How to Revise an Email So That People Will Read It - David Silverman - Harvard Business Review

How to Revise an Email So That People Will Read It - David Silverman - Harvard Business Review

Do you write email? I do. Take a minute and refresh with these ten tips. Fun for all ages. This is good advise not just for professionals, but for students just starting out! Imagine that; what if we gave you tools that were helpful, not just assumed that you knew the perfect way to use technology? That would be swell. Don't send this link to coworkers. Send it to your 14 year old nephew.

Work with an axe, become President...

See, you can spend your whole adolescence working with an axe and become the greatest President in history.  Maybe kids these days just aren't applying themselves to the right kinds of work.

Abraham Lincoln (books by this author) was born on this day (February 12) near Hodgenville, Kentucky (1809). Though he's generally considered possibly the greatest president in our country's history, fairly little is known about his early life. Unlike most presidents, he never wrote any memoirs. We know that he was born in a log cabin and had barely a year of traditional schooling. His mother died when he was nine, and he spent much of his adolescence working with an ax. But when he was in his early 20s, Lincoln apparently decided to make himself into a respectable man. Residents of the town of New Salem, Illinois, said that they remembered Lincoln just appearing in their town one day. People remembered him because he was one of the tallest people anyone had ever seen, about 6 feet 4 inches, and the pants that he wore were so short that they didn't even cover his ankles.

Now you can go back to cramming for the SAT.

Startup advice 1

So as I offer some advice to schools getting the adolescent programs up and running, I thought I'd put it up here.  Here's post 1.

I love bees, but you do have to look into some best practices for keeping them on campus.  There are so many schools that do it, I'm sure there are a million web resources.  It would also be good to see about finding a parent in the community who is also gung-ho about it to start building a coalition for support of the idea.

Record keeping is a can of worms.  

There are so many different ways.  I'd start with the end in mind: At the close of each semester, what do you want to be sharing with parents?  What will a final transcript need to look like to facilitate matriculation to the local high schools?  What feedback will students need all along the way on their work (what feedback is helpful?)?  What will be the triggers for parent meetings if a student is not meeting expectations?  How will an advisory system support students with all the challenging work and keeping it organized?

Will there be letter grades?  Will students see them or will they just be on transcripts sent on to schools?  You can easily do no letter grades on daily work and only give them at semester reporting time.  You can also skip letter grades entirely for 7th grade and only introduce them for 8th grade.  You'll want to have some kinds of scales (never observed...always observed) to indicate  progress and development kind of like a "presented" "practicing" "mastered" scale.  There are lots of right answers as long as you can explain and justify WHY you do it the way you do.

Stop saying this...

One "homes in on" as in a 'homing pigeon' or 'homing beacon'.  One doesn't "hone in on."  'Hone' is what happens to skills or wits as they become more refined and sharper.

I honed my skills. (I sharpened them)
I homed in on my target.  (I got closer to it)

While we're at it, let's stop saying, "We're going to have to start at ground zero" when we really mean "start at square one."  'Ground zero' is the center point or origin of the disaster.  If you're planning a disaster, then yes, you'll want it to start at 'ground zero'.  If you're project has gone awry, you'll want to start over at the beginning, at 'square one'.

/rant

Books on Parade

Sitting at my desk I notice a slowly moving figure in my doorway.  The nine-year old student is not coming in, she's just walking past my open door at glacial pace.  I start to ask her about what she's doing, but then think better of it.  Eventually, she passes completely by my doorway without glancing up for a moment.  She goes out of sight.

A moment later, as I'm back to typing away, another figure appears.  Again walking slowly from right to left past my door.  Patiently, she moves out of the frame to the left.

Why so slowly?  They were both reading while walking.

It's a good thing I bit my tongue!  I would have selfishly interrupted their deep concentration and engagement.  At schools, this is what we're laboring for all day; what a gaffe it would have been to awkwardly interject and destroy their focus.

Whew.  That was a close one.