Enjoy Holiday Break

This week's article summary is How One Sentence Can Change Your Life.

Holiday break is a much-needed time during the school year for a re-set. 

Spring Break — and obviously, Summer — are the two other times when we have time to take a few deep breaths, practice self-care, and re-energize our professional batteries.

But to me Holiday Break is special in that the re-focus is about gearing up for the second half of the year, like a water break at the 13-mile marker of a marathon.

My annual mid-year re-set includes attitudinal re-centering.

Below is an article with inspiring quotes that helped people refocus their attitude toward the bigger picture and not to let life’s frustrations, anger, stress, or disappointment get the better of them.

Over the next few weeks when you find a few spare moments of solitude and self-reflection, think about which of the quotes below could be a mantra you use to re-orient yourself when the outside pressures of life try to get you down.

Enjoy the holidays with family, friends, and hopefully some alone time!

Joe

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There’s nothing quite like having a breakthrough moment. When you hear something that completely reframes how you view a challenging life situation that helps you move past the barrier and into a new headspace, it can be exhilarating.

 "Breakthrough is that moment when frustration, struggling, fear, worry, or anxiety disappears,” famed personal development coach Tony Robbins once said. “It's a moment of insight, recognition about who you are, and the realization that you are more than the moment. It's a radical, massive improvement in the quality of your life, and as a result, all those you have the privilege to touch."

 Here are some words of advice sentences that changed people’s lives.

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place, you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted: This is a spin on an old saying, They tried to bury us, but they didn't realize we were seeds.

Never try to hate anyone; often they don't care, and you're left doing all the work: Said by a friend of mine at a very critical time in my life. It's been said in other ways, but that one stuck with me for the last 35+ years. Makes me think of this gem: Never get in a fight with a pig. You both get covered in sh*t but the pig enjoys it. Hate corrodes the vessel it's carried in.

Have you had a bad day, or did you have a bad 5 minutes that you let ruin your day? I need someone to remind me of this sometimes! I'm not neurotypical and I can tell sometimes that when things can't go to my plan or agreed schedule it can be like a monkey wrench in a gear and just PAUSE my life in a way I hate sometimes.

People are quick to accept that the smallest change in the past can dramatically change the present, yet refuse to accept that the smallest action today can completely change the world: Hindsight’s 20/20 as they say, and it’s easier to know the difference between the outcome compared to the present. Whereas our current actions, we really have no way of knowing how it’ll affect the future, as there are so many other variables that could affect things, and we can’t see into the future.

Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm: This reminds of an African proverb Beware the naked man who offers you clothes.

 I love you enough to let you hate me

 Nothing is going to be different unless you do things differently: Nothing changes if nothing changes!

Living well is the best revenge: Instead of making yourself miserable stewing over the past, improve your life and make yourself happy. For the people that hate you, or just generally dislike you, there's nothing worse than seeing you be happy. If someone hurts you on purpose, you don't need to try and hurt them back, if you become obsessed with them, then they've won, but being happy and leading a good life is the best revenge you could have, because they'll hate to see it. If you can't love yourself for you, love yourself just out of spite towards the people who would bring you down.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough

Acceptance is the answer: When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. I was so consumed with everything that was wrong around me. It made me start looking at and adjusting myself instead. I can only control me.

You never know what someone is going through, always be kind: Always react with kindness. It costs you nothing and can make most situations much better.

Righty tighty, lefty loosey: Sometimes it’s the banal reminders that ground me!

The price of procrastination is the life you could have lived.

Let today be the day you learn the grace of letting go, and the power of moving on.

 

Girls and Boys Solve Math Problems Differently

This week's article summary is Girls and Boys Solve Math Problems Differently.

The big takeaway from this article is while girls typically get better grades in math classes—particularly in elementary and middle school--more boys than girls end up in jobs that requires math.

Girls have a greater tendency to follow the mathematical procedures taught by their teacher while boys are much more willing to be experimental and creative in devising their own methods and strategies for solving math problems.

This adventurousness of boys is advantageous when to comes to dealing with increasingly complex and multi-step math problems.

Certainly, there are other factors at work: for example, girls tend to be compliant in class and deferential to the teacher.

The pedagogy Trinity employs for teaching math emphasizes creative problem solving. We challenge students (both girls and boys) to find multiple ways to solve problems, helping to build deeper conceptual understanding. This deeper understanding of math concepts increases a student's confidence and flexibility when they encounter more complex math concepts and problems.

Joe

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Among high school students and adults, girls and women are much more likely to use traditional, step-by-step algorithms to solve basic math problems – such as lining up numbers to add, starting with the ones place, and “carrying over” a number when needed. 

Boys and men are more likely to use alternative shortcuts, such as rounding both numbers, adding the rounded figures, and then adjusting to remove the rounding.

Those who use traditional methods on basic problems are less likely to solve more complex math problems correctly. 

These are the main findings of two studies published in November 2025.

This new evidence may help explain an apparent contradiction in the existing research: girls do far better at math in school, but boys do better on high-stakes math tests and are more likely to pursue math intensive careers. 

Boys and girls approach math problems differently, in ways that persist into adulthood.

In a recent study of U.S. elementary students, boys outnumbered girls 4 to1 among the top 1% of scorers on national math tests. And over many decades, boys have been about twice as likely as girls to be among the top scorers on the SAT and AP math exams.

However, girls tend to be more diligent in elementary school and get better grades in math class throughout their schooling. 

When older adults think of math, they may recall memorizing times tables or doing the tedious, long-division algorithm. Memorization and rule-following can pay off on math tests focused on procedures taught in school, but more advanced math involves solving new, perplexing problems rather than following the rules.

In looking at studies of young children, the research team was struck by findings that young boys use more inventive strategies on computation problems, whereas girls more often use standard algorithms or counting. 

We suspected that girls’ tendency to use algorithms might stem from greater social pressure toward compliance, including complying with traditional teacher expectations. The research showed that girls were more likely to report a desire to please teachers, such as by completing work as directed. Those who said they did have that desire used the standard algorithm more often.

We identified some factors that may play a role in these gender differences, including spatial-thinking skills, which may help people develop alternate calculations approaches. Anxiety about taking tests and perfectionism, both more prevalent among women, may also be a factor.

While compliant behavior and standard math methods often lead to correct answers and good grades in school, we believe schools should prepare all students – regardless of gender – for when they face unfamiliar problems that require inventive problem-solving skills, whether in daily life, on high-stakes tests or in math-intensive professions.

Improvement in Youth Mental Health

This week's article summary is The Good News About the Youth Mental Health Crisis.

Particularly after the Covid pandemic, the mental health crisis in youths around the world has been in the spotlight.

While adolescence--at least since the 1950s when the idea of teen culture began--has included inevitable angst and self-doubt, the world today seems more dangerous and unpredictable. It used to be a given that the next generation in America would aspire and often achieve a higher quality of life than the previous one — especially when it came to material things like houses, cars, etc. The belief in continuous progress and increasing wealth is gone.

With more competition, not just from other people but from AI too, internal and external pressure to be perfect and excel in all things all the time, anxiety about the future, more online than in-person time, and politicians/social media influencers who often spew hateful, polarizing messages, the world today is more troubling than in previous generations.

All this uncertainty has had an adverse effect on today’s youth: anxiety, loneliness, depression.

Although many of us believe that teens are heading toward even deeper, darker abyss of emotional turmoil, the article below is a hopeful sign that adolescents in the aggregate may be starting to feel better about themselves and their future.

Part of the reason is that we adults, especially parents and teachers, have been more attuned to their needs and are more sensitive to their psychological well-being. For example, many of the schools our alums matriculate to have gone lighter on homework and overall academic workload. 

Part of it also may be that kids today recognize that to change the world for the better, they need to take more initiative and not entrust the older generation to shape the future. Think of the recent New York City mayoral election which was dramatically impacted by young voters.

Clearly the crisis isn’t over, and kids of all ages need our attention, empathy, compassion, and guidance; yet I am glad to see that that the data is moving in a positive direction regarding adolescent mental health.

Joe

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If there’s one settled fact about life online, it’s that negativity gets more attention than positivity. As one study of more than 100,000 headlines found, negative stories receive far more interest than positive ones. 

Which is why you probably haven’t yet heard the good news about the youth mental health crisis. 

The youth mental health crisis is real. The fact that young people have been struggling emotionally has earned extensive coverage for at least a half-decade, with good reason. Rates of anxiety and depression shot up among youth over the last several years. Horrifyingly, the suicide rate for 10- to 24-year-olds jumped 62 percent from 2007 to 2021. 

The numbers were so alarming that in 2021 the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association jointly declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health. That same year the U.S. Surgeon General issued a youth mental health advisory.

This wasn’t media overreaction. Young people really have been struggling mightily. But amid this tornado of alarming news, and with the internet’s baseline preference for negativity, it’s easy for glimmers of hope to get lost. 

Which is why most of us haven’t yet heard that the youth mental health crisis is showing signs of improvement.

That’s the message of a recent article in Greater Good Magazine by Anya Kamenetz. When it comes to young people’s mental health, “things have been looking up in many ways,” Kamenetz writes. “And while there are certainly still disparities and major gaps to be addressed, the incipient positive turn in youth well-being is not receiving the same amount of attention as the negative trendlines before it.” 

What are these underreported green shoots of good news? 

Kamenetz mentions several: 

• Data shows a two-year uptick in college students who are flourishing for the first time since 2012.
• Other sources indicate a small decrease in reported loneliness and anxiety among young people.
• Numbers from Health’s Youth Mental Health Tracker showed four-in-five reported being satisfied with life, happy, and feeling that what they do in life is meaningful in 2024.  
• In July 2024 94 percent of 10- to 18-year-olds told Gallup that they felt happiness “a lot” the previous day. 
• The National Institutes of Health reported an unprecedented trend in the reduction of illicit substance use among teenagers in 2024.

Taken together, all these data points paint a picture of young people who, while still worried about their future and the world’s many problems, are feeling slightly better overall. 

The data suggest something real has shifted. But at this early stage it’s not entirely clear what that is. Covid and all its attendant traumas slowly receding into the rearview mirror certainly can’t hurt. Kamenetz also suggests that the attention on youth mental health may have driven resources and funding towards the problem. 

Whatever the causes, these hopeful signs are encouraging. But that doesn’t mean we should declare “job done” and pop the champagne. 

There is still a lot of suffering out there, particularly among LGBTQ+, minority, and economically disadvantaged youth, Kamenetz stresses. We have a long way to go to help everyone who needs support. But it is important to notice success so we can build on them. 

There is another reason to notice and applaud signs that a turnaround in youth mental health is underway. All the recent doom and gloom on the subject in itself might be contributing to young people’s mental health issues.

Northwestern University psychology professors Vijay Mittal and Renee Engeln recently argued in theWall Street Journal that the attention given to the youth mental health crisis may be accidentally making it worse.

“The growing focus on students’ anxiety and depression, while well-intentioned, may be making psychological distress seem inevitable. Instead of fostering a supportive community for adolescent and young-adult students with mental-health concerns, we may be reinforcing a false and destructive belief that misery is universal among young people,” they warn.

Panicked headlines about sad teenagers may have inadvertently conveyed the message that, if you are a thoughtful, aware, kind kid, you will also inevitably be a miserable one. That messaging could nudge young people to over focus and even pathologize negative emotions that are a normal part of human life. 

“Emotions are contagious. When students internalize the idea that suffering is the norm, that norm—even when inaccurate—can foster a culture of misery,” the psychologists worry. 

Raising the alarm about suffering young people was the right thing to do. You need to know about a problem in order to solve it. But given what attracts most eyeballs in the media, it’s important to trumpet positive developments too. 

For one, we all need more positivity (and factual accuracy) in our lives. Plus, good news is energizing. If you see that your efforts are having an impact, you’ll likely be driven to work even harder. Finally, negativity can become a self-reinforcing cycle.

Teens who think being young means guaranteed mental health woes are more vulnerable to suffering. Thankfully, that’s not what the latest data says. 

Yes, the kids have been going through a very rocky patch. But evidence suggests things are starting to look a little more positive for youth mental health. Serious psychological suffering need not be an inevitable part of being young.