What are the chances a sixth-grader from the biggest slum in Kenya ends up on stage in New York City, speaking to thousands of people?
Not very great, but Eunice Akoth did it. She’s living her dream.
Eunice captivating her audience. Image via Women in the World.
Eunice’s dreams aren’t exactly uncommon for a girl her age: to travel the world and to become a doctor. But the possibility of seeing them through is extra difficult simply because of where she was born.
Between unemployment rates, gender discrimination, and violence in her slum of Kibera — it’s a long road out for girls like her.
“Most of the kids in Kibera are raped, some are neglected by their parents, some are homeless,” Eunice said at the Women in the World summit. “Most of them have dreams, but they don’t know how they can achieve them.”
She’s starting to figure out how to achieve her own with some welcomed help.
The first-ever all-girls school opened up in Kibera, and it’s changing the future.
It’s Eunice! And her home in Kibera! Images via A Path Appears and Shining Hope for Communities.
It’s called the Kibera School for Girls, and as an all-girls school, it’s putting a much-needed focus on girls by giving them an education free of charge and pushing them to dream and work toward a brighter future. It’s the first of its kind in the area, and Eunice is a star student.
In a lot of places, going to school isn’t a given. Especially for girls.
Eunice says that “growing up as a girl in Kibera is hard work, but if you trust in yourself, you can make it here.” She believes in herself and her school believes in her, too. She even spoke in New York City at the 2015 Women in the World Summit, along with the founders of her school. (I guess she can mark a trip to NYC off of her list!)
She traveled from Kenya to New York City to deliver a poem about a dream she has.
You can tell how much Eunice values her education when you hear the poem she wrote for all of the children she knows in Nairobi, Kenya. Here’s an excerpt:
*chills*
She’s going places. Keep an eye on her.
Don’t miss her poem from 0:00-1:35. And if you’ve got time, stick around for the Women in the World panel afterward on how education can help break the cycle of poverty for girls in Kenya and around the world.
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Kids say a lot of hilarious things. It starts when they’re little and are just learning how to talk and string sentences together, and the unintentional comedy continues all the way into the overdramatic and angsty teen years.
As parents, we often wish we could remember these little nuggets of gold forever. Now, a new trend is turning teens’ most emotional and unhinged words into unforgettable earworms.
One mom turns texts into unbelievably catchy pop-punk song
Mandi Mansour, a hairstylist from San Diego, recently posted a Reel on Instagram of herself rocking out in the car while singing along to a song of her own creation.
The lyrics? Her own teenager’s frantic and melodramatic text messages.
It’s amazing to watch how messages like “Can I get Canes or Taco Bell? I know you said no, but I’m starving,” and “Can I have ten bucks? … Can I have seven dollars?” become such a catchy and convincing song. Of course, old early-2000s emo is the only musical style perfectly suited to capture the frantic angst, and the final product is honestly a banger. (The vocal run during “seven dollars” is absolutely priceless.)
A great detail from the video is how Mansour is driving and singing the lyrics without even looking at the screen. She’s clearly listened to her personalized song on repeat dozens of times and can’t seem to get enough of it.
Video is part of a trend making clever use of an AI music app
Mansour’s video isn’t the only one like it, not even close. These “emo songs” have become a huge viral trend over the last couple of weeks, with parents using the AI music app Suno (and similar ones) to turn these “lyrics” into full-blown songs, usually in the pop-punk genre.
It’s hard to say exactly where the trend originated, but Marcus Leshock, a reporter for WGN-TV, was one of the early prominent participants. Hundreds of thousands of parents followed suit shortly after.
Trend has parents asking: “Do we have the same kid?”
No matter how many clips you watch, all texts from the teenagers seem to fall into two buckets: wanting food and asking for money.
The series is an amazing glimpse inside the mind of the modern American Gen Z or Gen Alpha kid. It’s all Starbucks, açaí bowls, Raising Cane’s chicken—all fast food, really—e-bikes, and, of course, the classic requests for cash.
This is one of the first times we have such thoroughly documented evidence of how teens and preteens really think. About 85% of 11- to 13-year-olds have a cell phone capable of texting, with many getting their first phone under the age of 10.
Simply put, we’re in the frontier days of kids being able to text directly with their parents at all times. And the results are definitely something these moms and dads will want to remember when their kids are grown and self-sufficient.
Thanks to these infectious and unforgettable choruses, they most certainly will.
Turning texts into emo songs is really the best kind of AI trend. It draws humor from real-life experiences that connect all of us (well, all of us with moody teens), and uses a little assist from the technology to make it memorable and fun.
No one’s trying to top the Billboard charts here, but the commonalities between the songs really go to show that none of us are in it alone. Raising a teenager is tough, exhausting work—but it’s bringing parents all over social media a lot of comfort to know the challenges they’re dealing with are extremely common.
And those big feelings and dramatic outbursts just so happen to be perfect fodder for the type of songs many of us grew up loving.
Having a healthy communication style isn’t just about how you speak. It’s how you listen and perceive the other person or people to whom you’re talking. Knowing the strengths (and sometimes more importantly, the weaknesses) they might bring to a conversation can often help produce a better outcome.
Licensed therapist Jason VanRuler developed an efficient quiz to help people determine their communication style. After answering a short series of questions, an individual can find out if they lean toward the “peacemaker, the advocate, the harbor, the thinker, or the spark.” Of course, most of us don’t fit neatly into one box or another. To account for that, each archetype (to borrow Carl Jung’s term) is given a number, so one can see how they relate to each style.
In an Instagram Reel posted by VanRuler, he explains how essential mere perception can be. “You may think great communication is about saying the right thing, but it’s actually about knowing how to read the room. When something doesn’t land, we often blame the other person for not understanding, instead of asking how our message may not have connected with them. Different people process information differently, and ignoring that creates disconnect.”
How to reframe
There are ways in which he says a person can reframe. “What to Do About It: Shift your focus from ‘Why didn’t they get it?’ to ‘How can I say this in a way that connects with them?’ Pay attention to how people respond and adjust your approach accordingly. Great communicators don’t just express well, they adapt well.”
In the clip, he describes a time when he was giving a conference to a room full of accountants. “So I got up and I talked a lot about feelings, and I went really deep and got really emotional. And it was really, really quiet. And I left thinking, ‘what was wrong with the audience? Why didn’t they resonate with what I just said?’ But what I didn’t really think about is, what is it about what I just said that didn’t resonate with them?”
Learning your “style” can help facilitate better relationships through stronger communication. On VanRuler’s website, he explains who he’s attempting to help, writing, “Whether it’s leadership coaching, relationship building, couples therapy, addiction, trauma, or something different, my goal is the same: to speak truth and grace into every life I work with.”
“Strength: Creates peace and eases tension in difficult or trying moments. Opportunity: Can avoid necessary conflict, which delays resolution and repair.”
Advocate
“Strength: Focused on justice, fairness, and upholding morals; advocates for their beliefs. Opportunity: Can present as intense or overpowering, or advocate when it’s not needed.”
Thinker
“Strength: Focused on logic, thoughts, facts, and getting things correct. Opportunity: Can miss cues for feelings and appear distant or emotionally unavailable.”
Harbor
“Strength: Creates a safe space for others to go deep and talk about feelings and emotions. Opportunity: May struggle to express their own needs, communicate boundaries, or be the focal point of a conversation.”
Spark
“Strength: Brings lots of energy, creativity, and momentum to conversations. Opportunity: Can struggle with consistency and initiating difficult conversations.”
He makes it clear that understanding these “paths” is a great start to elevating a relationship, saying, “Each path speaks a different ‘language,’ and the more fluent you become in other styles, the better you can bridge the gap between you and the people you care about.”
The loneliness epidemic has reached a critical mass, with the Surgeon General warning that social isolation can have dire health consequences. Tons of research backs it up: Being lonely can make us sick.
For many years, patients have been screened for loneliness and offered only a few limited options: Therapy and medications that treat symptoms of loneliness like insomnia, depression, or heart problems.
But recently, doctors have been taking a far more radical approach: What if they actually treated the loneliness itself?
“Social prescribing” trend takes off
Doctors cant befriend their patients, but more and more they’ve been leaning on a concept called “social prescribing.” It’s a way of treating the whole patient and not just the symptoms.
How? By writing prescriptions for things like nature walks, art classes, book clubs, singing lessons, and more. All of these activities are shown to boost mental health, decrease loneliness, and create a domino effect of positive health outcomes.
It’s not just loneliness that can be treated by social prescribing. Depression, anxiety, and chronic pain can all benefit from community-based, real-world activities.
How social prescribing works
A person dealing with loneliness might be asked to take part in a community class, volunteer, or even use a service that helps them make friends.
Depression patients might be asked to spend more time in nature through a birdwatching group or nature-walk group They may also be enrolled in art classes.
Doctors frequently tell people to exercise more, but social prescribing sees them direct chronic pain patients, for example, to specific group exercise classes.
Prescriptions for art classes can really make a difference. Photo Credit: Canva Photos
It can be even simpler than that, too. Someone who’s isolated because they’re a caretaker for a family member might be asked to simply go to a coffee shop a few times per week. A person who’s feeling down and disconnected due to remote work might get a social prescription for joining a group or social club. Someone who’s dealing with stress and anxiety related to finances might be assigned to meet with a debt management specialist.
How it works from a logistical standpoint depends on the doctor and where you live. In the UK, social prescribing has officially been adopted by the NHS. Patients in need will be referred by their doctor to a “link worker” whose sole job is to connect them to the right community resource.
In America, social prescribing is still in more of a fledgling state. Fortunately, though, more and more local pilot programs are popping up around the country to provide the same support. Experts believe that even in the United States’ heavily privatized model, it can still be effective.
Social prescribing actually works
Going for weekly nature walks to help depression and loneliness is a cute idea, but is it actually effective?
A majority of research says Yes. One study found that patients who received a social prescription were less likely to visit their doctor for other consultations or go to the emergency room. Participants showed not only reductions in anxiety and depression, but major boosts to self-confidence, self-esteem, and overall wellbeing.
Beyond what’s reflected in the numbers and studies, doctors who practice social prescribing say they’ve seen the impact it can have firsthand.
Scientific Americanwrites, “The most memorable gains from social prescribing come through in its before-and-after stories. Whether its patients sharing how social prescriptions have provided a ‘reason to wake up in the morning,’ or doctors sharing how it feels like ‘prescribing beauty in someone’s life,’ social prescribing just feels right.”
The practice is not without its critics, though. Some researchers say that the positive gains from social prescribing only last as long as a healthcare worker is facilitating the activities, but fade away quickly when patients are left to their own devices. They argue that the root causes of loneliness, depression, and anxiety run far deeper in our cultures and require more precise intervention.
Still, it’s hard to argue with the idea behind social prescribing. Therapy and medications have their place, but human beings have always needed community, connection, and time spent in nature. What’s most surprising about the trend is that it took us this long to give it a try.
Renee Buckingham was on a tram in Melbourne when an older man started calling a young woman “disgusting.”
The woman was with friends, wearing a dress. The man told her she should be embarrassed for dressing that way in public, in front of older people like him, he said. He kept going.
She couldn’t stay quiet
Buckingham, a Melbourne-based content creator, said she felt her heart rate climb as she watched. She doesn’t usually look for confrontation. For a moment she hesitated, worried the man might turn aggressive if she intervened.
“I said to him, ‘Don’t you dare speak to women like that,’” she explained in an Instagram post shared on January 19, 2026. She told him that if he felt uncomfortable looking at the woman’s outfit, that was his problem, not hers. She told him a woman’s clothing choices have nothing to do with her worth.
He didn’t have much to say after that.
Putting the shame on the shamer
Buckingham posted about the incident and it spread quickly, drawing thousands of responses from people who recognized the moment, the calculation that happens in real time when you witness something wrong in a public space and have to decide whether the cost of speaking up is worth it.
For the young woman on the tram, Buckingham had a direct message: “Never change who you are for any man.”
Her message resonated
The comments on her post filled with people who’d been in similar situations on both sides of it, the ones who’d been shamed, the ones who’d watched and said nothing and still thought about it, and the ones who’d spoken up and found it went differently than they feared. “Thank you for advocating for that young woman,” wrote one commenter. “We need to keep speaking up.”
Buckingham’s point, boiled down: the discomfort belongs to the person doing the shaming, not the person being shamed.
Jodie Foster has won two Oscars, been famous since she was 12, and has been working in the industry since she was barely 3. By her own account, all of that success had started to do something to her she didn’t like.
The cappuccino that changed everything
She described the moment of recognition in a January 2026 interview with Variety, timed to the release of her new film “A Private Life.” It came down to a cappuccino.
“I asked someone for a cappuccino?” she recalled, with what Variety described as barely restrained horror. “I did what? I thought I knew what I was talking about and ranted on for 45 minutes? I didn’t send that person a condolence letter when their mom died? I wasn’t at their wedding? I disappeared for four months and expected everybody to be my friend when I came back?”
Foster, now 63, said she feared she was becoming what she called “a creature of Hollywood,” a politer way of putting something less polite. Famous since her breakout in “Taxi Driver” at 12 and a two-time Best Actress winner before she was 30, for “The Accused” in 1988 and “The Silence of the Lambs” in 1991, she’d spent decades in an environment that tells you your needs come first. The cappuccino moment was when she realized she’d started to believe it.
The science behind her self-awareness
That discomfort is backed by research. Columbia University psychologist Adam Galinsky has studied the relationship between power and empathy, finding that people who feel powerful are demonstrably less able to read others’ emotional states accurately. In one experiment, participants who’d been primed to feel powerful made significantly more errors identifying emotions in facial expressions than those who hadn’t. Power, it turns out, reduces emotional sensitivity, not because powerful people are inherently worse, but because the environment trains them to stop paying attention.
Foster paid attention when she noticed it happening to her, and she stepped back. She told NPR in a separate interview that she wanted to make movies she loved and give everything to her performances without getting caught up in celebrity culture, and that meant keeping her personal life tightly guarded. “I wanted to give everything of myself on screen, and I wanted to survive intact by having a life and not handing that life over to the media,” she said.
Hollywood on her terms
She has since returned to work, including “A Private Life,” which premiered at Cannes and opened in January 2026. She told Variety she believes it may be the best work of her career, and the secret, she said, is that she’s never worked less hard in terms of energy output. “I just do what I think, and then I drink a coffee.”
Alex Lyons is on a mission to make sure no one else suffers in silence. The 21-year-old from Armagh, Northern Ireland, spent months hiding a secret that she feared was too “gross” or “humiliating” to share with her friends and family. But as the BBC reported, that silence nearly cost her everything.
Lyons first noticed she was having frequent, urgent bowel movements and spotted blood in her stool. Instead of seeking help, she ignored the signs, hoping they would simply go away. Her hesitation was rooted in a deep sense of embarrassment and a desire to protect her family. Her twin brother, Joe, had recently undergone bowel removal surgery due to a chronic condition, and Alex didn’t want to put her parents through that trauma a second time.
Unfortunately, the symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) do not wait for a convenient time to be addressed. By the time Alex finally disclosed her struggle, her condition had progressed to a life-threatening level. She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, a form of IBD that causes chronic inflammation and ulcers in the lining of the colon. According to the Cleveland Clinic, these symptoms are often caused by an overactive immune response, and as seen in the case of Alex and her brother, genetic factors often play a significant role.
The inflammation was so aggressive that standard treatments could no longer save her bowel. She was rushed into emergency surgery, a procedure that saved her life but changed it forever. “I think I would have gone a little longer without losing my bowel had I gone to the doctor earlier,” Alex told the BBC.
From ambulance to advocacy
Now, Alex is using her voice to dismantle the stigma that kept her silent. She has become a viral advocate on TikTok, documenting her life with a stoma bag and showing her followers that a medical diagnosis doesn’t mean the end of a vibrant life. She refuses to let her condition stop her from wearing her favorite clothes or going out with friends.
My first shower in 7 weeks!! Kinda crazy lol. When you’re on deaths door a shower is the least of your worries trust me! This disease has taken alot from me but it won’t take my pamper days! #stoma#ulcerativecolitis#recovery#pamper
The lesson Alex wants to share is simple but vital: speaking up sooner matters more than avoiding a few minutes of discomfort. What might seem like a minor, embarrassing issue can develop into a serious health crisis if left unaddressed. As Alex and her brother continue their healing journey together, they are proving that there is no room for shame when it comes to saving your own life.
Flying can test anyone’s patience, but Reddit user Safe_Ad_9314 may take the cake for having all their buttons pushed. They shared how a recent flight turned into a surprising lesson in setting boundaries, explaining that they had reserved a window seat, which was an intentional choice aimed at making their journey just a bit more enjoyable. But as soon as they settled in, a family boarded and a conflict began brewing.
After several attempts to calm her, the father turned to u/Safe_Ad_9314 and asked if they’d give up their seat for the child, adding, “She’s just a kid.” The OP gently stood their ground, explaining that the window seat was not a random perk, but something they had deliberately arranged, and even paid extra for.
Outbursts from children on airplanes can be extremely disruptive, sometimes even causing flights to be delayed.
The tantrum that sparked the conversation
The family’s six-year-old daughter quickly grew upset that she didn’t have the coveted window view. Her frustration was clear:
“I want the window! I want the window!” — the child
Eventually, the mother distracted the child with a tablet, and the flight continued. When everyone deboarded at their destination, the mother shot a lingering remark at u/Safe_Ad_9314:
“Some people just have no heart.” — the mother
That stung. It’s never easy to feel judged, especially when you’ve tried to be polite. Unsure if they’d done the right thing, u/Safe_Ad_9314 turned to the trusty Reddit subforum r/AITAH for feedback, asking, “AITA for not giving up my window seat on a plane to a kid just because she threw a tantrum?”
The response was overwhelmingly supportive, reframing the encounter into a conversation about how we teach children empathy, respect, and understanding of life’s little disappointments.
Boundaries matter – especially in public
Do we cave at the first sign of a tantrum, or do we help kids learn that not every wish can be granted? The community weighed in:
“You teach your kids how society works and that not everything is at their disposal all the time.” — u/hierosx
People pointed out that giving in to every demand might soothe tears in the moment, but can set unrealistic expectations for the future. If having a window seat was so important, some said, parents could plan ahead and book one. After all, this wasn’t about denying a child joy, but about showing them how to handle disappointment gracefully.
Why tantrums don’t work
Many commenters stood behind the idea that it’s kinder in the long run to help children learn healthy boundaries:
“I learned when my kids were toddlers that the best policy was ‘we do not negotiate with tantrumists.’” — u/BeBearAwareOK
At the core, many commenters reminded readers that random strangers aren’t responsible for resolving someone else’s poor planning or appeasing a meltdown:
“It’s not your responsibility to accommodate someone else’s poor planning or their child’s tantrum.” — u/experiment_ad_4
Others emphasized that saying “no” isn’t heartless—sometimes it’s a necessary act of kindness to the child, who learns that people have their own boundaries and can’t always bend.
“I am a mum of three. Kids get explained that they can’t have that seat as it’s already occupied, end of it.” — u/Sure_Freedom3
Instead of feeling guilty, u/Safe_Ad_9314 received a gentle reminder that upholding personal boundaries is part of living in a shared world. When we calmly stand our ground, we help create an environment where everyone learns that respect and empathy go both ways—even at 30,000 feet.
In the end, that’s what makes these moments matter. When we model healthy limits, we’re not just keeping a seat—we’re showing kids that there’s a bigger picture out there, one where kindness and fairness guide us all.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
If you’ve ever been around a group of 20 or 30 kids or teens, try to imagine getting them all to pay attention and stay focused for longer than 5 minutes. There’s no doubt that wrangling a classroom of kids is a formidable feat at any age. Getting a group of learners to be engaged, attentive and reasonably courteous is the goal, but managing diverse personalities from various backgrounds and home environments and who have different standards and expectations of behavior isn’t easy.
Some teachers take the old-school “law and order” approach to classroom management. They lay out a list of rules everyone is supposed to follow, and those who don’t fall in line face consequences of some sort. But high school Language Arts teacher Monte Syrie takes a different tack, one that sees students as valued citizens of a community instead of young people to be controlled.
Instead of Rules…
I offer Roles, Routines, Rights, and Responsibilities.
Syrie, who has been teaching for nearly three decades, says he’s always striving to make the school year better than the last one. That means regularly reflecting and reevaluating how he communicates with his students, which is how he went from standard classroom rules to reframing them as “Policies and Procedures” to tossing out the concept of “rules” altogether.
Why he ditched the rulebook entirely
Now he offers 4 R’s, Roles, Routines, Rights and Responsibilities, as a framework for classroom management.
“I think teachers are framers. We frame the room. We frame the work. We frame the day. We frame the year. We frame the entire experience–whether we want to or not,” Syrie shares. “The kids look to us for the frame. What we do or don’t do decides the day. And, man oh man, is there pressure in that. But, there’s also possibility–powerful possibility.”
Syrie explains in his book about teaching that kids respond differently when teachers frame things differently, and being greeted with classroom rules on day one evokes a specific response in kids.
“We seem to believe if we don’t get rules in front of the kids immediately, we will never get the kids where we want them,” he writes. “I don’t believe in this anymore. I did, I suppose, at one point, but at this point, I believed there was a better way to ‘get kids.’”
Syrie decided to reframe his classroom policies as Roles that let kids see themselves through various lenses, Routines that tell them what to expect, Rights that give them individual autonomy and Responsibilities that help them contribute to a shared community.
What each of the four R’s means in practice
So what does that look like?
Roles in Syrie’s classroom include the roles of Yourself (the most important role, he says), Valued Community Member, Reader, Writer, Mistake Maker, and Reflector. He explains to the students what each of these roles entails and why it’s important for kids to take them on.
Routines include daily and weekly activities such as starting class with a community check-in called Smiles and Frowns and ending class with Journey Journaling. Each day of the week also has a specific focus, such as writing, reading or grammar.
Rights include things like, “I have the right to feel safe,” “I have the right to learn,” and “I have the right to ask as many questions as l want.” Syrie also gives students the right to eat and drink in class and the right to make mistakes without fear of penalty.
As for Responsibilities, students have a responsibility to get to class on time, know and honor the class routines, self-regulate use of electronic devices in the classroom, be a great listener, self-regulate leaving the room, take ownership of their learning, and be sensitive and respectful of others’ viewpoints, among other things. Students are expected to do their best to fulfill these responsibilities and to handle any breaches (such as being late to class) with courtesy and minimal disruption to the rest of the class. If they are struggling with any of these responsibilities, interventions include reminder(s), conversation(s), parent contact, and as a last and unlikely resort, office referral.
The beauty of Syrie’s four R’s is that they demonstrate a sense of trust in students right off the bat, helping them see themselves both as responsible individuals and as valued parts of a communal whole. When people feel trusted and valued and are empowered by a clear balance of rights and responsibilities, most tend to rise to the occasion, even when they’re in high school. That’s not to say that this framing eliminates all classroom management issues, but it’s a framework that encourages character development from within the students rather than exerting control from the top down. They’ll be able to take this framing through their whole educational career and beyond.
Why this idea goes beyond the classroom
A fellow educator wrote on X, “Love this in so many ways! In these times, this answers ‘how can we help learners understand the principles of a democracy?’” Imagine if we all reflected more on our roles, routines, rights and responsibilities as citizens rather than just memorizing the laws we are obliged to follow. Perhaps Mr. Syrie’s rethinking and reframing of the educational experience can help us all consider a new framing for our own lives as individuals and community members as well.
