【推荐1】A new student group in the Highline district, south of Seattle, wants youth to have a say in hiring educators.

Jordyn Famimiko, a 17-years-old, is president of her school’s Black Student Union(BSU). She says it’s critically important to get a more diverse teaching staff. Eighty percent of students in the Highline district are youth of color. But people of color make up only 25 percent of the teaching staff. Across Washington, youth of color are about 47 percent of the student population, and people of color consist of 13 percent of teaching staff.

“I feel like students on every level need to feel safe, they need to feel valuable,” she said. “It’s not to say that minority students can’t connect with their white teachers, however, just right off the bat there is some disconnect there culturally.”

Mary Belay, 17, is entering her senior year at Mount Rainier High School in Des Moines and is an officer in her school’s Black Student Union. She helped contact BSUs at other schools to form the student association and initiate(发起)a districtwide discussion about their experiences as students of color.

The new student group met recently with Superintendent Susan Enfield. Highline does have a policy that calls for “hiring teams to reflect the diversity of our schools and community.” Mary said, to put that into practice, the district needs to include youth representation.

Highline district spokesperson Catherine Carbone Rogers said in an email that the district has included students on hiring teams for principals. The district is now considering ways to give students a role in the teacher hiring process, though it may be difficult to include students in interviews of candidates because those decisions often happen quickly and teachers of color are in high demand.

【推荐2】Whether you admit it or not, people’s love for Christmas jumpers (毛衣) around Christmas has increased over recent years. And while you may be less willing to get involved in the Christmas jumper trend, Christmas Jumper Day now enables you to do more with your jumper than build up sweat in an incredibly warm office.

The origin of the Christmas jumper can date back to the late 19th century in the USA. Americans in the 1930s knitted (编织) for Christmas to create an item of clothing to keep them “warm” during the tough period- the Great Depression. They copied the jumpers they saw their favorite stars wearing on the big screen. From the 1950s, it was common to see American families wearing festive jumpers as they sat down to eat their Christmas dinner.

Now, alongside wearing a festive jumper for the fun of it, there are other positive outcomes. Christmas Jumper Day has been set up to encourage people to make the world better and raise funds tor Save the Children by wearing a Christmas jumper and making a minimum donation of £1. Ladbrokes, a company, in the UK, is running a competition in which all you have to do is take a selfie (自拍) outside of one of their shops while wearing a jumper- the winner will win a good prize and for every submission Ladbrokes will donate f5 to St. Luke’s Hospital charity. For you, it’s a win-win situation.

If you’re still unconvinced that it’s about time you bought yourself a Christmas jumper, then maybe the fact that Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg have all been spotted wearing Christmas jumpers will raise your enthusiasm. Retailers (零售商) such as Topshop, Burberry and H&M have also become committed to Christmas Jumper Day and have their very own types of Christmas jumpers.

【推荐2】Some African schools are adding programs that teach what officials are calling “soft skills” to students. Soft skills are personal qualities that help a person relate effectively to others. Officials say this kind of training can help students succeed in the job market and in life.

The training is being offered at the St. Bernadette Kamonyi Secondary School in Kigali, Rwanda. For weeks, its students have been visiting neighborhood businesses. The goal of these field trips is for the young people to learn what is necessary to secure a job.

For the secondary school students, this information is important. In a few months, they’ll complete their studies and try their best to find work. One of the Rwandan students is 22-year-old Aminadab Niyitegeka. He says he will look for any job available. He hopes that what he learns in his work readiness class will help. Traditionally, secondary schools in Africa have spent more time on subjects like mathematics and science, largely ignoring areas like public speaking and teamwork. But that is changing. Schools are exploring new teaching models to offer soft skills and professional training. It is part of an effort to perpare students to become better communicators, problem solvers and citizens (公民).

Rwanda has started a work readiness training program called Akazi Kanoze Access. It means “work well done” in Kinyarwanda, the official language of Rwanda. The program has trained more than 20,000 students to help make them more appealing to employers.

Emmanuel Ntagungira is a teacher and works as a trainer for Akazi Kanoze Access. He often visits employers who have given jobs to high schools. The employers are very happy because the graduates are ready to work. He says he hopes the program will help lower unemployment, which stands at over 13 percent nationwide. He also explains that the graduates have a healthy mindset and employers are satisfied with the job they’ve been doing.

【推荐3】The accent is the way you pronounce the words of a language. Everyone has an accent, and no one is accent-free. And for every accent, there are groups of people who react badly to it. These reactions are the result of prejudice. No accent is free from such prejudices.

I have held and expressed prejudices about other people’s accents. Over the decades, my experience of working with people from a wide range of backgrounds has led me to give up these prejudices. However, I still have prejudices that I find difficult to control in relation to some particular accents.

Language experts tell us that no accent is better than any other. But the reality is that the wider world likes the idea of simple rules which tell us what is right and wrong. We like to judge others on the basis of these rules. If you break these rules, you are somehow to blame. Jacob Rees Mogg recalls when he first stood unsuccessfully for election (选举) in Fife, Scotland: “I gradually realized that whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favor dropped as soon as I opened my mouth.”

And some people make their accents sound gentler when talking to people outside their circle of family and friends. However, Sky News ran a report recently in which a British woman Jemima was trying to sound less posh (上等人的), because she didn’t like random people telling her that she must be rich and from an upper-class background.

Lastly, it’s worth being reminded that people can be accented — even highly accented — and still be easily understood.