Giving Thanks to Parents and Teachers

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I find myself focusing on the many people for whom and to whom I am grateful. As an Independent School educator, I think about the parents who send their children to our school. This requires an extraordinary commitment of time and resources—and reflects parents’ bedrock belief that few things in life are as important as their children’s education. As a parent, I think about the teachers who have shaped--and are now shaping--my daughters’ lives. These teachers are exceptional human beings who inspire my children to discover who they would dare to be.

With gratitude toward both parents and educators on my mind and in my heart, I’d like to recommend a particularly powerful book—a collection of essays compiled and edited by Jerry and Lorin Biederman entitled Parent School: Simple Lessons from the Leading Experts on Being a Mom and Dad. Now, you might be wondering why a book with this title would be an appropriate expression of gratitude to both parents and teachers. In a recent letter to our Summit parent body, I offer an answer to that question:

“Parenthood is a gift—in much the same way that being a teacher is a gift. Parents and teachers alike love our children—and are grateful for our time with them. As Thanksgiving approaches, the teachers join me in expressing our deep gratitude, what G.K. Chesterton described as “happiness doubled by wonder,” for all that you do and all that you are as parents—and, most especially, for the opportunity to live and learn with your children.”

I have told many audiences, and will continue to tell anyone who will listen, that the single most profound influence on my teaching and on my understanding of the developmental needs & characteristics of children—far beyond undergraduate work or doctoral studies or classroom research—has been my fifteen-year tenure as a father. And while the roles of educator and parent are distinct, they are also deeply connected. Yes, educators rely on parents to be experts in nurture, structure and latitude with children. Yes, parents rely on educators to be experts in child development, curriculum development and teaching & learning. And, of course, there are moments when these areas of expertise wonderfully and maddeningly overlap. Which brings us back to this brilliant collection of essays.

Parent School is divided into 12 sections, ranging from Parenting 101 (including essays such as “Tending Your Child’s Soul,” “The Seven Best Things a Parent Can Do,” “Four Thoughts for Parents from the Tao Te Ching,” “Raising Good Kids in a Troubled World”) to Lessons in Learning: Educating Our Next Generation (including essays such as “Learning is Really Fun,” “What is Smart? Understanding and Nurturing the Multiple Intelligences in Your Child,” “Children and Books”). The authors are as fascinating and varied as their topics. Everyone from Nancy Samalin (a pioneer in the field of parent education) to Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D. (child and adolescent psychiatrist and co-author of The Over-scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap) offers keen insights and expertise on topics that are at the core of our work as parents and as educators.

In the opening chapter, “Orientation,” the Biedermans offer several key points that speak to me every bit as much in my role as educator as they do in my role as parent:

• “After all, good parents are one of the four fundamentals needed for the raising of good kids—along with air, food, and waters. The very future of our society (not to mention the sanity in our homes) relies on the quality of the next generation.”

And, of course, right up there with those four fundamentals is a fifth element: Teachers. In fact, teachers are able to do a better job with children in school when parents do a better job with children outside of school. In short, parents and teachers alike deal with the whole child—and have an impact on the whole child.

• “Included in this book are inspired contributions on every subject of importance to parents, including the best ways to discipline your child; how to nurture self-esteem; making the most of our pediatrician’s visit; the art of listening to your child. . .dealing with divorce; building family values; the importance of play; making the most of education.”

The reality is that every one of these topics is crucial to parents and teachers alike.

• “Parent School is not intended to provide fast-food answers to parents’ questions. Rather, it offers gourmet appetizers, and readers are encouraged to go out and get the main course from those authors who match their taste.”

One of the beauties of this book is that it contains substantive essays from world-class experts on topics of keen interest to anyone who is committed, professionally or personally, to the healthy growth, development and education of children.

* * * * *

During a series of five separate “Parent Nights” this fall, I noted the following:

Each of these children is the center of someone’s universe. We celebrate that fact. And we’re mindful of it. That each of these children is the center of someone’s universe drives home the point that we as educators can’t support a child alone. We don’t know all that there is to know in that child’s universe. You as parents can’t support your child alone. Because a part of that universe is here at school. The good news is, together--as partners--we are able to act in the best interests of your child.

Now, that brings us back around to the essential point of this entry and my reason for recommending the reading of Parent School to both parents and educators: Our goals and responsibilities as parents and educators overlap in fundamental and profound ways—and even in the moments where our work and responsibilities are distinct, the success of each of us results in a synergy of benefits for the children to whom we have dedicated our lives.

In drawing this post to a close, I want to share five essential points from Laurel Schmidt’s essay “What is Smart?” For in answering the question “What does research tell us about how children learn best?”, Ms. Schmidt celebrates the crucial roles of both parents and educators. These five points, she writes, are what research tells us about how children learn best. And, of course, parents and teachers alike can apply these principles to our learning and living with children:

• Children learn through play. It’s the work of childhood.
• Children learn through hands-on experiences. Seeing, touching, tsting, and smelling are th e strongest modes for early learning.
• Children master communication by having conversations.
• Children learn by trying to solve real problems.
• Children find exploration and investigation intrinsically rewarding. The driving force is “What if. . .” and “I wonder. . .”

As we approach this Thanksgiving holiday, let's celebrate the roles of both parents and educators. As a parent, I want to express my deep gratitude to my children’s teachers. As an educator, I want to express equally deep gratitude to my students’ parents. And to both groups I want to say thank you for investing your life’s blood in soulful, profoundly important work. What could be more important or meaningful than our collective commitment to these children? Happy Thanksgiving!

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Meaningful Learning: Linking What Goes on in School with our Students' Aspirations

There are times when apparent synchronicity in life startles me—and teaches me a thing or two. Recently two different parents passed along to me material to read and consider. The first parent emailed to me a link to Tim Ferris’ (author of The 4-Hour Workweek) blog entry on Josh Waitzkin. You might recognize Waitzkin as the subject of the book and movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and as an eight-time National Chess Champion in his youth. In this particular blog post, Ferris quotes extensively from an article by Waitzkin on “the multi-tasking virus” prevalent among college students in the classroom. Interestingly enough, Waitzkin’s article starts off ostensibly about “Classrooms across America [being] overrun by the multi-tasking virus.” Drawing on solid cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience, Waitzkin writes,

“Students defend this trend [of multi-tasking in the classroom by things such as surfing the internet while the professor is speaking] by citing their generation’s enhanced ability to multi-task. Unfortunately, the human mind cannot, in fact, multi-task without drastically reducing the quality of our processing. Brain activation for listening is cut in half if the person is trying to process [competing] visual input at the same time. A recent study at The British Institute of Psychiatry showed that checking our email while performing another creative task decreases your IQ in the moment 10 points. That is the equivalent of not sleeping for 36 hours—more than twice the impact of smoking marijuana.” Important—and true. But no surprises here.

And then Waitzkin gets really interesting—and drives home his true thesis—in his next sentence:

“But to be honest, on the educational front, multi-tasking feels to me like a symptom of a broader sense of alienation.”

Now THAT’S a thought-provoking statement—and fundamentally connected to the thesis of another article recently passed along to me by a parent. In his article “Education and the Path to Purpose,” author, researcher and Stanford professor (Director of The Center on Adolescence) William Damon argues, “When young people spend countless hours, days, and weeks on activities that they find meaningless, there are psychological and social costs.” Further, Damon contends, “With the exception of a relatively small proportion of students (in the diverse national sample of my recent study, about one in five), young people in our country do not see the link between what goes on their schools and their aspirations for their lives.” Hard to imagine a more sure-fire recipe for alientation. (Please refer to Damon's recent book The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life.)

Waitzkin’s 2-part article on Ferris’ blog serves as a kind of précis for his recent (and compelling) book The Art of Learning. In Part 2 of the article featured on Ferris blog, Waitzkin lays out 6 key points that have direct application to teaching and learning and, quite remarkably, dovetail beautifully with 4 points by Damon:

• “Instead of cultivating my natural strengths, [my chess coach] boxed me into the cookie cutter mold he knew. In time, I lost touch with my intuitive feeling for chess, and without an internal compass I foundered in the swells fame and high-pressured competition.”

• “Too many primary, elementary, and high schoolers are being boxed into the mold of conformity required by big classes, competition for grades, test with multiple-choice answers. . .Part of the responsibility lies in public policies like No Child Left Behind, the standardized tests that are turning education into a forced march, and a culture that bombards us with so much stimulation that it is difficult to know what to focus on. . .The problem with this is that we get stretched along the superficial outer layers of many things. I believe in depth over breadth in the learning process.”

• “Young learners have immense pressure to perform, to get good grades, but no one is listening to the nuance of their minds. They feel suppressed, they are suppressed, and by the time students get to college, they have become disconnected from the love of learning.”

• “[Barnard professor Dennis Dalton’s] classroom is an environment for reflection, introspection, and letting resonant themes sink into your being. Unfortunately, to these college students, the notion of delighting in the subtle ripples of learning is almost laughable. Who has the time?”

• “Multi-tasking is just a symptom of a broader cultural disconnect that emerges from too much rigidity and too little creativity in our educational and corporate worlds. If we love what we are doing, odds are we will want to focus on it. So the solution is two pronged—help people discover the love, and arm them with strategies to zone in when they want to.”

• “As parents, teachers, and coaches, we must reach children when they are young, nurture their natural curiosity, help them understand their minds. Teachers have a responsibility to listen first—is a child auditory, kinesthetic, or visual? Are they naturally extroverted or introverted? What excites them? What gets their creative juices flowing? How can we take that unique potential and help it grow? How can we help our child enjoy learning instead of being paralyzed by external pressures?”

As if in response to Waitzkin’s broadsides against rigidity and lack of creativity in schools, Damon offers four insights into and approaches toward a curriculum of engagement:

• “Not only does an overemphasis on test-taking restrict teachers’ judgments about how and what students should learn, it crowds out time for discussing with students the broader questions of what a person can and should do with academic knowledge in the world beyond school, the all-important question: What is the purpose of learning?”

• “Above all, schools must address this “why” question about everything they do. Why do people study math and science? Why is it important to read and write? To spell words correctly? Why do we expect you, and your fellow students, to excel in the work that we assign to you? The answer to such questions must be more substantial and more stirring than the generic response, ‘You need to do well in school in order to graduate and get a job.’”

• “Beyond the curriculum, schools can introduce students to a rich array of options for purposeful pursuits through programs in art, music, sports, language, theatre, and all the other extracurricular activities that schools at their best have offered students.”

• “[Students] need schools that stir their imaginations and give them a chance to discover their deepest and most enduring interests. During their crucial formative years, students need schools that help them decide what kind of person they wish to become.”

* * * * *

Founded in 1933 during a time when many other schools were eliminating programs, Summit came into being as a school featuring rich, comprehensive programs and focusing on the education of the whole child—a focus that pivots on meaningful learning. Day-in and day-out over the past seventy-five years, Summit has earned a reputation for embracing its core values and living its mission. Summit is well-known for providing a challenging curriculum within a caring environment to help all students develop their full potential. The cornerstone of the Summit educational experience is the cultivation in our students of the following:

• a strong academic, athletic, artistic, and technological foundation;
• an ethical compass, guided by character, confidence and competence;
• an intellectual curiosity, including critical and creative thinking with a commitment to lifelong learning;
• a global awareness with an embracement of diversity and a collaborative spirit;
• a commitment to civic responsibility, service and stewardship.

These five elements represent our infrastructure as a school community for helping our students establish their own, in William Damon’s words, "path to purpose." The combination of academic, athletic, artistic and technological challenge and support in the context of students’ curiosity, character, creativity, collaborative spirit, and civic responsibility represents our deep commitment to meaningful learning that lasts a lifetime. This kind of experience hinges on our practice of the art of learning and feeds that deep human drive to find one's calling in life. Is there any more meaningful work than this?

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Key Trends in Learning & Teaching Part 5: Expecting School Leaders to Provide Expertise in Teaching and Learning

A cornerstone of advocacy for our children as 21st century learners and leaders is the emerging role of principals, superintendents, division heads and heads of school as teaching and learning leaders.

There is no question regarding the single most significant impact on student learning: the quality of the classroom teacher (just refer to Robert Marzano’s book Classroom Instruction that Works—and the rich body of research that supports it or John Bransford and the National Research Council's How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School).

Who is fundamentally responsible for that quality? School administrators. And how do they provide it?

By keeping up with cutting edge research from across disciplines and throughout the world on teaching and learning.

By cultivating school cultures in which teachers leverage one another’s expertise (e.g., by systematically visiting one another’s classrooms and providing feedback and by engaging in self-selected professional study groups) as the rich resource it is.

By providing teachers with opportunities to participate in world-class professional development opportunities through local as well as national organizations, everything from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to the National Association of Independent Schools to the International Reading Association.

School administrators have the fundamental and profound responsibility of supporting the lifelong learning of those who teach our children. To provide this support, school administrators must themselves be lifelong learners who participate in the larger, global conversation about teaching and learning in the 21st century. Parents should expect—and administrators should provide—nothing less.

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