I was just writing to the babe. I’ve been doing that recently, writing to her.

There’s so much I want to remember to say before I forget, before life becomes faster. One of those important things is that I want this baby to know I don’t care about school. I don’t care about how smart she is, how great she does {or doesn’t do} on tests. What percentile she’s in. How many contests she wins {or loses}. How many soccer goals she gets.

Will I celebrate these triumphs? Of course. But I find there to be a fine line that crosses over into danger zone when a child receives too much praise and too much emphasis is placed on scholastic achievement and measurable activities. These are not important to me.

I am much more concerned with who she is as a human being. I want to know how kind she is, how loving she is. I want to know she includes other children and is strong enough to stand up for those who are being made fun of. I am more concerned about her as a person.

The school, and all the other stuff will fall into place. I’m not worried about that. It will. But nurturing a loving and kind child, that’s something else. That’s something you see a little less of.

The majority of my teaching time in the classroom was spent not on teaching but on how we treat each other — and this was high schoolers. It took an entire grading period, but I started seeing phenomenal results. My students all got along with each other. We were a melting pot of odd balls and cool kids and jocks. We made it work, but only after I drilled into them the Golden Rule.

What a simple thing. Treat others how you want to be treated. But, it all comes down to this, doesn’t it? Our entire World rests on this.

But we don’t learn these things in school anymore. We’re not teaching our children how to communicate and effectively resolve conflict. We’re not teaching that kindness and love do make a difference. They win. And a lot of kids aren’t getting it at home, either.

So we see — that we, all of us, truly are World Changers. Just by being us. Just by our simple actions. That’s the only way we change people. One person, one kind, one loving thing at a time.

I never thought of it that way. That we’re all World Changers, in this together. That’s how it starts, one by one by one.

Which is why we have a responsibility — to one another — to be really great us’.