【推荐1】Chris Moon, 39, runs a company he set up to help people solve problems in human resources and security management. He has called it Making The Best (MTB). His own philosophy is all about making the best of any situation, however bad it may seem.

After studying agriculture, he decided that the farmer’s life was not for him and took a year out to work as a volunteer at a center for the homeless. During this time, he decided to change direction. “I asked myself the question, what is life all about? I decided it was about doing the best we can, reaching our full potential and making use of our talents, so I decided to join the army.”

After leaving the army, he heard that the British Charity, the HALO Trust — which specializes in mine (地雷) clearance — wanted an army officer with agricultural and command experience, he was keen to get involved. Two years later, he was blown up by a mine, while walking in a supposedly clear area in Mozambique. He lost his lower right arm and leg, but does not consider himself a victim. He accepts responsibility because he chose to work in mined areas.

His big break could be said to have come shortly after he left hospital, when he was talking to an old friend who suggested he look on the accident as an opportunity to do something that would help him grow as a person. Recognizing the value of education and feeling that he hadn’t been able to do his best at school, he decided to do a master’s degree in security management at the University of Leicester.

After completing the degree, he had plenty of job offers but felt he wanted to keep the focus on charity work. He says his main aim is to try and motivate people, although he prefers to be called a performance enhancer rather than a motivational speaker. “There is no greater thing than empowering someone to do something they thought they couldn’t,” he says.

【推荐2】The problem nowadays is that there seems to be less of a desire to read than in the past. Teachers often complain that students don’t read. Most of them find it challenging to try to encourage students to read. Reading is a source of knowledge and language, but it should also be a source of entertainment.     1    

When did we last give our students the chance to read something just for the pure pleasure of reading it? Reading is so often linked to some kinds of tasks.     2     Therefore, we need to show our students the benefits of reading for fun, and offer them the time to do so.

Witnessing students reading for fun

Recently, I was really surprised by two things that I saw. The first was in a bookshop. On a raining day, I wanted to shelter myself from the rain and browse some books, but it was hard to find a chair to sit, for all the chairs were occupied—by teenagers with their heads buried in books.     3     The front three rows were taken by youngsters, absorbed in reading and ignoring everything and everyone around them. In both cases, they read what they had chosen to read since it was of interest to them instead of school textbooks.

How to get students reading for pleasure

The dilemma we face is how to get our students to behave in this way in the classroom. First and foremost, remove their fear of always being formally questioned during or after reading. Secondly, give them opportunities to read simply for the pleasure of reading. What they like matters.     4     Even five minutes of reading for pleasure every day or every lesson will soon motivate them to read through their own choice. Of course, in reality, it’s hard to be achieved. But a start has to be made somewhere.

Remember, reading empowers!     5     Try and carry out these tips in the classroom and you could find some amazing results.

【推荐3】Storytelling provides children with a window to new worlds.     1     Without realising it, they are learning valuable life lessons through hearing an engaging, exciting story. Telling stories allows children to walk out of their familiar zone and experience different worlds, countries, and traditions. It can help develop an appreciation of the rest of the world.

Storytelling has also proven to help develop a sense of empathy as children are encouraged to put themselves in the position of the story’s major characters; to consider their actions and reactions and why they may have behaved in certain ways.     2    

Reading to a child can increase their willingness to express themselves and communicate their thoughts and feelings.     3     You could also actively encourage children to ask questions and to talk about how they feel.

Storytelling also encourages children to be creative and use their imagination to picture the setting, the characters, and the story as it unfolds. It’s different from watching a film where children are given the imagery to accompany the words.     4    

    5     They show respect to the storyteller or others listening to the story. They learn to be more patient and to let others speak; they begin to understand that others may not interpret things in the same way they do.

【推荐1】The shift from adolescence (青春期) to adulthood can be hard and often filled with hardship and lessons learned, especially for young people experiencing homelessness.

Frankie, a young woman who feels lucky to have had the caring support from her dad Frankie’s dad raised her, and they were very close. When he suddenly passed away two years ago, Frankie didn’t know how she would survive. With no family or relatives to take her in, she fell into a depression. She bounced from home to home, losing trust she’d ever gain stability.

One Friday afternoon, Frankie sat at a park bench outside of school. As she was worrying about where she was going to live, she suddenly remembered something her dad would tell her when she was little.

“Don’t ever give up,” said Frankie. “If dad were here, he would tell me that.”

Those words encouraged her to seek help from Noel, a YouthCare case manager, who helped her find accommodation at Catalyst, one of YouthCare’s community living programs, YouthCare provided a path back to stability. Frankie was thankful to have a routine: dish washings after dinner, weekly game nights, and check-ins with a mental health doctor every Thursday. At Catalyst, Frankie received consistent support and found additional resources for her mental health care. Outside of her Thursday appointments, she participated in weekly homework assignments focused on well-being and goal-setting for the future.

Noel showed great surprise at Frankie’s positive changes with each passing day. She earned her GED, and it wasn’t long before she began searching for her first job. With the help of Noel, Frankie applied for a handful of positions in health or fitness. Frankie jumped with excitement when she received an interview call for a front desk position at a local gym!

Dressed in green, her dad’s favorite color, Frankie entered her interview with confidence. Noel smiled very happily when Frankie received a second call later that day with news that she got the job.

Too many young people come to YouthCare with their own story. Each of them deserves a path back to stability a stable home, consistent support, and access to treatment services necessary to become well. Like Frankie, they can imagine new possibilities and change the course of their own story through encouragement and treatment.

【推荐3】In 1867, Caroline Shawk Brooks and her husband, Samuel, had a farm in Arkansas. Life on the farm was not easy. From sunrise to sunset, Caroline and Samuel milked cows, gardened, and picked cotton. This left Caroline no time for her dream of becoming an artist.

Time was not the only problem. Money was a worry too. The cotton crops were failing. What could Caroline and Samuel do?

Caroline decided to make butter (黄油) from their cows’milk and sell it at market. But other farms also made and sold butter. How would Caroline set her butter apart from the rest? This is where Caroline’s artistic talent came in. To draw attention to her butter, she began making small butter sculptures (雕塑). She used many different tools, such as butter paddles (搅拌器的浆叶), broom straws, and tree sticks. She also put the butter in a shallow tin pan, which sat in a larger tin pan filled with ice to stop the butter sculpture from melting.

Caroline’s butter sculptures were a hit. Before long, she was displaying them at fairs and exhibitions. One of her largest butter sculptures was a life-size statue called A Study in Butter. It was transported all the way to Paris for the 1878 world’s fair.

Caroline also made sculptures using marble (大理石). She eventually opened a studio in New York City where she created many marble sculptures, some of which were shown at the 1893 world’s fair in Chicago.

But Caroline never stopped making butter art. She considered butter a superior material to work with. At the 1893 fair, she also displayed her butter techniques with a sculpture of Christopher Columbus.

Caroline Shawk Brooks died in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1913. She is remembered as the first known American butter sculptor.

【推荐3】Chances are that you’ve seen a movie or played a video game that contains a cyborg（半人半机器的生物）. These half-man-half-machine beings have been a vision of many creative writers. But it seems that some people can’t wait for the future to arrive.

At the Body Hacking Conference in 2017, held in Texas, US, hundreds of science fiction fans from all over the world gathered to show off their body hacks. Rob Spence, 45, had his right eye removed after an accident. Soon after, he decided he wanted to replace it with something more interesting. The minute I learned that I was losing my eye, I began researching how I could turn it into a camera, he told Wired.

This is an extreme example, and body hacking doesn’t always take things so far. For example, around the world, many people are choosing to get NFC chips implanted in their hands. This is the same technology as used in smartphones, and it allows users to pay for things or even unlock their cars just by using their fingertips. The chip is the same size as a grain of rice and can be fixed and removed easily without much pain.

Hannes Sjoblad, founder of a Swedish body hacking group, believes that these implants are just the natural next step for smart technology that is already in wide use, such as smartwatches.

We are updating our bodies with technology on a large scale already with wearables. But all of the wearables we wear today will be implantable in 5 to 10 years, he told Business Insider.

Sjoblad believes that such implants will become a regular part of our lives. Indeed, his group was asked to put chips in the hands of employees at a company in Sweden, allowing them to do things like opening doors, paying for lunch, and using the copy machine in the office.

Who wants to carry a clumsy smartphone or smartwatch when people can have it in the finger-nail? he said.