thank you faster Thank You Sasha Thank
You Sonya I didn’t know there were TEDx
coaches is it too late to change my mind
I’ll go next year after having some
coaching well thank you as a teacher I
have a dream and I think it’s shared by
many people and that is that every
student is successful in their life and
I hope this for my students I hope this
for all students
now this dream might seem ambitious it
might seem too big to be realized in my
lifetime but if you’re not dreaming
about something that can’t be achieved
in your lifetime maybe you’re not
dreaming big enough so when I think
about lifelong learning I hope that
every students learning experience at
whatever age or level can be something
that is really meaningful to them
something that’s interesting engaging
and something that’s ultimately useful
to them now I’m a teacher so I have to
confess that not all of our schooling
meets these criteria at least not yet
so I have to make some kind of diagnosis
after all I am a doctor but I’m not a
medical doctor I’m an education doctor
so I’ll make a little diagnosis about
why our schooling doesn’t do a better
job at preparing our students for
lifelong learning and one reason is that
the institution of schooling was
developed and involved a very long time
ago this is a page from a textbook that
was used in the United States before it
was the United States
it began in about 1690 to be used
throughout New England and it continued
to be used for over a hundred and fifty
years they didn’t change the textbook
and that’s the age that’s the time in
which schooling developed and even now
in 2018 we
still have a lot of vestiges of this
age-old institution so this is really
fun to check out the words of four
syllables and five syllables and some
poetry here I especially like this one
the idle fool is whipped at school so
times have definitely changed and we
know we all know this the world is
changing so fast and it has been
changing so fast that an institution
which developed when the same text book
could be used for a hundred and fifty
years can’t always serve our needs in a
world that is changing constantly but
another reason that we aren’t doing
better in schools to prepare students
for lifelong learning is that knowledge
itself is changing our understanding
about knowledge and the flood of new
information that we’re constantly
inundated by so for example if you’re at
university here and you’re a chemistry
major and you went to our fine library
and you read 24 hours a day seven days a
week for a year every new thing that was
published on chemistry after the first
year you would probably be about four or
five years behind on your reading
there’s just too much so we’re we’re
entering this age we try to deal with
this by specializing by narrowing our
field by by focusing more and more so we
sometimes say that in an age of
specialization people are learning more
and more about less and less until they
know absolutely everything about
absolutely nothing so what we need in
this day is judgment now I like this
quote from the Dean of Harvard Medical
School who used to tell his incoming
students every year half of what we’re
about to teach you in medical school
this one of the finest medical schools
in the world is wrong the trouble is we
don’t know which half and I think this
is very profound because he’s
acknowledging right at the beginning of
medical school that this is not about
knowing everything it’s about developing
good judgment
so another problem we face which is
closer to home and closer to my
experience is this that in the
curriculum in schools all over the world
we have this paradigm we have this
concept that the best way to prepare
students for the future is to prepare
them for everything and so we have the
idea of the every student and we try to
teach every student everything but every
one of our students is absolutely unique
and so this is a bit like trying to pack
your bags to travel everywhere in the
world because you don’t know where
you’re going and so this is a list of
some of the recommended text types that
English teachers teach in Hong Kong now
I was a secondary teacher English
teacher in Hong Kong for many years I
taught more than a thousand students and
I would dare say that there’s not 1 or 2
percent of my students that really need
all these text types or couldn’t learn
them later in life when they need them
so it’s very overwhelming now in fact my
students were more interested in text
types that were not even on that list
they’re interested in social media
they’re interested in Facebook and
Instagram and here I’m trying to catch
up with some of my students by getting a
good angle on this photo for my
Instagram page so what is the
alternative
one of the alternatives that I have
discovered only recently which has been
part of my lifelong journey as a teacher
is to understand life as a story that
every one of us has a story and the
question we have to ask is who is the
author so Aristotle said plot is
character in action it’s all about how
you live how you develop your character
and who is making these choices about
who you will be and I think you know my
answer it should be yourself you should
be the author of your own life
so a writing your life course or a
reflection curriculum is primarily about
reflection after all the eyeball sees by
reflection and so we should teach our
students to reflect on their own lives
and their own place in the world so
fortunately in this curriculum that I
showed you there actually is a place for
this and if you read this list very
carefully you can see autobiographies is
already there so I was very happy to
find that and I have to say that there
isn’t a lot of reflection or text types
on this list but there are one or two
the autobiographies and I think Diaries
are also wonderful to help students
develop the habit and the experience of
continuous close careful reflection okay
so I I should include a little bit of my
own autobiography since that’s what
we’re talking about and this is my first
grade class so in a traditional public
high school in the United States and so
this is the beginning of my lifelong
learning journey that’s that’s me
sitting in the front row for some reason
Brown was always my favorite color and
so you can see I’m dressed out in brown
there now in this space after that first
picture before we get to this one of
course I had at my own learning journey
but one of the important landmarks on
that learning journey is when I began to
look around and see the great diversity
of people in the world and all of the
profound differences in terms of beliefs
and cultures and history and governments
yet I decided that more important than
these differences is the oneness is the
commonalities is the unity of humanity
so this this belief was inspired by the
teachings of bahá’u’lláh and the Baha’i
faith and it it empowered me to think
about all of us as one family in the
world
so well I
grown up and was educated in Virginia so
I really didn’t know very much about the
world so for my first full-time teaching
job I asked the US government to send me
to the place in the world which was most
different from the United States and
they sent me to Papua New Guinea so this
is where I was first a teacher and it
was very interesting to learn something
about it I went to the library and I got
out the books that I could find on Papua
New Guinea there weren’t very many and
the titles of two of them were blood is
their language and the last cannibals so
I was a little nervous going to this
place but I want to tell you that my
belief in the family of mankind was so
affirmed when I realized teachers in
Papua New Guinea students in Papua New
Guinea essentially they’re just like my
teachers and students and friends in the
United States and some of my closest
friends and brothers are still living in
Papua New Guinea and we’re in close
touch 30 years later so this led to a
kind of exploration of the world this is
the Baha’i world centre in Israel and
here we are today so I’ve been through
China and now here in Hong Kong and I
feel very much at home in the world and
in fact my family is a small
representation of that diversity my
lovely wife and son and so we’re half
Chinese my children are both 50% Chinese
my wife is Chinese so half my family is
Chinese okay so this principle in unity
in diversity was something that became
part of my lifelong journey and it’s
shown in the faces of behind from all
over the world it’s shown in the houses
of worship that are on every continent
in the world that these these beautiful
houses of worship all have a central
dome and nine entrances facing every
direction as a symbol of unity and
openness but you can see they also
reflect the beautiful diversity of our
architectural traditions everywhere well
this is just a little bit about my
autobiography and it’s very important to
realize in teaching that we have to let
go of this principle
teaching as instructing or giving
knowledge this is not what it’s all
about I’m just sharing a little bit of
my autobiography but I want each one of
my students to find their own beliefs
not to necessarily believe what I
believe but to be inspired by others by
a wide range of cultural and literary
traditions and to find their own belief
the only recommendation that I would
give is to believe in and commit
yourself to something which is bigger
than yourself and this will give your
life meaning so whether it’s community
service the environment your family or
the next generation of students because
I know many of you will also be teachers
this is something that will really give
me okay so how do we do it we have to be
practical and the idea of teaching
reflection is is not easy it’s a bit
like teaching creativity if you tell
someone how to do something to be
creative you see the paradox it’s not
creative for them and so one of the
things we’ve learned is that you have to
give space you have to give a place
where people have permission and feel
free and have license to be creative and
then try to find some inspiration and
then discover for themselves what is
creativity reflection is the same that I
can’t tell you what to reflect on about
your life we have to provide a space and
thanks to some help from the Australian
writing your life professor Richard
Freeman I got some guidance and we
started this class here at the education
University and this is our first class
and thanks to all of those who joined as
guinea pigs in our first class so we
first start by reading some of the great
life writers like Viktor Frankl who
wrote when we are no longer able to
change a situation we are challenged to
change ourselves so he has a profound
life story about man’s search for
meaning and and
of course who wrote among many other
beautiful things despite everything I
believe that people are really good at
heart
so we give inspiring life writing
samples and then we actually teach some
writing techniques it is writing your
life and the writing and writing your
life really has two meanings and one is
literally learning to write and tell a
good story so these are some of the
principles and my students know this is
my favorite I say it in every class and
that is don’t tell your story
don’t just say something like I
experienced a crisis when my father
abandoned our family by showing your
story you invite your classmates and
your readers to share the experience to
enter into that experience with you and
by reading it by hearing it they
actually participate in that and that’s
a very profound thing there are many
other writing strategies that help you
to do this having a good opening one of
my students last year wrote I used to
hate my mother and I could hear gasps in
the classroom when she said this and
people were really paying attention and
then she went on to reflect on her
relationship with her mother and how she
came to understand that what she really
hated as a teenage girl was her mother’s
way of showing her that she loved her so
that was quite a profound change in in
her life so there’s many other
techniques characters setting dialogue
pacing and of course every writing class
will teach you to think about who is
your audience how do you know your
audience
and this is also important in our
writing your life class your audience is
your classmates and how can you share
with them things that they might not
always understand coming from a very
different experience but finally the
most important audience member for
writing your life class is yourself so
that that brings us to the really second
most important part of the curriculum in
addition to teaching writing or teaching
students to think about writing as
authorship or
agency or responsibility for their own
life so as the writer of your own life
you are the agent so this is not a new
idea it’s been around for a long time
Socrates talked about it and actually
drank poison because he used to teach it
I hope they won’t make me drink poison
but know thyself
he said the unreflective life is not
worth living and what we do in class as
part of the curriculum is to help
students to focus on these different
landmarks of their life things or
experiences where they had a profound
paradigm shift and they saw that there
were other perspectives besides their
own major turning points critical
decisions in their life or moments of
crisis and success so for example I’ll
share one of the paradigm shifts that
one of my students shared with us and
this was her shame that her father’s
occupation as a construction worker she
told us that she used to lie to her
friends and her teachers and say that
her dad was an architect because she was
so embarrassed that he was a
construction worker and then one night
when she was in high school she was
going for a drink of water and she heard
her mother crying talking to her dad and
they were talking about money problems
and the dad said well I’ll just I’ll
work more
I’ll work longer hours and more days so
that we can continue to send her to this
good school and in realizing that he did
this work for her she had this profound
paradigm shift where she realized she
really was grateful and so after that
she was very proud to tell her friends
and teachers that he was a construction
worker so another example of a kind of
turning point one of my students shared
was when he took piano lessons for ten
years because he thought his parents
wanted him to and he wanted to make them
proud but in fact he hated the
no he couldn’t stand it it was a bit
like torture to him and he kept hoping
okay I’ll learn to like it I’ll learn to
like it but for ten years it just became
harder and harder as the expectations
became higher and higher and it he
finally ended entered a period of mental
crisis when at last his dad came to him
with tears in his eyes and said it’s
really time for us to talk well when his
dad learned that his son really didn’t
like studying the piano he said just
quit and your mother and I are fine with
that we want you to be happy and do what
you love and it was astonishing to my
student that all along his parents would
have been supported but for ten years
they’ve never talked about it so he
wrote despite living together for more
than ten years deep inside we had no
idea what one another was thinking about
from then on I’ve talked much more to my
parents I share all the things that
happened and what I’ve experienced
sometimes they tell me about their work
pressure I feel we’re much closer since
that incident it took a lot of money in
time to learn the lesson but it was all
worth it I’ve just been so privileged to
hear so many wonderful stories like this
I know I don’t have time to share too
many with you or they’ll drag me
offstage
but I just want to say that this has
just been such a meaningful part of my
lifelong journey I’m really happy to be
able to share it with you and actually
my experience has just been very
personal very anecdotal but after
teaching it I began to look around and I
found there’s actually quite a lot of
research that’s been done on this and it
sometimes goes by different names in
different professions scripto therapy
for example that psychologists and
counselors recommend writing your life
as a way to reflect and understand your
situation better and even in business
they’ve found that such things as what
they call after event reviews can help
develop leadership skills so there’s a
lot of evidence that this is a very
healthy part of life law
learning my experience is just anecdotal
I really love the stories of my students
a one group came to me after my class
and said we’ve been friends for a long
time but we never really knew each other
we never really understood each other
until we sat in a class and learned
something about who we are that was very
strange for them but very inspiring so
now they’re closer friends than ever and
I also want to say because we have a
very diverse audience today it’s never
too late
lifelong learning is forever and this is
the story of Alfred Nobel who was the
inventor of dynamite and he made
munitions for European armies well when
they wrote his obituary before he died
he read it and it was called The
Merchant of death is dead dr. Alfred
Nobel who became rich by finding ways to
kill more people faster than ever before
died yesterday he didn’t like this story
of his life so he rewrote it and he left
his vast fortune to create the Nobel
Prizes and now when we think of dr.
Nobel we think of the Nobel Peace Prize
so he really made a choice and he
transformed what his life was about and
all of us can do that so I’d like to
just finish with this inspiration from
Anne Frank one of my favorite and she
writes and finally I twist my heart
round again so that the bat is on the
outside and the good is on the inside
and I keep on trying to find a way of
becoming what I would so like to be and
could be if there weren’t any other
people living in the world
the final forming of a person’s
character lies in their own hands and so
the lifelong learning journey goes on
thank you [Applause]
You Sonya I didn’t know there were TEDx
coaches is it too late to change my mind
I’ll go next year after having some
coaching well thank you as a teacher I
have a dream and I think it’s shared by
many people and that is that every
student is successful in their life and
I hope this for my students I hope this
for all students
now this dream might seem ambitious it
might seem too big to be realized in my
lifetime but if you’re not dreaming
about something that can’t be achieved
in your lifetime maybe you’re not
dreaming big enough so when I think
about lifelong learning I hope that
every students learning experience at
whatever age or level can be something
that is really meaningful to them
something that’s interesting engaging
and something that’s ultimately useful
to them now I’m a teacher so I have to
confess that not all of our schooling
meets these criteria at least not yet
so I have to make some kind of diagnosis
after all I am a doctor but I’m not a
medical doctor I’m an education doctor
so I’ll make a little diagnosis about
why our schooling doesn’t do a better
job at preparing our students for
lifelong learning and one reason is that
the institution of schooling was
developed and involved a very long time
ago this is a page from a textbook that
was used in the United States before it
was the United States
it began in about 1690 to be used
throughout New England and it continued
to be used for over a hundred and fifty
years they didn’t change the textbook
and that’s the age that’s the time in
which schooling developed and even now
in 2018 we
still have a lot of vestiges of this
age-old institution so this is really
fun to check out the words of four
syllables and five syllables and some
poetry here I especially like this one
the idle fool is whipped at school so
times have definitely changed and we
know we all know this the world is
changing so fast and it has been
changing so fast that an institution
which developed when the same text book
could be used for a hundred and fifty
years can’t always serve our needs in a
world that is changing constantly but
another reason that we aren’t doing
better in schools to prepare students
for lifelong learning is that knowledge
itself is changing our understanding
about knowledge and the flood of new
information that we’re constantly
inundated by so for example if you’re at
university here and you’re a chemistry
major and you went to our fine library
and you read 24 hours a day seven days a
week for a year every new thing that was
published on chemistry after the first
year you would probably be about four or
five years behind on your reading
there’s just too much so we’re we’re
entering this age we try to deal with
this by specializing by narrowing our
field by by focusing more and more so we
sometimes say that in an age of
specialization people are learning more
and more about less and less until they
know absolutely everything about
absolutely nothing so what we need in
this day is judgment now I like this
quote from the Dean of Harvard Medical
School who used to tell his incoming
students every year half of what we’re
about to teach you in medical school
this one of the finest medical schools
in the world is wrong the trouble is we
don’t know which half and I think this
is very profound because he’s
acknowledging right at the beginning of
medical school that this is not about
knowing everything it’s about developing
good judgment
so another problem we face which is
closer to home and closer to my
experience is this that in the
curriculum in schools all over the world
we have this paradigm we have this
concept that the best way to prepare
students for the future is to prepare
them for everything and so we have the
idea of the every student and we try to
teach every student everything but every
one of our students is absolutely unique
and so this is a bit like trying to pack
your bags to travel everywhere in the
world because you don’t know where
you’re going and so this is a list of
some of the recommended text types that
English teachers teach in Hong Kong now
I was a secondary teacher English
teacher in Hong Kong for many years I
taught more than a thousand students and
I would dare say that there’s not 1 or 2
percent of my students that really need
all these text types or couldn’t learn
them later in life when they need them
so it’s very overwhelming now in fact my
students were more interested in text
types that were not even on that list
they’re interested in social media
they’re interested in Facebook and
Instagram and here I’m trying to catch
up with some of my students by getting a
good angle on this photo for my
Instagram page so what is the
alternative
one of the alternatives that I have
discovered only recently which has been
part of my lifelong journey as a teacher
is to understand life as a story that
every one of us has a story and the
question we have to ask is who is the
author so Aristotle said plot is
character in action it’s all about how
you live how you develop your character
and who is making these choices about
who you will be and I think you know my
answer it should be yourself you should
be the author of your own life
so a writing your life course or a
reflection curriculum is primarily about
reflection after all the eyeball sees by
reflection and so we should teach our
students to reflect on their own lives
and their own place in the world so
fortunately in this curriculum that I
showed you there actually is a place for
this and if you read this list very
carefully you can see autobiographies is
already there so I was very happy to
find that and I have to say that there
isn’t a lot of reflection or text types
on this list but there are one or two
the autobiographies and I think Diaries
are also wonderful to help students
develop the habit and the experience of
continuous close careful reflection okay
so I I should include a little bit of my
own autobiography since that’s what
we’re talking about and this is my first
grade class so in a traditional public
high school in the United States and so
this is the beginning of my lifelong
learning journey that’s that’s me
sitting in the front row for some reason
Brown was always my favorite color and
so you can see I’m dressed out in brown
there now in this space after that first
picture before we get to this one of
course I had at my own learning journey
but one of the important landmarks on
that learning journey is when I began to
look around and see the great diversity
of people in the world and all of the
profound differences in terms of beliefs
and cultures and history and governments
yet I decided that more important than
these differences is the oneness is the
commonalities is the unity of humanity
so this this belief was inspired by the
teachings of bahá’u’lláh and the Baha’i
faith and it it empowered me to think
about all of us as one family in the
world
so well I
grown up and was educated in Virginia so
I really didn’t know very much about the
world so for my first full-time teaching
job I asked the US government to send me
to the place in the world which was most
different from the United States and
they sent me to Papua New Guinea so this
is where I was first a teacher and it
was very interesting to learn something
about it I went to the library and I got
out the books that I could find on Papua
New Guinea there weren’t very many and
the titles of two of them were blood is
their language and the last cannibals so
I was a little nervous going to this
place but I want to tell you that my
belief in the family of mankind was so
affirmed when I realized teachers in
Papua New Guinea students in Papua New
Guinea essentially they’re just like my
teachers and students and friends in the
United States and some of my closest
friends and brothers are still living in
Papua New Guinea and we’re in close
touch 30 years later so this led to a
kind of exploration of the world this is
the Baha’i world centre in Israel and
here we are today so I’ve been through
China and now here in Hong Kong and I
feel very much at home in the world and
in fact my family is a small
representation of that diversity my
lovely wife and son and so we’re half
Chinese my children are both 50% Chinese
my wife is Chinese so half my family is
Chinese okay so this principle in unity
in diversity was something that became
part of my lifelong journey and it’s
shown in the faces of behind from all
over the world it’s shown in the houses
of worship that are on every continent
in the world that these these beautiful
houses of worship all have a central
dome and nine entrances facing every
direction as a symbol of unity and
openness but you can see they also
reflect the beautiful diversity of our
architectural traditions everywhere well
this is just a little bit about my
autobiography and it’s very important to
realize in teaching that we have to let
go of this principle
teaching as instructing or giving
knowledge this is not what it’s all
about I’m just sharing a little bit of
my autobiography but I want each one of
my students to find their own beliefs
not to necessarily believe what I
believe but to be inspired by others by
a wide range of cultural and literary
traditions and to find their own belief
the only recommendation that I would
give is to believe in and commit
yourself to something which is bigger
than yourself and this will give your
life meaning so whether it’s community
service the environment your family or
the next generation of students because
I know many of you will also be teachers
this is something that will really give
me okay so how do we do it we have to be
practical and the idea of teaching
reflection is is not easy it’s a bit
like teaching creativity if you tell
someone how to do something to be
creative you see the paradox it’s not
creative for them and so one of the
things we’ve learned is that you have to
give space you have to give a place
where people have permission and feel
free and have license to be creative and
then try to find some inspiration and
then discover for themselves what is
creativity reflection is the same that I
can’t tell you what to reflect on about
your life we have to provide a space and
thanks to some help from the Australian
writing your life professor Richard
Freeman I got some guidance and we
started this class here at the education
University and this is our first class
and thanks to all of those who joined as
guinea pigs in our first class so we
first start by reading some of the great
life writers like Viktor Frankl who
wrote when we are no longer able to
change a situation we are challenged to
change ourselves so he has a profound
life story about man’s search for
meaning and and
of course who wrote among many other
beautiful things despite everything I
believe that people are really good at
heart
so we give inspiring life writing
samples and then we actually teach some
writing techniques it is writing your
life and the writing and writing your
life really has two meanings and one is
literally learning to write and tell a
good story so these are some of the
principles and my students know this is
my favorite I say it in every class and
that is don’t tell your story
don’t just say something like I
experienced a crisis when my father
abandoned our family by showing your
story you invite your classmates and
your readers to share the experience to
enter into that experience with you and
by reading it by hearing it they
actually participate in that and that’s
a very profound thing there are many
other writing strategies that help you
to do this having a good opening one of
my students last year wrote I used to
hate my mother and I could hear gasps in
the classroom when she said this and
people were really paying attention and
then she went on to reflect on her
relationship with her mother and how she
came to understand that what she really
hated as a teenage girl was her mother’s
way of showing her that she loved her so
that was quite a profound change in in
her life so there’s many other
techniques characters setting dialogue
pacing and of course every writing class
will teach you to think about who is
your audience how do you know your
audience
and this is also important in our
writing your life class your audience is
your classmates and how can you share
with them things that they might not
always understand coming from a very
different experience but finally the
most important audience member for
writing your life class is yourself so
that that brings us to the really second
most important part of the curriculum in
addition to teaching writing or teaching
students to think about writing as
authorship or
agency or responsibility for their own
life so as the writer of your own life
you are the agent so this is not a new
idea it’s been around for a long time
Socrates talked about it and actually
drank poison because he used to teach it
I hope they won’t make me drink poison
but know thyself
he said the unreflective life is not
worth living and what we do in class as
part of the curriculum is to help
students to focus on these different
landmarks of their life things or
experiences where they had a profound
paradigm shift and they saw that there
were other perspectives besides their
own major turning points critical
decisions in their life or moments of
crisis and success so for example I’ll
share one of the paradigm shifts that
one of my students shared with us and
this was her shame that her father’s
occupation as a construction worker she
told us that she used to lie to her
friends and her teachers and say that
her dad was an architect because she was
so embarrassed that he was a
construction worker and then one night
when she was in high school she was
going for a drink of water and she heard
her mother crying talking to her dad and
they were talking about money problems
and the dad said well I’ll just I’ll
work more
I’ll work longer hours and more days so
that we can continue to send her to this
good school and in realizing that he did
this work for her she had this profound
paradigm shift where she realized she
really was grateful and so after that
she was very proud to tell her friends
and teachers that he was a construction
worker so another example of a kind of
turning point one of my students shared
was when he took piano lessons for ten
years because he thought his parents
wanted him to and he wanted to make them
proud but in fact he hated the
no he couldn’t stand it it was a bit
like torture to him and he kept hoping
okay I’ll learn to like it I’ll learn to
like it but for ten years it just became
harder and harder as the expectations
became higher and higher and it he
finally ended entered a period of mental
crisis when at last his dad came to him
with tears in his eyes and said it’s
really time for us to talk well when his
dad learned that his son really didn’t
like studying the piano he said just
quit and your mother and I are fine with
that we want you to be happy and do what
you love and it was astonishing to my
student that all along his parents would
have been supported but for ten years
they’ve never talked about it so he
wrote despite living together for more
than ten years deep inside we had no
idea what one another was thinking about
from then on I’ve talked much more to my
parents I share all the things that
happened and what I’ve experienced
sometimes they tell me about their work
pressure I feel we’re much closer since
that incident it took a lot of money in
time to learn the lesson but it was all
worth it I’ve just been so privileged to
hear so many wonderful stories like this
I know I don’t have time to share too
many with you or they’ll drag me
offstage
but I just want to say that this has
just been such a meaningful part of my
lifelong journey I’m really happy to be
able to share it with you and actually
my experience has just been very
personal very anecdotal but after
teaching it I began to look around and I
found there’s actually quite a lot of
research that’s been done on this and it
sometimes goes by different names in
different professions scripto therapy
for example that psychologists and
counselors recommend writing your life
as a way to reflect and understand your
situation better and even in business
they’ve found that such things as what
they call after event reviews can help
develop leadership skills so there’s a
lot of evidence that this is a very
healthy part of life law
learning my experience is just anecdotal
I really love the stories of my students
a one group came to me after my class
and said we’ve been friends for a long
time but we never really knew each other
we never really understood each other
until we sat in a class and learned
something about who we are that was very
strange for them but very inspiring so
now they’re closer friends than ever and
I also want to say because we have a
very diverse audience today it’s never
too late
lifelong learning is forever and this is
the story of Alfred Nobel who was the
inventor of dynamite and he made
munitions for European armies well when
they wrote his obituary before he died
he read it and it was called The
Merchant of death is dead dr. Alfred
Nobel who became rich by finding ways to
kill more people faster than ever before
died yesterday he didn’t like this story
of his life so he rewrote it and he left
his vast fortune to create the Nobel
Prizes and now when we think of dr.
Nobel we think of the Nobel Peace Prize
so he really made a choice and he
transformed what his life was about and
all of us can do that so I’d like to
just finish with this inspiration from
Anne Frank one of my favorite and she
writes and finally I twist my heart
round again so that the bat is on the
outside and the good is on the inside
and I keep on trying to find a way of
becoming what I would so like to be and
could be if there weren’t any other
people living in the world
the final forming of a person’s
character lies in their own hands and so
the lifelong learning journey goes on
thank you [Applause]
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