Blogs on Social and Emotional Learning

The first thing I heard as I walked into school on this miraculous morning after Barack Obama's landslide victory was a group of African American parents talking about the results. One father said, "They didn't want to give us 40 acres and a mule, so we took fifty states and the White House."

Before she attended a summer leadership event sponsored by Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., Allie, a sixteen-year-old from Pasadena, California, says she had heard both of these words: social and entrepreneur. "But," she adds, "I had never put them together before." Now, after taking part in the Girl Scouts Challenge and Change program, she feels inspired to become a social entrepreneur herself.

The theme for this first year of our arts@newman program could best be expressed with the statement "We live storied lives." Throughout the year, we have been exploring how the arts can help us both understand our stories more deeply and express those stories to others.

When Ashraf Ghani talks about world events, his words carry the weight of experience: After twenty-three years of exile from his native Afghanistan, he returned after the fall of the Taliban to serve as finance minister for the transitional government. A veteran of the World Bank and recently on the short list of finalists to head the United Nations, he continues working to rebuild societies torn asunder.