【推荐2】Great Part-Time Jobs for a College Student

【推荐3】Noa Mintz has started her own nanny (保姆) agency since August 2012. She employed Allison Johnson in 2014 to take charge of day-to-day business operations while she attended her first year of high school. She rents a room in an office building in Midtown Manhattan where Johnson works.

Like any teenager, Noa has had to depend on her parents for some help. Her father is the registered owner of her business. He’s helped raise front money for legal fees. But Nannies by Noa is all her brainchild. The idea came about as a result of a challenge made by her mother: find a better nanny for their family.

She did just that, and then she started helping her mother’s friends find nannies. “I found it fun to get to know a family and their needs — and especially to find a nanny,” she said. So, Nannies by Noa was born. It was the summer of 2012, before she entered 7th grade.

She’s designed a thorough review process: an application, an in-person interview with a trained nanny, the reference and background check and a phone interview. Her business has seen a considerable success: from 50 clients (客户) in 2013 to 190 clients today.

At first, she charged $ 100 to $ 200. “I wasn’t charging enough. Even clients would say, ‘You realize you should be charging way, way more,’” added Noa, whose clients are mostly looking for long-term help. She’s changed her business model since: Nannies by Noa now takes a percentage of the overall rate, which is usually 15% of the nanny’s first year gross salary.

While Noa said she has other business ideas, she also would consider other careers. “Perhaps I’ll start another company. We will see,” said Noa.

【推荐1】Sitting in the classroom I felt confused, for I couldn’t read the blackboard. Then Mum took me to the hospital. Within a few days, I was diagnosed (诊断) with a severe visual impairment (视力障碍). In fact, I was practically blind. Amazingly, I’d managed to reach the age of 13 without anyone realizing, not even me! “It all makes sense now,” Mum said. As a kid living on a farm, I was forever falling over things. I was known as the clumsy (笨拙) one to my parents and four sisters. But now, I was being told that I saw the world differently — I could only make out the outlines of things. I was given reading glasses but they didn’t help much.

Refusing to let my diagnosis hold me back, I continued doing everything I loved. As long as everything was in its place, I could feel my way around.

Later I got married to Lance and had amazing kids. I could change nappies (尿布) and dress the kids fine — it just took a little longer as I relied on touch to work out where things were. Cooking, on the other hand, was not my forte. I was terrible — always mixing up sugar and salt!

Nowadays, my grandkids have all been brought up not to leave toys on the floor or move chairs away from the table. “We don’t want Grandma tripping,” Lance will say.

Over the year, I’ve enjoyed lovely family holidays, but sometimes felt like Lance or the kids were too protective of me. So I was thrilled when I booked myself on a trip to the Gold Coast with people who were just like me in a travel company. I’m not missing out — my life is beautiful. I’m so lucky to have a wonderful family and lots of experiences.

Life is precious — you don’t need to “see” that.

【推荐2】When Lucy was ten, she went to the theatre to see a play The House at Pooh Corner with her parents. Immediately, Lucy fell in love. But although she took part in school and college plays, she never thought it could lead to a career. Instead, she studied business at university, working for the Land Register of Scotland until she retired in 2012. Her newly free time reignited (重新，点燃) a decades-old spark. “I still wanted to do something with my brain so I went back to university to study theatre and performance,” says Lucy.

That year, she took part in a folk drama workshop and discovered mumming, an ancient masked form, in which male actors travel through villages, performing simple plays, often in exchange for food or shelter. “It’s a simpler story than conventional plays. It has one central conflict rather than slow character development. It’s rooted in history and involves more improvisation (即席创作) because the play is always tailored to a local audience,” says Lucy.

Interest grew and Lucy set up her group — the Meadows Mummers — as a charity, to attract wider support and donations. Its first performance was in 2015, at the Meadows festival in Edinburgh. Things snowballed from there. As well as touring central Scotland, the group went to the International Mumming Symposium and Unconvention in Gloucestershire in 2016, and learned more about the history of folk drama.

More recently, life circumstances have made performing difficult. “I’ve had health problems.” She says that, at times, she has considered giving up, but gets too much joy from doing it to stop. “We’ve just done one performance this year but I’m really excited that we’re getting ready for more festivals next year.”

The drive to keep going is inspired by an experience more than 30 years ago. “I was in a national park in Yugoslavia when I saw a woman staring attentively at this green river,” she says. “She told me she was going blind and wanted the river to be the last beautiful thing she ever saw.” Whenever doubt creeps in (不知不觉产生), Lucy recalls that encounter and feels forced to continue grasping life with both hands. “Just because you’ve reached 60, it doesn’t mean the drawbridge has been pulled up,” says Lucy.

【推荐3】Rosie Dutton, a teacher from Relax Kids in Tamworth, UK, used two apples to show her students the damaging, and often unseen,consequences of bullying(霸凌). And her post about the powerful lesson has gone viral.

Rosie Dutton explained that during one of her classes she introduced the children to two red apples. What the kids didn't know was that before the lesson, Dutton had repeatedly dropped one of the apples on the floor. And yet, on the outside at least both apples looked perfect. "I picked up the apple I'd dropped on the floor and started to tell the children how I disliked this apple, that I thought it was disgusting, it had a horrible colour and the stem was just too short," Dutton wrote.

She then encouraged the students to do the same. Some of the children looked at her as if she was "crazy", but the students passed the apple around the circle, calling it names. Continuing the exercise, the teacher then passed the second apple around the circle. This apple, however, was showered with comments like: "Your skin is beautiful", and "What a beautiful colour you have."

Dutton then showed the students both apples once again, highlighting that "there was no change; both apples still looked the same . "

That is, until she cut them open. "The apple we'd said unkind words to was bruised and all mushy inside," she said.

There was, she said, an immediate "light bulb" moment for her students. "They really got it. What we saw inside that apple, the bruises, the mush and the broken bits is happening inside every one of us when someone mistreats us with their words or actions."

Dutton explained how important it is to teach children to stand up for one another, and to stop any form of bullying. "Let's create a generation of kind caring children," the teacher wrote." The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break a heart. So be careful with your words."