From College Fit to Failing Fast: Preparing Our Students

Our college process and philosophy: As we start a new year, I’d like to remind the group briefly about graduation last year.  As a community, we sent 51 happy, well adjusted and good looking young adults out into the world. 100% of them were accepted to a college or university where they were offered a total of 91 scholarships and grants totaling over $6 million.  One of those awards was the Jefferson Scholarship at the University of Virginia: Out of the 1750 nominees, only 34 awards were given. The Jefferson Scholarship includes full tuition, a stipend, summer travel study, and leadership training.  When I called an admissions counselor at Duke to explain why this young man would be turning them down, she paused only for a moment to say in a lovely southern accent, “Don’t worry, darling, that’s the same decision I would have made.” 

 

I tell you this not just because it’s a tremendous honor to teach students of this caliber, but to address the question that is frequently asked and always on someone’s mind about how many seniors will be attending an Ivy League school.  The better question is how many of them are at the school that is the right fit for them where they can be happy, insanely successful, and be trained for whatever comes next for them.  That is our goal in college admissions and we have a great track record. 

 

Taking risks with a second chance: The act of teaching is so uniquely creative, and rich with possibility that teachers are constantly trying new things, failing a dozen times en route to that magic moment of getting it right.  Failure is an essential part of learning and professional growth; you know this from your own work and endeavors. There is a sign that hangs in the robotics workspace that boldly proclaims ”Fail Fast”; that’s the spirit we want to help students embrace this year. Ultimately, we’re interested in what students do when they don’t know what to do.  I heard a story once that if life were like school and you got a flat tire, you would read about the science of a flat tire for three months, you’d practice changing a dozen or so, and then you’d actually get one on a bright sunny day on a wide and safe road. It never happens like that. It’s always dark, raining, and on some kind of incline. I hope you’ll notice teachers being more willing to provide students with second chances.  If mastery of a subject matter is what we’re after, we’ll be allowing students more opportunity to take academic risks and give it a shot, maybe fail or fall short, and to try again.

 

Mindfulness: Over the summer, the faculty reading was The Way of Mindful Education.  In addition to having many great ideas about how to use mindfulness in the classroom, it provided some evidence on why it is important.  You all know that we live in an overly busy, overly stressful world.  According to the work of Dr. Susan Smalley at UCLA, 1/3 of Americans report experiencing extreme levels of stress, and that that stress has increased over the last 5 years. She reports a dramatic increase in visits to family physicians due to stress related symptoms.  One in two adults has experienced a major psychiatric disorder in their lifetime and 1 in 5 children have one or more mental health or behavioral problems.  Mindfulness practice then is a way to focus your attention, to become more aware of present experience… to calm the mind… to focus. In people who participate in some mindful practice, studies show increased self-regulation, emotional stability, and enhanced cognition.  Blood pressure goes down, people experience better immune response, improved working memory, we sleep better, have more energy… stress and anxiety go down.

 

What does this mean for school?  We certainly have our fair share of stress here. Stress isn’t always a bad thing, but it is something that students and teachers alike need to know how to manage.  We started a pilot program of meditation in 9^th and 10^th grade English classes last year that went really well. We end each of our faculty meetings with a quiet moment for reflection, and this year, we’re going to give a concerted effort to practice mindfulness every day whether it be a guided meditation, a moment of silence, or even a walk outside. Each teacher will have a different idea about what will work best with their students, but what we’ve all committed to is to take time each day in our second period class for the practice.  I hope that you’ll see the effects of our work with your children and I encourage you to begin your own mindful practice.