A poem by Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breath, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their radiance,
fall away.

We are not so much maddened
as we are reduced
to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whispered to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

By Linda Howard, Counselor at JLS Middle School

Good evening distinguished guests, the JLS Staff, parents and family members, and the 8^th grade class of 2013.

After 540 days, twenty Kleenex boxes, dozens of miles walked or run on campus (this includes running the mile in P.E.), eating hundreds of school lunches and brunches, twelve dances, and listening to thousands of words from your teachers, we find our selves gathered a final time to celebrate the passage from middle school to high school. I have had the opportunity and honor of being your counselor for the past 3 years.

This is my last time to talk to you as your counselor. Listen, I am going to tell you something important….

Each one of you has gifts to offer the world.

As you enter an ever more expanding world of high school and beyond, you will have the opportunity to act with integrity or not. On a daily basis, you can make small decisions to do what is right such as treating a person with respect and standing up for someone who is being treated unjustly. Make kindness and respect for others a habit. MLK conveyed this message by saying, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” You will never go wrong when you choose to act with integrity.  Standing up for what is just is a gift that each one of you can give.

Tonight I’d like to honor a young person whose words and actions inspired the people who knew her. Samantha Howard would have been seated here tonight with the 8^th grade graduating class, but she passed away between her 6^th and 7^th grade year. During the 6^th grade she joined and was active in the BeTCha student advisory group. This group develops ideas and creates activities to promote a positive school climate.

Sam’s kindness, energy and activism inspired her friends to join BeTCha and continue the good work she started. The way Samantha lived her life was her gift to all who knew her.

Acting with kindness and respect toward others sets a powerful example. It is a gift that each one of you can give.

I would like to read a poem that Samantha enjoyed when she was only eleven years old. The poem is entitled  “Love is a Place”

Love is a place
And through that place of love
moves with brightness of peace
all places.

 

ee cummings

JLS has been your place for the past 3 years. You may not have always realized it, but you have moved through a place of love. Your teachers, administrators and counselor have always loved and cared for you. We continue to wish you the very best as you journey to the next place.

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for…. the presentation of the promotion certificates for the class of 2013.

.

From Stanford Biodesign

Starting in 2012, we award 2 awards per year to teams working in medical devices. The award is named by LUNAR for Robert Howard, a long-time employee of that design firm who passed away in 2011. The award comes with 100 hours of consulting time from Lunar.

The 2012 winners were announced at the Biodesign Graduation Ceremony:

Team Calcula – Dan Azagury, Buzz Bonneau, David Gal,and Kate Garrett.
Their device clears kidney stones from the ureter.

Team DiaLock – Tze Kiat Ng, Justin Phoon, Luke Tay and Pearline Teo
Their device stops bleeding during laporoscopic procedures

• Application Information for 2013
• Application Form for 2013

About Robert Howard

Robert Howard (1962-2011) served as Vice President of LUNAR for 15 years. He was a Stanford Alumnus (MSME ’86) and served as a lecturer inthe Department of Mechanical Engineering (Product Design). Robert loved helping people, teaching, tinkering, making the impossible possible, designing healthcare products and being involved in the Stanford community — in particular the Biodesign program. LUNAR wishes to honor Robert by giving time to Stanford Biodesign in his memory.

About LUNAR

LUNAR is a globally recognized product design and development firm. Since 1984 LUNAR has created ingenious products for consumer, medical and high tech markets. LUNAR is an in-kind sponsor of the Stanford Biodesign program.

by Ana Maria

This presentation, written by Ana- Maria for her daughter’s PreSchool Family class seemed appropriate for January 1, Ana-Maria’s birthday and also a day for re-evaluation and reflection.

Time management is about creating days that are meaningful and rewarding to you and feeling a sense of satisfaction in each and every one of your tasks.

The most successful people in life have a big-picture view that helps them rise above the chaos and maintain their perspective.

A time map provides structure to your day and week which frees you to  live in the moment because you know in advance that everything has a time and place in your schedule.

Technical Errors:

1. One of the most common causes for not getting to important activities is that you haven’t set aside a specific time in which to do them.
2. Or you’ve set aside the wrong time.
3. Unrealistic about what they can accomplish in a day
4. Wrong person for the job
5. A too large task can be intimidating and cause you to procrastinate
6. No reliable to-do list and therefore can’t remember what you have to do
7. Your space is disorganized
8. Don’t take time to plan
9. Unrealistic workload

External Realities

1. Health problem
2. Interruption rich environment (acknowledge and plan for it and then create an oasis of time for yourself)
3. Other People’s chaos

Psychological Obstacles:

1. Unclear goals and priorities
2. Conquistador of crisis
3. Fear of failure or success
4. Fear of downtime
5. Need to be caretaker
6. Fear of completion
7. Need for perfection
8. You fear structure will stifle creativity

We often resist calculating how long things will take for fear of discovering that we actually don’t have enough time to do it all or we miscalculate based on wishful thinking – we believe if we are extra disciplined and diligent we can get things done more quickly than usual.

Everyone needs a planner

If you tried using a planner but abandoned it because it didn’t work chances are you made one of these three common mistakes:

1. Wrong planner for you
2. Didn’t take time to master its features
3. Didn’t make it the one and only place to record your appointments and to-dos, so you never came to rely on it.

Section on choosing the right planner – paper or electronic

What’s working Worksheet:

Why are these particular things working?  Is it because you enjoy certain tasks more? Or you are very skilled at them? Or responding to outside pressure? Does it have to do with the time of day or amount of time each one takes? Are you better at solitary tasks than collaborative ones?

Preferences:

If you thrive on a fast pace you should try to fill your days with several activities.  If you prefer a slower pace you might limit your daily to-do list to three to four items.

If you respond to tight deadlines, create a self-imposed deadline and schedule something critically important right after your self imposed deadline.

Pay attention to your natural rhythms.

Study yourself.

Study your past:

Study your planner for the last two weeks or track your time for one to two weeks

Tie your time spent to a life category.

A goal is a destination.  It’s what you want to achieve. An activity is how you get there.  It’s the specific means to your higher goals. Big picture goals are based on your core values and they tend not to change much over the course of your life. Activities do change over the course of your life.

Set big picture goals for each category of your life.  Let yourself dream.  Look at your life categories, consider your deepest values and ask yourself “what would make me happy in each of these key areas of my life?”

Write down only one or two big picture goals for each major life category.

Writing down your big-picture goals is essential to making them come true.

In a study of Yale class of 1953 the recent grads were questioned about their future plans.  Only 3% had written out their goals and plans of action.  Twenty years later this 3% percent appeared happier and more content than the others; furthermore this small group had achieved more wealth than the remaining 97% of their classmates combined.

When you write it down opportunities to realize your dreams present themselves to you almost as if by magic.  Write down major life categories and next to it the big-picture goals.  Make sure these are what you want and let go of those that aren’t.  Picture your life 10 years from now.  Write down activities to get there.  Focus on top 2 to 3 activities.

At least once a year reevaluate your activities.

If your life feels out of balance look to see where you are spending the majority of your time.  Chances are that your time is being spent in those areas of your life for which your goals are clear-cut.

Keep a joy journal.

Create a time map.  See appendix A.

Make sure to carve out time for yourself.  Pay attention to energy rhythms.

Adjust your time map until you can answer “True” to all these questions:

• My time map reflects my big picture goals.
• My time map includes time for all the categories I want tot get to.
• I am able to concentrate on my chosen activity (during family time I can concentrate on my family; during work time I can focus on my work).
• I am diong my activities at the right times for me.
• My schedule makes me feel balanced and energized.

It won’t work all the time but it is something that you can come back to.

When scheduling tasks ask yourself which life category does it fit in to.

Assign a home, you need to be specific about when you will do things.  A “to-do” not connected to a “when” rarely gets done.

Create start and stop times.  This forces you to place a relative value to the item and also keeps you on track and not overwhelmed.

Follow your natural rhythms.  Provide variety to keep yourself energized.