Sublime

this more effective deployment of self is cultivated by a potent set of concepts, metaphors, and practices. These foster the formation of five central competencies:

The Unschooled Mind: How Children Think and How Schools Should Teach, the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner

way. In this quiet crucible, he’d forged a personality that was ambitious but patient, innovative without being brash, brave without being dangerous. He was a real leader.

The BEST mentoring leaders are encouragers.

William Damon, The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life (New York: Free Press, 2009).

Just as Michelangelo thought there was an angel locked inside every piece of marble, I think there is a brilliant child locked inside every student. —Marva Collins

To the end of his life, he encouraged students to think laterally, broaden their experience, and forge their own path in search of match quality. “I try to teach people, ‘Don’t end up a clone of your thesis adviser,’” he told me. “Take your skills to a place that’s not doing the same sort of thing. Take your skills and apply them to a new problem,

The capacities to be proactive, prosocial, disciplined, and determined stayed with students longer—and ultimately proved more powerful—than early math and reading skills.

We want him to be assertive, but not aggressive; to be empathetic, but not naive; to be “a doer,” but also introspective; to be perseverant, but not stubborn; to be prepared, but not obsessive; to help people, but not enable them . . .