acts of terrorism, the people of Lebanon found themselves asking: Where’s our flag? Where’s our Facebook safety check? Where’s our solidarity?

Many commentators have spoken out about the discrepancy in international responses, citing racism and Western bias.

Yes, this is bias. “Most people in the U.S. can’t even locate Lebanon on a map,” notes Stanford University psychologist Emma Seppälä, who is science director of Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.

But where does this bias come from? Psychology can shed some light on how we can display compassion for one global crisis, and barely notice another.

To read the full article, click here.

Written by Alisa Solomon.

When Anna Deavere Smith was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2012 by President Obama, the citation lauded how “she has informed our understanding of social issues” by conveying “a range of disparate characters.” Through her sustained project “On the Road: A Search for American Character,” which she began in the early 1980s, Smith has indeed invented a unique and powerful form of documentary theater that shines light on pressing contemporary issues. Inspired by Smith’s groundbreaking artistry, Stanford Live’s series Live Context: Art + Ideas and the Office for Religious Life are presenting works that explore the role art can play in promoting social change.

Smith builds her plays by interviewing a diverse group of people who all have some stake in a particular event or issue, and then she culls rich monologues from what she calls the “organic poetry” in their expression. She performs these verbatim texts with complete fidelity to the rhythms and patterns of each person’s speech and gestures. As a result, through the medium of her body, onstage Smith brings into dialogue people who would otherwise never occupy the same space. A Lubavitcher housewife, a Nation of Islam minister, an Orthodox rabbi, and a young rapper, for instance, are just four of some 26 characters Smith personified in Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities, the 1992 work that dug into the heart of the violent clashes between that neighborhood’s Hasidic
and Caribbean American communities and that catapulted Smith to international acclaim. With this same technique, Smith’sTwilight: Los Angeles, 1992 illuminated the causes
and effects of the riots that followed the verdict in the Rodney King beating case. (The searing PBS version will be screened at Cubberley Auditorium on October 14, followed by a Q&A with Smith.) House Arrest examined the American presidency and its public image. Let Me Down Easyexplored illness and mortality within the context of a broken health-care system.

Smith also performs (or directs other actors in) works made from archival texts she has selected that still speak to the current moment—to America’s persistent inequities and to its enduring promise—and that respond to the same concerns that animate her interview-based plays: racial and economic justice, American identity on individual and national
scales, triumphs and failures of empathy, the struggles folks face and the ways they rise to meet them. (These are also the themes she will take up in a dialogue on compassion at Stanford’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education on October 7.) Rap on Race juxtaposed Mike Wallace’s 1959 interview of Lorraine Hansberry with James Baldwin’s legendary 1971 conversation with Margaret Mead. Smith’s recitation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”—which she will present at Memorial Church on October 21—reanimates his defense of taking to the streets for the cause of justice as a rousing summons for right now.

To read the full article, click here.