There’s a reason why people in the Renaissance commissioned masters to capture their likeness in swirls of paint, why people in the 1800s flocked to studios to have their daguerreotypes etched on silver plates, and why even today we stand with arms extended to snap a steady stream of selfies. Portraits? They’re powerful.

No one knows this better than French artist JR, whose super sized black-and-white portraits have been pasted on walls, scaffolds and rooftops all around the world. As the winner of the 2011 TED Prize, JR launched the global art project, INSIDE OUT, to share the power of portraiture with the world. The INSIDE OUT project invites anyone, anywhere, to take portraits in their community with a social message in mind. JR’s studio then prints them up as large-scale posters and mails them back to be displayed in a public space. So far, more than 300,000 portraits have gone up in 140 countries. Schools make up more than 30% of the project participants.

In schools, the project can be a classroom catalyst for starting conversations on social justice, tolerance and the power of art. Over the next few months, INSIDE OUT is making a special commitment to education — and if you’re an educator, they need your help!

As an educator, you can participate in the project by sharing your students’ portraits in the form of a giant mosaic. To get started, follow these 4 simple steps:

• Register as a group leader by emailing education@insideoutproject.net.
• Take portraits of students, teachers and any other members of the school community.
• Send INSIDE OUT these portraits (as high resolution photos) via Dropbox or WeTransfer. After your photos are approved, JR’s studio will edit, print, and ship the portraits back to you.
• Paste these portraits on your school walls or in another visible place.

By participating in INSIDE OUT, your school will be part of a global art initiative that’s changing the world one poster at a time. And if you’re in in one of the following states in the US, you can help INSIDE OUT in their drive toward inspiring actions in schools in all 50 states. Email education@insideoutproject.net for more information.

Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
Arizona
Connecticut
Delaware
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Kansas
Kentucky
Maine
Minnesota
Missouri
Montana
North Dakota
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Virginia
Vermont
Wisconsin
West Virginia
Wyoming

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“Citizen science” projects can boost student engagement by giving kids the opportunity to help solve real-world problems, in fields ranging from archaeology to zoology. One citizen science option that we recommend is GlobalXplorer, a new platform launched by archaeologist (and TED Prize winner) Sarah Parcak. Here’s how it works:

There are millions of lost temples, buried pyramids, and other archaeological sites around the world. Many of these sites contain ancient art, history, and artifacts — precious evidence of humankind’s collective resilience and creativity.

Your mission is to help protect these archaeological sites from looters. To succeed, you’ll need to study satellite images for signs of looting. In GlobalXplorer, these images are called “tiles.”

There are 120 million tiles in GlobalXplorer’s first expedition: Expedition Peru. So, archaeologists really need your help!

Can you examine 500 tiles?

To start your citizen science project with GlobalXplorer’s Expedition Peru, go here. 

To learn more about the history of exploration in Peru, start with this 1913 National Geographic article about Machu Picchu.

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Sometime between the first bite of turkey and the last slice of pie, it’ll happen: a lull in the dinner conversation. What will you do next? If you’re breaking bread with acquaintances, you might turn small talk into smart conversation or choose to talk about politics constructively. But if you’re with family and friends and want to deepen the ties that bind, then try asking one of the following 10 questions around the table, as recommended by StoryCorps founder (and 2015 TED Prize winner) Dave Isay:

What are you grateful for?

What are you proudest of?

What’s been the happiest moment of your life so far?

What’s been the hardest moment of your life, and how did you get through it?

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?

How would you describe yourself as a child? Were you happy?

Who has been kindest to you?

How do you want to be remembered?

If your great great grandchildren could listen to this years from now: is there any wisdom you’d want to pass on to them? What would you want them to know?

If you could honor one person in your life — living or dead — by listening to their story, who would that be, what would you ask them and why?

Need some inspiration first? Below, check out 3 stories of gratitude and thanksgiving, chosen by Dave Isay. For more stories from the heart, listen to these 7 unforgettable StoryCorps tales and read Ties That Bind: Stories of Love and Gratitude from the First Ten Years of StoryCorps.

“I put an ad in the local paper and offered to cook Thanksgiving dinner for twelve people.”
“Scott Macaulay remembers how, 25 years ago, he started an annual holiday dinner for strangers who have nowhere else to go.” Listen to his story.

“If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody.”
“In 2013, Maurice Rowland was working as a cook at Valley Springs Manor, an assisted living home for elderly residents in California. He got his friend Miguel Alvarez a job there as a janitor last fall. But in October of that year the company that managed the home suddenly shut it down, leaving many of the elderly residents with nowhere to go. The staff stopped being paid so they all left, except for Maurice and Miguel. At StoryCorps they remembered caring for abandoned residents until the fire department and sheriff took over three days later.” Listen to their story. 

“A good man”
“Bryan Wilmoth and his seven younger siblings were raised in a strict, religious home. At StoryCorps, Bryan talks with his brother Mike about what it was like to reconnect years after their dad kicked Bryan out for being gay.” Watch the animated story.

The article above was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas.ted.com article. Image credit: iStock

You don’t “find your calling,” you fight for it — and other lessons from people who found their passion (sometimes late in life).

Whether it was during a career aptitude test or in a heart-to-heart chat, chances are someone has talked to you about how to “find your calling.” It’s one of those phrases people toss about. But StoryCorps founder Dave Isay takes issue with it … specifically, the verb. “Finding your calling — it’s not passive,” he says. “When people have found their calling, they’ve made tough decisions and sacrifices in order to do the work they were meant to do.” In other words, you don’t just “find” your calling — you have to fight for it. And it’s worth the fight. “People who’ve found their calling have a fire about them,” says Isay, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize. “They’re the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work.” Over a decade of listening to StoryCorps interviews, Isay noticed that people often share the story of how they discovered their calling — and now, he’s collected dozens of great stories on the subject into a new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. Below, he shares 7 takeaways from the hard-won fight to find the work you love.

1. Your calling is at the intersection of a Venn diagram of three things: doing something you’re good at, feeling appreciated, and believing your work is making people’s lives better. “When those three things line up, it’s like lightning,” Isay says. He doesn’t suggest that a person has to be a surgeon saving lives to feel like they have a calling; think of the diner waitress who talks to customers and makes them feel loved. How do you find this overlap? “You have to shut out all the chatter of what your friends are telling you to do, what your parents are telling you to do, what society is telling you to do,” Isay says, “and just go to that quiet place inside you that knows the truth.”

2. Your calling often comes out of difficult experiences. What lurks in that quiet place will be a defining experience — quite possibly a painful one. Isay points to an interview in Callings with 24-year-old teacher Ayodeji Ogunniyi. “He was studying to be a doctor when his father was murdered. He realized that what he was really meant to do was be a teacher,” says Isay. “He says that every time he walks into a classroom, his father is walking in with him.” This theme of people turning their hardest experiences into a new path runs throughout the book. “Having an experience that really shakes you and reminds you of your mortality can be a very clarifying event in people’s lives. Oftentimes, it leads to changes,” he says. “We spend a lot of time working, so it can really change your priorities in terms of work life.”

3. Calling often takes courage and ruffles feathers. Elsewhere in Callings, we hear about Wendell Scott, who became the first African-American NASCAR driver in 1952, and kept on driving despite threats against his life. From scientist Dorothy Warburton who dealt with extreme sexism as she conducted research to break the stigma around miscarriage. From Burnell Cotlon, who opened the first grocery store in the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina because he wasn’t about to let his old neighborhood’s spirit fade. Calling, says Isay, very often starts with taking a stand against a status quo that simply isn’t acceptable, and then dedicating your work to changing it: “It’s work ignited by hope, love, or defiance — and stoked by purpose and persistence.”

4. Other people often nudge you toward your calling. Sharon Long had worked odd jobs most of her life. As Isay tells it, “Her daughter was going to college, and as the bursar was helping them with financial aid forms, she said quietly to herself, ‘I wish I could’ve gone to college.’ The bursar responded, ‘It’s not too late.’” Sharon enrolled in an art program, and on her advisor’s suggestion, took forensic anthropology as her science. “The advisor suggested it for no other reason than he thought it was the easiest science course for the science requirement,” says Isay. “But the minute she sat in that class, it was boom — this is what she was meant to do.” Isay tells this story to illustrate how calling, while very personal, is also relational. “People bump you this way and that way,” he says, often without realizing it. “When people find their callings, they want to honor those people who helped them get there.”

5. What comes after identifying your calling is what really matters. The old ‘finding your calling’ phraseology makes it sound like a calling is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — you find it, and the story’s over. But Isay stresses that your calling is an ongoing process. “Understanding what your calling is — that’s very different than the blood, sweat and tears of actually doing it,” he says. Pursuing a calling may require going back to school or apprenticing; it may require starting a business. Often, notes Isay, it leads a person into a line of work that’s in service of others. “This book is basically a love letter to nurses, teachers, social workers — the people who don’t often get celebrated for the work they do,” he says.

6. Age is irrelevant. Isay found his calling when he was 21 and interviewed a man who’d been part of the Stonewall riots. “The minute I hit record, I knew that being a journalist and interviewing people was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” he says. “I feel very lucky that lightning struck when I was very young.” But collecting stories for the book reminded him that a calling can be discovered at any age. The book includes an interview with someone who knew they wanted to be an NBA referee at age 15, and another who worked as an accountant for 30 years before discovering his passion for slicing lox. “Doing the work you’re meant to do is one of the most satisfying, remarkable experiences that a person can have,” says Isay, “so never give up.”

7. Calling often doesn’t come with a big paycheck. Another trend Isay sees in stories of people who find their calling: they often involve leaving a high-paying job for one that’s lower-paying but more satisfying. “The message we send to young people is that you want to do as little work as you can to make as much money as you can — that’s the dream,” says Isay. “But the wisdom in the StoryCorps archive is that there’s another, much more rewarding dream of taking risks and working very hard to live with integrity.” In the end, that’s the lesson he took away from writing this book. “There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no celebrities, nobody with a big Twitter following,” he says. “Just stories that can teach us a lot about lives fully lived.”

This article first appeared on Ideas.ted.com. To learn more about StoryCorps and the TED Prize, watch this TED-Ed Original video.

Featured image: Emily Pidgeon/TED

Sarah Parcak has one of the coolest jobs in the world. As a modern-day Indiana Jones, she looks at infrared satellite images of Earth to help identify lost pyramids and ancient cities across North Africa, Europe and the Mediterranean. Then, she grabs her hat and travels to these sites to help explore, preserve and protect the past.

What advice does she give to students interested in archaeology? Here’s what she told them at TEDYouth in 2015.

Get ready for an era of discovery. “Here’s the thing,” says Parcak. “Every week in my lab, my team and I are challenged by trying to find new archaeological sites in places all over the world where I don’t think we’re going to find anything, and guess what? I’m nearly always wrong. Everywhere we look we find new settlements, new temples, and even potential pyramids, showing us that we need to reassess and reanalyze almost every archaeological site in the world.”

Study science, because that’s the future of archaeology. ”The most incredible innovations in archaeology are happening today because of inventions in areas like DNA mapping, chemical testing, and 3D laser scanning,” says Parcak. These technologies weren’t even around 20 years ago. I think that there are millions of undiscovered archaeological sites around the world, and the only way that we’re going to find them is by using satellites and as-yet undeveloped technologies that you all will help invent.”

Learn from the innovators of the past. For example, says Parcak, ”In Jordan, the world-famous archaeological site of Petra was home to the Nabataeans, an incredible civilization that lived there 2,000 years ago. The Nabataeans were geniuses at water management, collecting millions of gallons of water per year in cisterns that allowed them to have incredible trade and amass great wealth. It’s amazing that they were able to have their civilization in this desert that gets less than six inches of water per year. It shows us just how resilient and creative human beings can be in the face of extreme environmental challenges.”

Read more about Sarah Parcak here.

Featured image credit | TED-Ed Lesson: How to make a mummy.

Anonymous companies are often used to cover up crime. Global Witness, the anti-corruption organization co-founded by TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch, calls anonymous companies the “getaway cars for the world’s criminals and corrupt.” In this animated video, Global Witness explains how it works.

These crimes frequently impact young people. One example: In their case report on anonymous companies, Global Witness notes that in Ohio, one school district’s IT manager set up a number of anonymous companies and billed his school district for $3.4 million in products and services never rendered. Then, there’s the case of American mobsters Nicodemo Scarfo and Salvatore Pelullo, who opened anonymous companies in the name of their children, and used these entities to steal $12 million and “buy fast cars, jewelry and a yacht they named ‘Priceless,’” as well as firearms. And the case of Interfarm, an anonymous company based in Oregon that sold vaccines to the Ukrainian government for double their real cost, leading to fewer children receiving their required vaccines, including the one against polio.

Young people are connected around the globe. This all speaks to an even larger point, says Mark Hays of Global Witness. “Anonymous companies are the vehicle all these different bad actors use to pull off schemes. In essence, the institutions created by people in one country are helping support these activities; sometimes enthusiastically and other times by turning a blind eye,” he says. “What this can teach a student, at any age, is that the notion that injustice in one country is somehow not connected to the actions and responsibilities of other countries is just false. If they want to be a part of challenging injustice, they need to understand the systemic ways these problems occur.” Read Global Witnesses’ case report on anonymous companies.

Knowledge can help you challenge injustice. With the 2014 TED Prize, Charmian Gooch called for the first public registry of who owns companies — a big leap toward ending the practice of anonymous companies. As the animated video explains, knowing this simple information could “allow us as the general public to understand the flow of enormous sums of money that impact politics, our daily lives and the health of our world.” Watch Charmian Gooch’s TED Prize talk to learn more.

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Everyone has a story. What’s yours? What about your parents and teachers? Your elders and mentors? Now is a great time to add all of these stories to the largest living archive of human voices on the planet: StoryCorps

The first draft of history is happening all around you

What if Anne Frank hadn’t kept a diary? What if no one could listen to Martin Luther King’s Mountaintop speech? What if the camera hadn’t been rolling during the first moon landing? Actively listening to the voices of the past and the people who matter to us is important, and StoryCorps wants you to lend your voice to history, too. To learn how, watch this TED-Ed Animation below.

To start a conversation across generations, try a few questions like these suggested by StoryCorps.

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