1 . Li Jianguo, a 49-year-old teacher at the Tianjin Vocational Institute, is set to be named as one of the “2022 most beautiful teachers” — an annual public award sponsored by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Education.

Li has stood out by taking the lead in the training of students in vocational skills, gaining a number of honors including being named a national role model teacher. He has mentored seven national-level technique experts and a team of 14 technique “masters”. One of his students, Guo Jinpeng, who graduated from the institute in 2007, became a college teacher at the Chengdu Auto Vocational and Technical School and was named a national role model teacher in 2019.

Li’s nomination as one of the “most beautiful teachers” reflects that China is focusing on the importance of vocational education and aims to foster more leading personnel with the spirit of craftsmanship in the manufacturing industry.

At an international vocational and technical education conference in Tianjin last month, Li noted that there is no difference between vocational education and ordinary education, and “vocational education is not “secondary” nor should it ever be treated as less than ordinary education”. “Vocational education has the mission of fostering a quality workforce and technical experts for the country. The hardworking spirit is the key to building any ordinary people into leading personnel,” he said.

Li joined the institute in 1993 and later founded a machinery engineering practice center, providing free training to 7,500 people a week. In 2015, he led a team of teachers to work for 40 days to renovate 124 machine tools in the center. Li has devoted himself to building the country’s first additive manufacturing technique and application center at the institute to satisfy the thirst for the country’s human resources in 3D printing.

Lu frequently finds its way in Chinese dishes. It    1    (origin) meant salted water used for meat that's boiled, and then served cold, and for vegetables.

“Salt is the core    2     Lu, even more important than spices. Spices can add a pleasant smell or remove some smells，    3     it is the salt that is crucial to the flavor," says Cao Yu, a food writer at Jinan University.

The earliest     4    (preserve) recipes for making Lu date back to Qimin Yaoshu, an ancient Chinese agricultural text written in the 5th century.

Cao believes the Lu we know today emerged around the Ming dynasty,    5     private agricultural businesses and food markets sprang up in China.    6    (attract) customers, these businesses began introducing new flavors to Lu by adding spices. And they then used it to season cooked meats and vegetables that    7     (sell) cold for takeaway.

In the centuries since, Lu has been diversified, taking on the characteristics of each of China's     8     (region) cuisines. For example, in Sichuan province, fragrant peppercorn (干胡椒) is put into Lu to add flavor and    9     (intense).

Some Lu is even alcoholic: Zao Lu is     10     light one made from the fermented rice remains from making Chinese yellow wine. Zao Lu is used across south-eastern China to season vegetables.

6 . It is lunchtime. At a long table inside a restaurant, some young people sit together over lunch. There is less conversation than you might expect from a typical group of friends: a boy seems to talk only to himself, and a girl looks anxious.

These young people met through a program organized by the nonprofit Actionplay, where young people with autism work together to write and stage a musical. Each Sunday, they work and have lunch together. “You meet other people just like you,” says Lexi Spindel. “That was the first time my daughter had a friend,” says Lexi’s father. “That never happened before Actionplay.”

For decades, scientists have supposed people with autism don’t have or need friends. A new research is forcing a rethink of those long-held beliefs. Autistic people report they want friends. One significant barrier to friendships is common people’s opinion that autistic people are not interested in connecting with them. Appearing uninterested, however, is not always the same as being uninterested. An autistic child looking uninterested in games may in fact be overcome by the noise. And behaviors like clapping hands repeatedly are a way to manage their anxiety and uncertainty, not a sign of their low social interest.

For some autistic people, friendships develop through experimental programs. In a program Lerner developed, participants play a game called Gibberish. where teenagers must interpret each other’s intentions without using real language. The point is not to get it right. but to attend to what the other person is doing in a way that creates opportunities to connect.

Lerner’s ideas were inspired by a moment 16 years ago after he established a small camp for children with autism called Spotlight. On the second day an l1-year-old boy ran up and pulled his clothes. “Lerner, Lerner, where did you find these kids?”

“All over the place,” Lerner answered. “Everyone wants to come to camp, just like you.”

“This is the first normal group of kids I have never met.” the boy said.

8 . A new year can bring new excitement and opportunities to grow for kids, too.     1     New Year’s resolutions can be a beneficial way for kids to get motivated, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“    2     ”said Dr. Lanre Falusi, a Washington, D. C., pediatrician (儿科医生) in an American Academy of Pediatrics statement. “Kids also love having something to work toward and to have fun keeping track on sticker charts or getting praise or rewards as they reach these goals.”

The idea of a goal may also be easier for younger children to grasp. Jack Frezell, 3, of Ontario, Canada, said his goal for next year is to “go on my bike by myself.” Setting goals can teach children persistence, focus and the value of planning, according to Gary Latham, Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Toronto, who specializes in goal setting. “     3     ” Latham said, “It teaches them control over their environment instead of being dependent on Mom and Dad.”

    4     “It has to be concrete; it has to be within the child’s ability to attain; and there has to be a reasonable time frame,” said Latham. He noted that once kids reach age 7 or so, it’s achievable for them to set a goal and make their own plan for how to pursue and attain it.     5     Here’s when to show children with inspiration and give them a hand.

“Next thing you know, the overall goal has been attained, and it gives kids a sense of accomplishment, excitement and achievement,” he said.

9 . Get Ready for Summer Series

Join the National Summer Learning Association Summer Bootcamp to gain tools and best practices to help youth thrive. Anyone who cares about summer learning is welcome! Leaders from schools, community-based programs, camps, libraries, outdoor education programs, and more. If you are working with youth during the summer months, you will benefit from these ideas and strategies.

Day 1 — March 30

Session 1: 1 p.m. — 2 p.m.

We’ll explore the research and data telling us the current state of the academic, mental, and physical well-being of children and families. With the data in hand, we’ll consider how to create strategies that meet this moment in time and help young people thrive.

Session 2: 2 p.m. — 3 p.m.

What’s known is that we need to think creatively and plan strategically to find and retain excellent staff that knows how to build relationships with young people. In this session, we’ll share tools and strategies to develop a strong workforce ready to make a difference this summer.

Day 2 — March 31

Session 1: 1 p.m. — 2 p.m.

Let’s explore how to access the investments and ensure impact. We’ll consider how to leverage partnerships across sectors, including schools, community-based organizations, business and more to make the most of the investment of public funding.

Session 2: 2 p.m. — 3 p.m.

In this session, we’ll dive into programs that have proven strategies, tools and courses that can be applied in your summer learning program. We’ll talk about how to access and apply learning strategies that ensure children and youth enjoy their summer.

10 . There is a kind of climate pollution that we can’t see clearly. It isn’t in our rivers, lands or skies, it is in our minds. When climate disinformation goes unchecked, it spreads like wildfire, undermining the existence of climate change and the need for urgent action.

Like the biosphere that sustains us, the health of our information ecosystems is vital to our survival. As an artist, I feel a responsibility to create new ways of seeing the disinformation that has come to define the age of fake news.

Social media sites are honed to grab our attention. Using sophisticated algorithms, the corporations behind them decide what billions of people see around the world, dictated by what keeps you hooked, but also by what the companies paying social media sites choose to put in front of you.

Powerful corporate actors deploy clever influence campaigns via ads targeted at specific users based on what social media firms know about those people. Major oil and gas companies have spent billions of dollars over the years persuading consumers about their green proofs, when only 1 per cent of their expenditure in 2019 was on renewable energy. This is known as corporate greenwashing. Still, fossil fuel firms maintain that their climate policies are “responsible” and “in line with the science”.

To expose the scale of corporate greenwashing online, I was part of a team that recently launched Eco-Bot.Net. Co-created with artist Rob “3D” Del Naja of the band Massive Attack and Dale Vince, a green entrepreneur, Eco-Bot. Net’s AI-powered website ran throughout the COP26 climate summit, exposing climate change misinformation by releasing a series of data drops for heavily polluting sectors, including energy, agribusiness and aviation.

Academic definitions of climate disinformation and greenwashing were used to unearth posts across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and visualize them on our website. Eco-Bot.Net then flagged greenwashing ads and posts on the original social media site with a public health warning.

By digging into our data, journalists have already revealed that companies are targeting specific demographics in order to influence public perceptions about climate change – and even alter government policy.

One data drop focused on the 100 biggest fossil fuel producers, companies that have been the source of 71 per cent of global carbon emissions. It found that 16 of these companies ran 1705 greenwashing and climate misinformation ads globally on Facebook and Instagram this year. In total, they spent more than £4 million creating influence campaigns that generated up to 155 million impressions.

Social media companies could end most of the harms from climate disinformation on their platforms if they wanted to. Flagging systems were swiftly introduced to warn users of posts containing disinformation about covid-19. The scientific consensus on human-caused global warming has been resolute for decades, so why can’t a similar flagging system be implemented for related disinformation?

It is true that Twitter and Facebook have both introduced climate science information hubs, but these are little more than PR exercises that fail to directly tackle climate disinformation on any kind of scale.

This epidemic of climate change disinformation on social media is eroding collective ideas of truth. In this post-truth age of disinformation, we hope that the public, the press and policy-makers will be able to use our data findings to see what is hidden by what we see online.

For the first time, we can witness the regional scale of corporate greenwashing. The era of climate denial and delay is largely over — except, as Eco-Bot.Net has revealed, on social media.