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(Download PDF) A Passion For Kindness Making The World A Better Place To Lead Love and Learn Tamara Letter Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) A Passion For Kindness Making The World A Better Place To Lead Love and Learn Tamara Letter Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
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ENDORSEMENTS FOR A PASSION FOR KINDNESS
“Your heart will be filled with a passion for kindness and your head
will be bursting with ideas after you read this engaging and inspiring
book by Tamara Letter. Once you begin reading A Passion for
Kindness, you will not want to put it down. Readers connect with
Tamara through her own beautifully told stories of challenge and
triumph while being absolutely in awe at her incredible devotion to
spreading kindness everywhere. Being an avid kindness researcher,
Tamara includes stories of others’ kindness missions as well as a
plethora of kindness resources. This book is not only a gift to all
educators but to all of humankind. Tamara is a difference-maker and
a world-changer and a blessing to us all as a transparent kindness
ambassador.”
—Allyson Apsey, elementary principal and author of The Path
to Serendipity
TAMARA LETTER
A Passion for Kindness
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval
systems, without permission in writing by the publisher, except by a reviewer who
may quote brief passages in a review. For information regarding permission,
contact the publisher at books@daveburgessconsulting.com.
This book is available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for use as
premiums, promotions, fundraisers, or for educational use. For inquiries and
details, contact the publisher at books@daveburgessconsulting.com.
San Diego, CA
DaveBurgessConsulting.com
Part I
1. The Power of Words
2. 40 RAKs
3. RAKs for Sandy Hook
4. Share Your Story
5. Secret Sisters
6. Renee’s Cheerios
Part II
7. Tilling the Soil
8. Planting Seeds
9. Roots and Stems
10. Spring Flourish
11. Global Gardens
12. Be the Good
— Mother Teresa
I was the picked-on kid. Short. Freckles. Glasses. A recipe for social
disaster when you’re the new kid in town. We had moved only ten
miles east, but you would have thought we landed in a new world.
Everything was different.
New house. New school. New rules.
It was the middle of my third-grade year, and all I saw was loss.
Before my mom could finish packing my metal Strawberry Shortcake
lunchbox, I knew my first day would be a disaster. I didn’t want to
leave the friends I knew so well. I didn’t want a new beginning, and
I was filled with conflicting emotions that I couldn’t describe.
Everything felt out of control.
My panic rose as I walked through the unfamiliar hallways on
that first day in my new school. What if I entered the wrong
classroom? What if nobody played with me at recess? What if I had
to go to the bathroom? What if I got on the wrong bus to go home?
I was consumed with worry and wanted to run away, but there was
nothing I could do to relieve the fear. I had to enter the classroom
and find my seat.
That’s when I heard the whispers.
“She’s the new kid.”
“Where did she come from?”
“What’s her name again? Tammy . . . PAYNE?”
“Oh yeah, I bet she is a pain, too. You can already tell.”
“Her glasses look like Coke bottles.”
I had barely taken off my coat when the cruel words filled my
ears. It was the first time I realized my last name was a homophone.
Their careless comments reddened my cheeks as I slid farther down
in my seat, the fear and embarrassment immobilizing any attempt at
unpacking my supplies.
I was the new kid in class, and they already hated me.
I paused my story, the past fading into present day as I looked at
the fifth graders sitting there. The silence in the room was
deafening. Some students fiddled with their fingers in their laps.
Some looked away when my eyes met theirs. Everyone felt the
weight of my words.
“That happened to me when I was eight years old. I am now in
my forties, and I can still hear their taunts in my mind as if it was
yesterday. I am sharing this story with you for one reason alone:
Your. Words. Matter. Choose them wisely, for they will last longer
than the notebooks you are writing in today.”
When students were given an opportunity to share their voices
by completing an online survey on friendship, they poured their
hearts out on the final question: “What do I want my teacher to
know?”
Points to Ponder
Tzŭ Hsi had not only realised the immense superiority of the
material forces of the western world, but she had also been
convinced of the immense intellectual and political forces which
education and increased means of communication were steadily
creating amongst her own subjects, forces with which, as she
perceived, the effete and ignorant Manchus would have to reckon
sooner or later. It is quite plain from her Edicts on this delicate
subject that she realised clearly the dangers which threatened the
Manchu rule. She saw that their class privileges, the right to tribute,
and all the other benefits of sovereignty which the founders of the
Dynasty had won by force of arms and opportunity, had now become
an anachronism, and must in the near future involve the Manchus
themselves in serious dangers and difficulties, unless, by fusion,
means could be found to avert them. Among the rules laid down by
the founders of the Dynasty for the maintenance of the pure Manchu
stock, was that which forbade intermarriage with Chinese. This law,
though frequently violated in the garrisons of the south, had
remained generally effective within the Metropolitan province, where
it had served its purpose of maintaining the ruling class and its caste.
But the Empress had now come to understand that if China was to
be preserved as a sovereign State, it must be rather by means of
Chinese energy and intelligence grafted on to the Manchu stock,
than by the latter’s separate initiative. In January 1902, immediately
after her return to Peking, she gave effect to her convictions on this
subject in a remarkable Decree whereby she recommended that, for
the future, Manchus and Chinese should intermarry. “At the time of
the founding of our Dynasty,” she says, “the customs and languages
of the two races were greatly different, and this was in itself reason
sufficient for prohibiting intermarriage. But at the present day, little or
no difference exists between them, and the time has come,
therefore, to relax this law for the benefit of the Empire as a whole,
and in accordance with the wishes of our people.” In the same Edict
Her Majesty deprecated the Chinese custom, which the Manchus
had never adopted, of foot-binding, and urged that the educated
classes should unite to oppose a custom so injurious to health and
inhuman in practice. There was, however, to be no compulsion in
this matter. In one respect only did she desire to adhere to the
exclusive Manchu traditions, namely, as regards the selection of
secondary wives for the Imperial harem, who must continue to be
chosen exclusively from Manchu families; she did not desire “to incur
any risk of confusion or dissension in the Palace, nor to fall into the
error committed by the Ming Dynasty, in the indiscriminate selection
of concubines, a matter affecting the direct and legitimate
succession to the Throne.” Nor would she expose her kinsmen to the
risk of conspiracy against the Dynasty which would certainly occur if
the daughters of the great Chinese houses were admitted to the
Palace. The law had been laid down once and for all by Nurhachu,
and it was binding on every occupant of the Dragon Throne, namely,
“no Manchu eunuchs, no Chinese concubines.”
Her next step, in a decree which frankly deplored the hopeless
ignorance of her kinsmen, was to authorise the Imperial clansmen
and nobles to send their sons to be educated abroad, so that
perchance the lump of their inefficiency might yet be leavened.
Eligible youths, between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, and of
good physique, were to be selected and their expenses would be
defrayed by the Government.
This much for the Manchus; but in regard to the whole question of
education, which she declared to be the very root of all China’s
difficulties, she perceived, after prolonged consultations with Yüan
Shih-k’ai and Chang Chih-tung, that so long as the classical system
continued, with its strong hold of tradition upon the masses, it must
constitute the chief obstacle to any effective reform of the body
politic. After much careful deliberation she decided that unless the
whole system of classical examinations were abolished, root and
branch, no tinkering with western learning could be of any practical
use. The ancient system of arguing in a circle, which for over two
centuries had characterised the ideal essay and hypnotised the ideal
official, must undoubtedly triumph over all other educational