A couple of weeks ago I shared a short story about C. Devine, a former student of mine.  My story of her was apropos of my finally sharing the anticipated Shine Manifesto with you.  Though I have not spoken to C. Devine in almost eight years, she was an appropriate subject for that day's story because as an undergraduate student C. Devine exemplified "shine."  

A fun factoid about shine is that, once shine is in your DNA it is always in your DNA.  

Heather helped me track C. Devine down on-line and this recently written bio that we found is perfect proof of my factoid.  Take a look.

C. Devine, a native of Atlanta, is a graduate of the University of Georgia where she earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Journalism and English. While at UGA, Ms. Devine lived abroad and studied at a university in Spain. After graduating from college, Ms. Devine went on to teach middle school English in Baltimore, Maryland as member of the Teach For America Corps. There, she graduated from The Johns Hopkins University with a Master's degree in English Education. Later, Ms. Devine returned to Atlanta to teach in the City Schools of Decatur, where she founded and led a running empowerment program for middle school girls. Ms. Devine spent this past year teaching at a primary bilingual school in rural Honduras. Ms. Devine is fluent in Spanish and in her free time she enjoys running, traveling, writing and Latin dancing. Ms. Devine is excited to be a part of the ACMS team!

See what I mean?  Once shine is in your DNA, it is always in your DNA.

Flooding Ms. Devine's mailbox will be like coming full circle - I bring her name up to create context for my Shine Manifesto. My Manifesto talks about principles of shine, and now - eight years later - we are flooding C. Devine's mailbox to tell her she shines.  It just feels right.

Please join me.  Write a short note.  "C. Devine, we know you are out there doing great things in your corner of the world and we just want to thank you for shining."  Place it in a yellow envelope... or a white envelope decorated with yellow markers.  Write the words, "Yellow Envelope Project" in the return address, and commit to mailing sometime before next Saturday.  That's it. 

Shining off until Monday...