A working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, at Harvard University, is entitled Supportive Relationships and Active Skill-Building Strengthen the Foundations of Resilience. This is something that most educators and workers with children or young people will know instinctively, but the working paper is still well worth reading.

It explores decades of research, including more recent scientific discoveries in molecular biology, genomics, and epigenetics. It explains how protective factors in the social environment and highly responsive biological systems interact to produce resilience, and discusses strategies that promote healthy development in the face of significant adversity.

There is also a very helpful series of three videos: What is Resilience, The Science of Resilience and How Resilience is Built.

Cause Clarity provides ideas, tips and resources on effective communication strategies for nonprofits. Each of their series of "How-Tos" includes a three-minute video and a downloadable worksheet to help you apply the ideas to your own workplace.

From messaging and branding to fundraising and social media, our collection of “How-To” videos address the top communications challenges facing nonprofits today. No matter your role, these resources help ensure that everyone in your organization can communicate with clarity.

Here's a grab bag of websites that contain useful resources for teachers - across different age groups.

Maths on YouTube

Firstly, here's Maths on YouTube - a video of a 'flipped classroom' taught by Peter Smyth, a maths teachers at Gunghalin College in Canberra. He has changed his whole teaching approach in response to feedback from his students and now prepares a series of videos to cover essential concepts, leaving more time for him to assist students with their learning.

What Schools Can Do to Welcome and Meet the Needs of All Students and Families

One of our favourite resource websites, mentioned previously in Starlink on a number of occasions, is the School Mental Health Project at UCLA in the US. Here is one of their useful guidebooks: What Schools Can Do to Welcome and Meet the Needs of All Students and Families. While you will need (in most cases unless you know the language) to flip past the Spanish sections to the next section in English, there are many useful tips and suggestions for schools everywhere!

Reading Rockets

Reading Rockets is another US based website that nevertheless has a wealth of information useful for Australian schools as well. It is a "national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help ... Our goal is to bring the reading research to life — to spread the word about reading instruction and to present 'what works' in a way that parents and educators can understand and use."

A Failure to Communicate is a short animated video ... great to use with children but might be a conversation starter for grown ups in the workplace as well! Assumptions? Stereotypes? Dependency on technology? Lots to prompt discussion.

And while we're on the subject of communication ... here's a very short take on the workplace jargon we all love to hate. You know what we mean - all those phrases that fill air time but actually communicate nothing. :) Well comedian Clint Paddison covers just about all of them in only a minute.

And for a wince-worthy list of words or phrases that 'fail to communicate' anything worthwhile in the workplace, see the Dictionary of Management Jargon or (for an even more tongue-in-cheek perspective) MBA Jargonwatch.

Just as they say on Inspired, "We really believe that what you focus on is what you get – so it’s well worth filling your head with the good stuff."

Visit Inspired to read stories about ordinary people with inspirational stories to share. For example there's Peter Sharp of Perth, WA, "who is driven by a desire to remind humanity of their common connection, to create public platforms for spontaneous outpourings of joy". He believes “life starts at the edge of our comfort zone”.

Or read about another Aussie, Oliver Percovich, who is transforming children's lives ... with a skateboard! ... through a grassroots initiative that now employs 70 people and educates 1500 students a week across four sites in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa.

And here's an amusing and insightful speech about aging - an invocation given by Mary Maxwell, at a convention for senior carers . It's a perceptive view about getting older - and very funny too!

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