1 . As a young girl, I was lucky to never explicitly hear that science was not for girls. Instead, I was encouraged to build soccer-playing robots and to set things on fire. And yet I was still scared away from science as a career by the constant, subtle insistence from all around me that my purpose was not to be a scientist but rather a wife and mother — as if these things were incompatible.

But I was not the kind of girl to shy away from being the only one in the group. In fact, I sought it out. Back then, all it took to convince me to do something was to tell me girls could not or should not do it. The problem with this attitude is that proving others wrong gets exhausting, in part because there are so many things girls are not supposed to do. Luckily, many of us are finding ways to ignore that expectation. Like any female trying to fight the common belief, for most of my life I felt that I had to be exceptional to pursue science. And why not? For many children, the only women scientists they encounter will be the exceptions. Yet this focus on a small number of extraordinarily successful female figures, rather than those who merely made significant contributions to science, can perversely reinforce the stereotypical belief that there is no precedent (先例) for ordinary women in science.

Five years ago, I participated in Ada Lovelace Day, a celebration of women in science across the Internet. Writing about women scientists for this project, we discovered that more articles were needed than any one person could write in a year, let alone during the celebration. That realization led me to start a new “WikiProject” dedicated to creating more biographies of women scientists. Now we work to write about the ordinary and extraordinary women who have shaped science.

An example of exceptionalism is, of course, Marie Curie, the physicist and chemist who performed pioneering research on radioactivity and who won two Nobel Prizes in different disciplines. Yet Curie was not the first or only woman to become a scientist, nor was she the only woman to discover an element or to establish a new discipline of science. Sixteen other women, including her daughter, have earned a Nobel Prize in one of the scientific disciplines.

Most of these women, despite their achievements, are relatively unknown. Collectively, they barely scratch the surface of women’s contributions to science history. Their stories-like so many others — have hardly been told. When we began working on our WikiProject in the fall of 2012, I naively estimated there to be a couple of thousand women missing from our online corpus. To my delight, I could not have been more wrong. After adding 4, 900 scientists, many of whom could be found only in obscure and often offline academic sources, we find that there is still no end in sight.

2 . The Professional Benefits of Volunteering

If you’re thinking about changing careers, it’s often necessary to find a way to develop new skills. This is not always possible in your current position so doing volunteer work can be a fantastic way of breaking into a new industry or profession.

Even if you’re not planning to change careers, there are numerous personal benefits of volunteering. Including volunteer work on your resume not only demonstrates you have the required skills, but it shows that you are passionate, have a positive attitude, are motivated by things other than money, and that you’re willing to help others. These are attractive attributes for any employer.

Meeting others through volunteer work is the most common way for people to expand their network and such connections are invaluable for professionals. In addition to this, the social, psychological, and health benefits of volunteering should not be underestimated.

    1    Although there are professional benefits to volunteering, many are motivated by the value of doing something for the good of others.

* Gaining Professional Experience

Volunteering gives you the chance to gain work experience in your field. If you have just graduated or are applying for entry-level jobs, you can find yourself in a chicken-and-egg situation when it’s hard to get your first job in your desired field.     2    By getting that valuable first experience under your belt, you become much more employable.

* Trying Out a New Career

It can be difficult to know which career you want to pursue without actually trying it. Taking a full-time, paid position is a big commitment and skipping between jobs and careers too regularly will make it seem to employers that you lack direction. Doing volunteer work is a fantastic way of trying something to see if it’s what you want to do.

* Training Opportunities

Though more affordable part-time courses which are emerging, the cost of education is generally getting more expensive.     3    Many organizations who use volunteers provide extensive training which can be invaluable in the long run.

* Improving Job Prospects

Volunteer work improves your job prospects for two main reasons.     4     Getting a professional recommendation from someone can significantly increase your chances of getting a job. Secondly, employers look favorably on job applicants who have volunteer work on their resume. It makes a very positive impression.

3 . The beliefs and theories that govern what we do as a school are always growing and developing. We believe that education should be a careful, artful and personalised blending of three functions of education.

From “The Beautiful Risk of Education” by Biesta(2013)

Qualification: Qualification is a major function of education of schools and other educational institutions. It involves providing students with the knowledge, skills and understandings and often also with the dispositions that allow them to “do something”—such as those skills and knowledge areas identified in the curriculum. The qualification function is without doubt one of the major functions of organized education. This aspect of education was considered to be of the greatest importance in the industrial model of education. What has changed with the rapidly changing world context are some of the skills and dispositions that are now considered important for students to acquire to prepare them for the future they will face. What has also changed is that this is no longer considered the most important function.

Socialisation: The socialisation function has to do with the many ways in which, through education, students become part of particular social, cultural and political “orders”. Through its socialising function, education assists individuals to understand the particular ways of doing and being of various cultures and communities. In this way education plays an important role in the continuation of, but also development of, culture and tradition. As a school, we are particularly interested in assisting children to be effective members of the community of learners, for example.

Individuation/subjectification: Education does not only contribute to qualification and socialisation but also impacts on what we might refer to as individuation(the student as a unique, individual human being), or, which Biesta refers to as subjectification. This function might perhaps best be understood as the opposite of the socialisation function. It is precisely not about the insertion of “newcomers” into existing orders, but about students, while being socialised, also growing some independence from such socialised ways of being. The point is that as unique individuals we are not fully defined by the cultures and communities we identify with. There is “individuality” which exists independently of the cultures and communities we belong to. This function of education was of little concern in the industrial model of education but has become of considerable concern as we think about the needs of our 21st century learners. It is our belief that any education worthy of its name should always contribute to the development of learners as unique and individual human beings; and it should assist those being educated to become more autonomous and independent in their thinking and acting.

It has been said that there is nothing so practical as a good theory. We believe we have a good theory of education; we then needed to turn this theory into methods for teaching in our school(pedagogical approaches)and to develop a series of practices or actions that we take to assist students’ learning.

6 . As cities balloon with growth, access to nature for people living in urban areas is becoming harder to find. If you’re lucky, there might be a pocket park near where you live, but it’s unusual to find places in a city that are relatively wild.

Past research has found health and wellness benefits of nature for humans, but a new study shows that wildness in urban areas is extremely important for human well-being.

The research team focused on a large urban park. They surveyed several hundred park-goers, asking them to submit a written summary online of a meaningful interaction they had with nature in the park. The researchers then examined these submissions, coding (编码) experiences into different categories. For example, one participant’s experience of “We sat and listened to the waves at the beach for a while” was assigned the categories “sitting at beach” and “listening to waves.”

Across the 320 submissions, a pattern of categories the researchers call a “nature language” began to emerge. After the coding of all submissions, half a dozen categories were noted most often as important to visitors. These include encountering wildlife, walking along the edge of water, and following an established trail.

Naming each nature experience creates a usable language, which helps people recognize and take part in the activities that are most satisfying and meaningful to them. For example, the experience of walking along the edge of water might be satisfying for a young professional on a weekend hike in the park. Back downtown during a workday, they can enjoy a more domestic form of this interaction by walking along a fountain on their lunch break.

“We’re trying to generate a language that helps bring the human-nature interactions back into our daily lives. And for that to happen, we also need to protect nature so that we can interact with it,” said Peter Kahn, a senior author of the study.

9 . If you visited a big aquarium such as SeaWorld or the Miami Seaquarium a decade ago, performances by tiger whales were probably a centerpiece of the visiting experience. However, animal advocates have pushed to end the harmful practice of keeping these enormous whales locked up in small pools and forcing them to perform for audiences. Now the good news is emerging from this continuing movement Lolita, one tiger whale living in the Miami Seaquarium, may soon be released to the Salish Sea where her mother lives.

Lolita’s possible homecoming is a longtime coming. The enormous animal was caught in 1970 in the Salish Sea, a body of water off the coast of Washington, which is home to tiger whales. Until now she has spent the past 52 years in captivity in Miami. Her tank is considered the smallest among those of captive whales in America. She has been forced to perform for crowds for decades. This has resulted in injuries. She has hit her head while performing “fast swims”, and her blood work has been abnormal.

Whales in captivity can suffer severe health issues. Lolita outlived her tank-mate Hugo, who died of aneurism (动脉瘤) caused by hitting his head on the aquarium walls. “Lolita’s lucky,” said Howard Garrett, a whale researcher and activist. “It’s against all odds that she is still alive. I think is her mental health that keeps her physical health in good shape. She is a complete miracle in her ability to stay healthy.”

According to the United States, Department of Agriculture, Lolita may not be getting enough food and water. This only adds to the list of health concerns which can appear in captivity. Activists who have been pushing for decades may at last see Lolita return to the Salish Sea, where her mother, a 93-year old tiger whale known as “Ocean Sun”, leads a pod. Returning these magnificent creatures to their natural habitat is a humane solution advocated for by the likes of the International Marine Mammal Project.