by Shelby Clark
As we think about going back to school—whether hybrid, remote, or in person—dealing with our fifth month of COVID-19, and continuing to manage work-life balance, we at The Good Project wanted to spend some time gathering together our Top 5 articles of August that will help us think about what it means to do good work (work that is ethical, excellent, and engaging) during these turbulent times. Below, we discuss some of our favorite August reads.
The Work You Do, The Person You Are. This 2017 article by the late Toni Morrison discusses the importance of being able to give back to family through work, even when you are a child. Ms. Morrison describes her own work as a child and how important she felt being able to give a dollar of each of her wages to her mother to be “used for real things.” Her father reminds her 1) Whatever the work is, do it well--not for the boss but for yourself; 2) You make the job; it doesn’t make you; 3) Your real life is with us, your family; and 4) You are not the work you do; you are the person you are. This article encourages us to think about how we can help children think about their own roles in the household and outside of the household as good work.
On Coronavirus Lockdown? Look for Meaning, Not Happiness. In this opinion piece from the New York Times, best selling author Emily Esfahani Smith describes how cultivating “tragic optimism”--maintaining hope and finding meaning despite obstacles, pain, and suffering--can help people live a flourishing life more so than purely seeking happiness. Esfahan Smith further discusses these ideas in her book, The Power of Meaning. At The Good Project, we often discuss meaning as part of being an engaged worker; how are you currently finding meaning in your work? Can you find benefits and meaning in your work or life in the face of the current pandemic and its challenges?
The B Corp Movement Goes Big. Chances are you’ve heard of or shopped at a B Corp company: Patagonia, Athleta, Toms, Cabot Creamery, and Allbirds are all B Corporations, just to name a few. B Corps share the belief that companies need to move away from focusing solely on shareholder profit and instead focus on other stakeholders--such as employees, community, and the broader world. This article gives a broad overview of the B Corp movement and how it has begun to spread at scale with some of the first large multinational companies becoming certified B Corps. The B Corp movement urges us to ask: are companies that focus on shareholder profit doing good work? Are B Corps doing good work? How and why?
An Ode to Assemblies. In a recent blog post regarding her work with the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, located in the UK, Rachael Hunter discusses how schools have continued to use virtual assemblies during the pandemic to encourage students’ character development. She particularly notes how assemblies can help students to develop their identity, can allow the student body to address difficult or important issues, and can give students a space to reflect. How could schools use assemblies--virtual or otherwise--to help students do good work?
We Can’t Just Go Back to Normal. For educators looking for additional resources regarding how to teach about structural racism, SAGE has put out numerous pages of free research articles, blogs, and activity suggestions regarding structural racism and oppression. On the linked page, several best practices are covered, including team-facilitated dialogues, the creation of podcasts about race, the development of emotive capacities for facilitators, and interactive maps of racial residence patterns. SAGE has also released other tools surrounding these topics, such as the page “White Educators Must Put in the Work: Free Tools for Dismantling Biased Teaching.” As you investigate these tools, what does it make you think about what it means to be a good teacher at this moment in time?