Blog - Head's Notes

Each year, before they head off on their senior projects, seniors participate in exit interviews with administrators and Trustees.  In small groups, we ask all of them a stock set of questions about their Holton experiences that generally fall into two categories: what was good and what could be better.  As you might imagine, we gain a lot of good information from these conversations and to the degree that there are clear themes, we try to use what they share to make Holton an even better place.

I thought you might be interested to hear what these girls, reflecting back on a period of ten to two years at Holton, think about their experience.  I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that there are certain departments they praise and some they feel could use improvement; it probably also won’t surprise you to know that while there’s a lot of agreement, sometimes there are diametrically opposing views.  Some would like more recognition for the arts.  Some yearn for more school spirit, especially attendance at games.  They would like more time with their advisors; they would value more field trips; and they wish we did more with Landon.  They would like more time for clubs, community service, and spirit activities.  While they really appreciate some assemblies, they wonder about the utility of some others.  Some of them feel that we’ve gone too far in reducing competition – some groups or individuals should win and others lose.  Some wish we focused more on women while others thinks we are too female-centric.  Almost in acclamation, they would embrace more cross-divisional activities.

While we take very seriously the issues the seniors raise in their exit interviews when themes emerge, we believe it’s equally important to emphasize what they value -- what was particularly special or important to them.  The list is long.  The relationships they have with each other and with their teachers, relationships that define the character of the Holton community, always rank towards the top.   Repeatedly, they praise their teachers’ enthusiasm, passion for their subjects, and the commitment to their students.  They feel their teachers are always available to help, for academics and for other issues.  As one girl said, “there is always someone to talk to; someone always willing to listen.”  They feel that their teachers “take an interest in your life.”  Most importantly, they believe that their “teachers really care and want their students to do well.”    While they frequently acknowledge that they’ve worked hard at Holton, it rarely comes out in a negative way.  Instead, they express appreciation for the challenge, they recognize and appreciate that they learn a lot and are well prepared for college.  They want to work hard for these teachers who care about them and support them.  As one student observed, “We are willing to do the work; it’s self induced stress.”

There is no doubt that these girls work hard.  By the students’ own estimation, Holton teaches values like commitment and dedication; they develop a work ethic.  But this happens in an environment that they term “comfortable and safe.”  They attribute this security, in part, to being single sex: “the all girls is the best part -- you do things in the classroom, like talk more, that you wouldn’t do otherwise.”  Another girl praised the “comfort in the classroom; being able to say what you want and ask questions – you aren’t judged or put down.”  Still another senior contrasted her previous school where competition and cheating were the norm to Holton which “is competitive but we don’t put each other down.”  Someone else similarly observed “you do your own best; it’s not super competitive” and she underscored collaboration while other classmates pointed to teamwork and community as Holton values.  The “close community” means a great deal to the girls and they treasure the fact that “everyone is friendly” and you “can go up to anyone in the class and have a casual conversation.” 

Their teachers create an environment in which the girls develop confidence.  One girl noted that she used to be “so shy” and now she is “able to speak up in discussion”; she is “way more involved.”  Another commented that Holton has “taught me to be confident in what I’m saying.” Among the values Holton teaches, they repeatedly site “confidence,” “self-awareness,” and “sense of self.”  In addition to their caring, challenging teachers and their small classes, they recognize that the “all girls program breeds confidence.”

Healthy communities depend on respect and trust, both qualities the class of 2010 avow as Holton values.  They point to “acceptance of others’ values” and “of others in general”; “respect for diversity”; “openness to individuality-not judgmental”; “interest in differences and appreciation of quirks”; and two of my favorites, “not all snobby and rich” and “private schools are not elitist but normal”  – all qualities that imply mutual respect.   Their plaid skirts even play a role: they unite them and identify them, but as one said, “there is still room for individual expression.”

Trust among members of the school community also distinguishes the Holton experience.  It is the Honor Code that forms the foundation for the spirit of trust, and the students value the Honor Code enormously.  One girl said emphatically, “We all respect and follow it.”  There is a general sense that “everyone has integrity.”  “Not cheating is ingrained in us, not like other schools where cheating is rampant.”   And the trust between students and faculty that the Honor Code promotes further strengthens student-faculty relationships.  Integrity comes up repeatedly as a value Holton instills.

Not surprisingly as adolescent girls, the class of 2010’s most memorable activities are those involving each other.  They have reveled in the class sleepovers preceding Junior Rising Up Day, the First Day of School, and Senior Spirit Day.  Anything, such as Lip Sync, that promotes bonding amongst themselves earns high marks.  They also love activities that connect them with the larger school community.  They still reminisce fondly about their third grade buddies from when they were sixth graders.  Happy Birthday Holton is another highlight.  Morning assembly ranks as a favorite because, as one girl put it, of “the ability to come together as a community every morning.”  Likewise, Convocation and Thanksgiving Assembly as well as Spirit Week – especially the Freeze Dance – figure prominently in their memories because they are occasions when the whole school gathers as one.

 These girls have worked hard, sometimes struggled and been frustrated, but leave proud of all they have accomplished and the self-confident, thoughtful, motivated, respectful, open-minded, committed, honest young women they’ve grown into.  They live by the Holton motto, I will find a way or make one” and are proud to be Holton girls, a pride “that will carry on.” When asked how they describe Holton to outsiders, they say things like “I love it!” and “the best decision I ever made.”  We can’t ask for more than that.

At this time of year, people frequently say to me, “the year’s almost over” or “the year is winding down.”  These comments always make me smile and also prompt a twinge of anxiety because no time of year is busier in a school.  One celebration follows another as we mark milestones and honor achievement climaxing in graduation and ending with closing faculty meetings.  As Head of School, I play a key role in many of these events, events that represent momentous occasions in people’s lives.  To say the pressure is enormous would be a gross understatement!  So I am hoping you will understand that this will be my next to last column.  This week, I’m going to look back at my columns over the course of the year and offer some thoughts – even suggestions – for summer. 

Our most important goal is to help our students become healthy, happy, successful, contributing members of society, a goal we know we share with you, their parents.  We also now know that being happy makes us healthier and more successful.  Plus there is the added benefit that our happiness affects people as distant from us as friends of friends of friends.  Summer is a time to take a breath, reflect and build on the past year, try some new things, and prepare for the next year.  It’s a great time to do things we haven’t had time for during the year; it’s a great time to focus on some of the actions we can take to be more fulfilled and happy.

We know from Martin Seligman and the Positive Psychology movement that there are six virtues that when embraced help ensure happiness.

• Wisdom and knowledge
• Courage
• Humanity
• Justice
• Temperance
• Transcendence

You may recall that three to five strengths flesh out each of these virtues, making for twenty-four strengths that help determine happiness. While all character strengths “contribute to fulfillment, strengths ‘of the heart’ – zest [courage], gratitude [humanity], hope, and love [transcendence]” have a greater impact on “life satisfaction” than the other strengths.  These are the qualities that we should most encourage our girls to cultivate. 

Researcher Marcus Buckingham explored the “secrets” of the happiest and most successful women, research that leads him to urge us to do four things, all of which really involve cultivating our virtues and strengths:

1.       Focus on moments, more than goals, plans or dreams.

He suggests that we focus on what he calls “strong moments,” times that when we think back on them “will be a vivid, detailed moment.” It is in these moments that we can find our true selves, what we really care about, what energizes us, what genuinely makes us happy.

2.       Accept what we find

What Buckingham means by “accept what we find” is to acknowledge and accept what those strong moments tell us about ourselves and don’t try to be something we’re not.

3.       Strive for Imbalance

As Buckingham says, “Pinpoint the strong-moments in each aspect of your life and then gradually target or tilt your life toward them. This means being as deliberate as you can about making them happen.”

4.       Learn to say "Yes."

If we’re going to find the right imbalance, we need to say yes to those activities that generate strong moments. 

Summer is a good time for girls to identify and contemplate their strong moments and think about ways to capitalize on them.  It’s so important that young people follow their hearts and passions, not what we might like for them or even what we might have planned for them if those plans are not right for them.   Because they’re young, and still have much to explore about the world and about themselves, they should have some trial and error in terms of finding the right imbalance.  They should gradually be developing strategies that work into lifelong passions and goals, passions and goals that will hopefully lead to happy and fulfilling lives.

Seligman and his colleagues help us along the road by proposing several very specific steps, more tactics than strategies, that research proves will make us happy.

• The gratitude visit
• Three good things in life
• Using signature strengths in a new way

“Using signature strengths in a new way” bears the closest resemblance to Buckingham’s recommendations.  By taking an inventory Seligman has created (which you can find on his website at www.authentichappiness.org), you identify your top five signature strengths from the list of six virtues and twenty-four strengths.  Each day, you should try to use one of your signature strengths in a new way.  Presumably, your “strong moments” draw on your signature strengths, so using your signature strengths helps you say yes to cultivate the appropriate imbalance in your life.

I’m sure you’ll all remember the “gratitude visit” prescription: write a letter to someone who has made a difference in your life and then go visit him/her to share your gratitude in person.  If you or your daughter hasn’t done this yet, please try it.  I still feel a rush of warmth whenever I think of my experience thanking my mentor Ann Hall. 

For “three good things in life,” each day you record three positive things that happened with an explanation of their cause.  This exercise can easily be expanded to become a “gratitude journal,” a measure recommended by another member of the Positive Psychology movement, Robert Emmons. 

Emmons encourages us to move beyond seeking happiness to achieve a state of gratefulness.  He has shown that when people are actively grateful, they are healthier, feel better, are more optimistic, and feel more connected to others.  He even found that they exercise more and sleep better.  Gratitude also has the advantage of being “other-centered” where as the pursuit of happiness can be more “self-centered” (even though being happy helps those around us). 

When we keep a gratitude journal, we spend a little time each day recording everything for which we are thankful.  I’ve been religiously keeping a gratitude journal for several months now and can’t speak highly enough about its salutary effects.  Even on the worst days, I’ve been able to find at least two things for which I am thankful and some days there are a dozen or more.  It helps me to reflect on my day and go to sleep with positive thoughts coursing through my brain.  If you haven’t adopted this habit, summer seems the perfect time.  Buy a pretty notebook, clip a pen to it, and start counting your blessings.

Everytime I heard coverage of the volcano in Iceland, I thought of Eric Weiner’s fascination with this magical country.  You may remember that their attachment to nature explained in part the happiness of both the Icelanders and the Swiss.   This is another promoter of happiness that summer is a perfect time to indulge.  Whether it’s a picnic in a local park, a ride along the canal, or a visit to some natural spot far from home, let’s get our children outside communing with nature!  And preferably outside for some unstructured activity (remember the importance of boredom, one of the many gifts that snowmaggedon gave us – it stimulates the imagination and gives our brains a rest).  My next read is Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.  Louv believes that our entire society is suffering because children have been divorced from nature: they study the Amazon rainforests in school but they don’t play in the fields and woods as generations before them did.  Louv is advocating for more unstructured time in nature because he believes in “the wonderful things that nature play can do for kids, like reducing the symptoms of ADHD, stress reduction, increased creativity, cognitive skills, and full use of the senses,” as he explained in an interview with Salon.com in 2005.

And while we’re outside, let’s think about the environment.  Summer’s warm weather and more relaxed schedules make it easier to dedicate ourselves to green behavior: use less water, eat less meat, walk or ride a bicycle instead of driving, turn off the lights and unplug as much as possible, hang the laundry out to dry.  So far, in the pledges I made in my Earth Day column, I’ve given up using paper cups; have consciously used less water; and I’ve unplugged various electrically powered devises whenever possible.  I have not yet made much progress on the meat reduction, but that will be my summer project. 

Finally, let’s look for opportunities for our girls to develop growth mindsets (Carol Dweck); really practice their passions (Malcolm Gladwell) so they can work towards mastery in something they love (Pink); and give them opportunities that provide autonomy and purpose (Pink).  Spending time in nature certainly encourages autonomy while also stimulating all our senses, de-stressing us, and making us happier.  If we’re looking for purpose, service opportunities seem the obvious choice, but they don’t need to be highly structured – helping a neighbor would suffice.  And we know that when we reach out to others, we feel better ourselves.

So there you have it: a summer of activities.  But don’t be too rigid and proscriptive about it all – remember snowmaggedon and how important it was to stop.  We can do that in the summer, too.  Stop.  Turn off the screens and invite friends over.  Do the summer equivalents of going sledding (which will connect you to nature).  And count your blessings, putting your daughters at the top of the list.

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Summer is also a time to read.  Below is a list of the books I’ve mentioned as well as a few others as food for thought.  Please send me along your ideas as well:

Derek Curtis Bok, The Pursuit of Happiness: What Governments Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being (2010)

Marcus Buckingham, Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD. PhD and James H. Fowler, PhD, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives (2009)

Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2007)

Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier (2008)

Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (2008)

Carol Graham, Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (2010)

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (2004) – if you want to know about Haiti

Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (2005)

Daniel H. Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us (2009) and A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future (2006)

Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun (2009)

Tina Lynn Seelig, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World (2009)

Martin E.P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (2004)

Anita Shreve, Testimony: A Novel (2008)

Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World (2008)

Several weeks ago I wrote a column on Daniel Pink’s new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  You may recall that Pink argues that what truly motivates us is not money or power, but autonomy, purpose and mastery.  I devoted most of that column to the research showing that contingent rewards (if you do this, I will give you that) fail to achieve the goals intended.  In fact, tangible rewards stifle creativity and can actually encourage unethical behavior.  I promised to return to Pink and apply his theories to our girls and even ourselves.  After interludes to celebrate Earth Day and to address the UVa tragedy, I’m returning this week to Pink.

The first message is, don’t use rewards to encourage good grades.  As the research Pink sites shows, this method of motivation discourages engagement and effort for the right reason (in this case to learn); secondly, it discourages creativity and risk taking; third, if you want good performance to continue, you will probably have to keep upping the ante.  The reward of good grades should serve as sufficient satisfaction.  And if you remember Carol Dweck and Mindset (whom Pink cites), we shouldn’t be praising grades anyway, but rather effort.  “You did really well; you should feel gratified that you worked so hard and it paid off” – that’s what she would say.  One could even argue, following Pink’s logic, that we shouldn’t even give grades because they inhibit creativity and risk taking.  I actually believe that grades are important because there needs to be some way to measure degrees of mastery; however, I would acknowledge that grades absolutely can discourage creativity and risk taking, especially in girls who tend to put more stake in outside affirmation than boys.  And any teacher will tell you that the most fun and invigorating people to teach are not necessarily the straight A students, but those girls (and boys) who try new things, push the boundaries, and are willing to take divergent paths.  These approaches are not always successful, but they tend overall to be more interesting.  And Pink emphasizes over and over, as he did in A Whole New Mind, that it is creative, problem solving, non-rote work that our 21^st c. economy demands and rewards.  This is the work that can’t be outsourced or performed by a computer.

As an aside, if you want to see a thought-provoking talk on children and risk-taking, watch Gever Tulley, the founder of The Tinkering School.

So this is all about what not to do.  What does Pink mean by autonomy, mastery and purpose?  Remember that he believes that what truly motivates us are these three conditions, not money and power.  He acknowledges that there are competitive people motivated by power and money, Type A people, but he shows that these people are less healthy than Type B people who may be just as successful, but are inner directed.  The Type A and B classification originated as a way to explain why some people had heart attacks while others didn’t.  You guessed it – the Type A’s are the ones who had heart attacks. 

Anyway, Pink believes that “our basic nature is to be curious and self-directed” not “passive and inert.”  Thus, we are happier, more engaged, and more creative when we have autonomy.  Specifically, we yearn for autonomy in four areas: task, technique, time, and team.  Are we free to decide what we do (task), how we do it (technique), when we do it (time), and with whom we do it (team)?  He provides several examples of businesses, mostly software companies, that have offered their employees autonomy in one or several of these areas with very positive results.  My favorite examples are companies that give their employees a significant percentage of their time every month (15-20% ) to work on a project of their choosing with a team they recruit.  3M has been doing this for years, and post-its are one of the many salubrious results. Closer to home, Georgetown University Hospital gives nurses freedom to pursue research projects of their own design.  Pink acknowledges that people still need to have goals (preferably ones they have helped develop), but that employees are more productive and morale is better when you allow them to be their own bosses.

There are obviously limitations on how much freedom you can or should give children and adolescents.  However, there are certainly opportunities for autonomy.  Whenever students are given an opportunity to choose their own book to read or their own research topic, we are giving them autonomy.  As they get older, they can choose their extracurricular activities and are given more freedom in choosing classes.  In Upper School, as they have more freedom to use their free periods as they wish and as seniors they can leave campus during the day once they get their senior privileges.  Having just come off Senior Spirit Day and Junior Rising Up Day, they enjoy a lot of autonomy in many of their class projects including the themes for days like this and the videos they make.  The creativity exercised is enormous and the results great fun and bonding for the students.  I’m confident many would like even more independence and freedom, but we do consciously try to give them appropriate levels of autonomy.  Perhaps more importantly, we know that it’s important for our students to be able to pursue their interests and their passions, and we often see higher levels of engagement when we grant them more autonomy.

Pink defines mastery as “the desire to get better and better at something that matters.”  Today’s economy demands people who can solve complex problems, which in turn “requires an inquiring mind and the willingness to experiment one’s way to a fresh solution.” (111)  Autonomy leads to engagement and engagement is essential to mastery.  Optimal engagement optimizes the quest for mastery and we achieve optimal engagement when we experience “flow.”  Flow is a state of being identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. “In flow, people lived so deeply in the moment and felt so utterly in control, that their sense of time, place and even self melted away.” (115)  It happens when we take on a “Goldilocks task,” a task that isn’t easy, but also isn’t too hard; it challenges us to stretch but is doable.  Obviously, such tasks allow us to grow and move us towards mastery.  (If you’re interested in this idea, Csikszentmihaly has written a book on the topic entitled, guess what, Flow.)

But there are some other interesting qualities to mastery – it is a state that requires persistent effort and hard work, as Pink says “mastery is a pain,” (124); it requires a growth mindset (here is Dweck – the belief that intelligence is malleable and that we achieve through effort and application not through natural ability); and it is an “asymptote,” a state we can never fully achieve.  This last quality makes it frustrating and, I would argue, requires you to be passionate (engaged Pink would say) about what you’re pursuing or it wouldn’t be worth what could feel like a futile effort.  The other part about it I like, which Pink doesn’t really talk about, is that it implies a certain degree of humility if you truly acknowledge that you’ll never achieve mastery. 

The pursuit of mastery is something we do well at Holton.  We expect excellence which comes from mastery.  We are an institution that values hard work, persistence, creativity and problem solving.  Every day as a member of this community lives out our motto, she is personifying the qualities necessary for mastery.  We see it in every aspect of school life.  We see it when a student reworks the rough draft of a paper or goes to see a teacher for extra help when she doesn’t understand her math homework.  We see it as she practices her instrument hour after hour or labors over her clay vessel during her free periods.  We see it as she practices her serves or her free throws after practice.  Our girls graduate knowing the satisfaction of endeavoring to do something really well, which is, after all, mastery. 

Finally, Pink argues that we seek purpose in our lives and we feel more fulfilled when we find it.  He gives a number of ways in which the economy is changing to accommodate this desire for purpose. There are companies that build altruism into their missions (Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and Paul Newman’s brands come to mind).  Until recently there were only for profit and non-profit organizations, but now there are low profit organizations.  Called an L3C, these corporations “operate like a for-profit business generating at least modest profits, but [their] primary aim is to offer significant social benefits.” (24)  But there are many ways to find purpose in our lives.  Those of us who are educators all have purpose.  Likewise, those who work in health related careers, and there are many other examples.  Purpose basically means working “in service of some greater objective” or “hitch[ing our] desires to a cause larger than [our]selves.” (133)  More simply, there’s more to life than the profit motive. 

Community service, whether in school or outside of school, is an obvious place where students find purpose.  We have courses that help them explore purpose – environmental science comes to mind,  but so do most of the humanities.  Girls who serve their school as 6^th grade patrol, tour guides, boosters or in student government are all serving a higher purpose.  Adolescents are naturally altruistic.  We as adults should encourage them to continue to cultivate and pursue that altruism.

Pink believes that “All kids start out as curious, self-directed Type I’s (inner directed).”  As adults, we need to encourage them to maintain and cultivate those qualities.  We can do that in part by our own example, by acknowledging the importance of autonomy, mastery and purpose in our own lives and in the lives of those with whom we work.  And if Pink is right, we will feel more fulfilled and be more productive ourselves.

Most of the time, stories of murder feature victims and perpetrators remote from us.  Not this time.  As we all know, George Huguely graduated from Landon.  His aunt and several cousins went to Holton.  Holton alumnae played with Yeardley Love at Virginia and were her friends.  If these aren’t people we actually know, we know people who know them.  A young woman with a bright future is dead; a young man with a bright future has confessed to a heinous crime; Love and Huguely’s family and friends will never be the same.  I cannot conceive of the pain the Love and Huguely families must be experiencing.  It has been the first thing I’ve thought of every morning as I woke up for a week. 

Nothing will bring back Yeardley Love nor undo the damage George Huguely has done to so many people, including Yeardley and himself; but as we’ve recovered from the initial shock, we’ve looked for lessons that could come from this awful tragedy.   Many of us agree that there are two areas on which we would like our girls to focus: how to avoid an abusive (or even just overly controlling) relationship and drug and alcohol abuse. 

Before we take up the lessons, we have wanted to give the girls a chance to talk.  Upper School Director Lisa Pence emphasized at Morning Assembly last week that a range of emotional reactions to Love’s murder is perfectly natural.  She also urged the girls to refrain from online chat about the crime.  Senior Dean Yolanda Keener invited the seniors (who have finished classes and are no longer on campus) to join her for a conversation last Friday.  Upper School Counselor Annette Levitine-Woodside has set up a lunch meeting on Thursday for any students who would like to talk about Yeardley Love’s death.  Many spontaneous conversations have taken place in classes and a number of Upper School Advisors offered their advisees the opportunity to talk about Love’s death during advisory period at the end of last week. 

We take our girls’ health and well-being very seriously and believe that our responsibility to educate extends well beyond the traditional academic subjects.  With a full-time counselor for each division, we have a larger counseling staff than any of our peer schools; indeed, other counseling staffs view Holton as a model.  All our counselors teach health and are available for individual counseling, a service students avail themselves of frequently and regularly.  We are gratified by how much our girls use the counselors – it signals a willingness to use the resources available to them as they negotiate the emotional challenges of growing up.    

Addressing topics in age appropriate ways, we offer a formal health curriculum for grades 3-9 that aims to develop girls who know how to be appropriately assertive in relationships so that their emotional needs are met.  In Lower School, the curriculum focuses on friendships; recognizing and managing emotions; body language; effective communication; problem solving; when to seek adult help; how to help friends.  A ‘clique busting” program constitutes the fifth grade curriculum; student learn to understand the difference between exclusionary cliques and friend groups, and how to handle exclusionary behavior and bullying.  Sixth grade topics broaden to include self-destructive behaviors, body image and media.   In Middle School, the curriculum continues to focus on relationships and on peer pressure.  Eighth graders participate in three lessons on standing up for themselves in all sorts of situations, including bullying, friendship, cheating, peer pressure, etc.  During a “special day” at the beginning of year, the girls actually practice self defense moves, posture, and language.  Ninth grade health continues the focus on taking care of oneself.  They have a unit on harassment, specifically sexually harassment, sexual decision making and, to quote Upper School Counselor Annette Levitine-Woodside, “how NEVER to let anyone do anything to you that you do not want done.”  They also discuss relationships: what defines healthy ones, such as trust and respect for one another, and vice versa, what defines unhealthy and abusive relationships.   In another unit, they address the dangers of technology and harassment through the internet.  Finally, our seniors participate in a date rape workshop with their Landon counterparts, a program that the girls have praised.  While the health curriculum has a structure, counselors are flexible, always prepared to respond to issues that arise among a specific group of girls.  While the girls do not take health classes after ninth grade, we bring in speakers on health topics, often on a subject that we feel needs addressing because of a specific incident or circumstances.

Likewise, we begin educating our girls about the dangers of substance abuse in Lower School.  Representatives from Freedom from Chemical Dependency (FCD), an organization that has been working in independent schools for more than twenty-five years, work with Lower School girls to teach them about the dangers of substance abuse.  In 8th grade, Michelle Kriebel, a drug education specialist, leads the girls in two hour-long sessions focused on brain development, good decision-making, the effects of alcohol and drugs, and other topics pertinent to this age group.  Much of the discussion centers on the emotional aspects of deciding whether or not to drink or use drugs.  Using humor, Kriebel energetically engages the girls.  A mandatory meeting with 8th grade parents follows, an exercise that draws very positive reviews.  Just a few weeks ago, five Middle School students took part in the first annual “Community of Character” Leadership Symposium, a new leadership program sponsored by Norwood with the Community of Concern.  The participants learned about brain development and to explore decision-making, particularly with regard to peer pressure and the consequences of different decisions. 

The 9th grade health curriculum also covers drug and alcohol use/abuse.  In 10th grade, students and parents take part in a mandatory evening called “Conversations that Count,” a format developed by the Community of Concern.  The Community of Concern, now a national organization of which Holton was a founding member, enlists parents, students, and school staffs in a partnership to prevent drug and alcohol abuse.   

As Yeardley Love’s death suggests, abusive relationships do not confine themselves by class, race, or age.  In fact, the statistics, even for teenagers, are staggering as several studies indicate:

• 5% of 13-14 year old girls know a friend or peer who has been pressured into either intercourse or oral sex.
• Only 33% of teens who were in an abusive relationship ever told anyone about the abuse. 

Liz Claiborne Inc., Conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, (February 2005)

• 36% of 13 and 14-year olds know friends and peers who've been pressured by their relationship partner to do something they didn't want to do.
• 20% of 13 and 14-year olds in relationships know friends and peers who've been physically abused (kicked, hit, slapped or punched) by a boyfriend/girlfriend.

The "Tween and Teen Dating Violence and Abuse Study" was conducted January 2-18, 2008 by TRU (Teenage Research Unlimited) and the survey's findings were released July 8, 2008.

And the experience of college age women is also sobering:

• Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence.
  Bureau of Justice Statistics, Intimate Partner Violence in the U.S. 1993-2004, (2006)

• 44% of students were abused by an intimate partner by the time they graduate from college (22% males and at least 50% of females).

A research study in the July 2008 issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

• 21% of college students report they have experienced dating violence by a current partner. 32% report dating violence by a previous partner.

C. Sellers and M. Bromley, "Violent Behavior in College Student Dating Relationships," Journal of Contemporary Justice (1996). Retrieved from The National Center for Victims of Crimes, Campus Dating Violence Fact Sheet, and www.ncvc.org.)

Sadly, Yeardley Love probably had company that Monday, since on the average day, more than three women in the US are killed by their husbands or boyfriends.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Holton prides itself on building confident young women with a strong sense of self.  This is the most important preparation we can give our students for leading healthy, successful lives, which includes having healthy, fulfilling relationships.  As I’ve shown, we also consciously address relationships throughout our girls’ time at Holton.  Yeardley Love’s tragic death throws a spotlight on the potential for violence within the context of relationships and the role alcohol can play in exacerbating abuse, making us even more conscious of our responsibility to help girls recognize unhealthy behavior and have tools to deal with it. 

I imagine that Yeardley Love’s death has prompted conversations in your household about a whole range of issues.  We hope it has, because family is always the most important factor in developing a person’s values and sense of self.  School and parents are partners in this critical endeavor and we look forward to continuing our work with you in raising strong, happy, confident women.

P.S. for good resources on this topic, check out www.beckysfund.org

I love Reunion Weekend.  I love hearing stories about the school from the past.  I love watching friends reconnect, sometimes quietly, sometimes with squeals of delight.  You might think that reunions are about memories, but they’re really about relationships.  Our alumnae come from all over the world – Brussels, Wales, London – and the country, from California to around the corner.  The oldest returning alumna this year is a member of the class of 1931; the youngest graduated in 2005.  Some are parents and volunteers who are here almost every day; others are returning for the first time in 30 or even 50 years.  Mariann Roberts Harris, who lives in San Diego, a member of the Junior College Class of 1952, had not been back since she graduated 58 years ago.  Why did she come now?  Because her son could stay with her ailing husband; because her old friend Lucia was coming; because it was time. 

 Lucia and Mariann have known each other their whole lives – since their mothers strolled them in their prams on Memphis sidewalks.  Many other women here this weekend have known each other their whole lives, and many of them have sisters, mothers, grandmothers and cousins; daughters, nieces and granddaughters who went to Holton.  The Class of 1960 boasts sisters- in-law: Betty married her classmate Anne’s brother.   When invited to share their recollections, the class of 1960 took the opportunity to raise a glass to each other – proving again that whether forged at birth or in ninth grade, Holton friendships are deep and abiding. 

While I see alumnae of all ages at the Legacy Reception (on Thursday evening) and the Alumnae Cocktail Reception (on Friday night), and the brunch on Saturday morning, I spend the most time with the older classes.  The 50^th Reunion Class, this year the class of 1960, comes to Granger House for dinner and on Saturday everyone from the 40^th Reunion and older is invited to cocktails and the 55^th Reunion and older to dinner at Granger House.  This means that most of the stories I hear occurred a half century or more ago. 

These are people who remember Mrs. Holton.  Abby Thornton Givens from the class of 1960 described climbing the stairs as young girl, perhaps a fourth grader, to a room where a lovely lady sat propped up in beautiful four-poster bed.  All the bedding was white and the lady smiled warmly at the girls.  That lady was Mrs. Holton not long before she died.  Almost 60 years later, this memory lives on vividly for a woman who didn’t even end up graduating from Holton.

Madame Bernier taught French and terrified her students – I’ve been hearing about her for three years.  Helen Shearman taught Latin (for 50 years!), and maybe some other languages, and she also terrified her students but in a way that many of them respected and revered her.  She kept a bear-shaped piggy bank on her desk called ursus maritimus (polar bear) and every time you made a grammatical mistake in English, you had to put a nickel in the bank.  She rapped students on the head with a ruler when they misbehaved, but apparently the bouffant hairstyles popular in the late fifties protected their skulls.  What a relief to know that the hairspray could mitigate the effects of corporal punishment!  Miss Lurton was lovely and kind, gracious and elegant, a perfect lady and a wonderful teacher, who like our English teachers today, taught her students to write, but whose portrait in Simms does not, apparently, do her justice. 

There was the physics teacher who gave a girl a C+ knowing that she had been absent the day of the test because she was home studying (some things never change!).  The teacher made sure to tell the girl, though, that the quality of the work was really A+.  “If you would only study,” she said, “you could be an A student.”  Bonnie Buchanan Matheson had never thought she could be an A student and the confidence that teacher instilled in her still makes a difference decades later. 

But it is Miss Brown whose name is usually the first from these women’s lips.  Occasionally I’ll find someone who didn’t like her, who felt she played favorites and cultivated a clique around her, but that opinion is a distinct minority.  “Oh, I loved Miss Brown.”  “Miss Brown was such a good teacher.”  “I learned so much from Miss Brown.”  Whether they took physiography, art history, or even math from Miss Brown, her former students say they never had a better teacher.  She made the subject come alive.  She was passionate.  She was strict, but they knew she cared about them and wanted them to succeed.  They have remembered their art history and geology for a lifetime.  One said, “The other day, I was walking along looking at the architectural style of a building and I thought of Miss Brown.”

Miss Brown had a twinkle in her eye and was known for having a soft spot for the girls with a streak of mischief or rebellion.  Our friend Lucia persuaded some friends to put alarm clocks set to go off during class in wastebaskets.  When the alarms went off, Miss Brown, calling the girls who had hidden the clocks by name, paused only to tell them to turn off the clocks.  How did she know who they were?  The pranksters weren’t startled when the alarms sounded.

Even in those days, when teachers were much stricter and more no nonsense than they are today, Holton students felt as though, as Betty Euwer DeVeau ’60 observed, the teachers met them where they were and helped each girl succeed in her own way.  When she became a teacher, she emulated that philosophy, believing in every child and promoting her success.

Perhaps the most marvelous part of the weekend occurred on Sunday when the homeowners at 2125 and 2129 S Street and the Washington Studio School at 2119 opened their doors to the Holton community.  Ninety-two went down to visit the old campus.  In the presence of all those alumnae who went to school in those buildings, you could feel the flood memories.  Stimulated by the location, stories tumbled out.  That’s where my roommate and I were caught smoking, explained Linda Slingluff Thompson ’60, pointing to one of the turrets.  Ginny Ford Fletcher ’50 showed us where there had been a garden between two buildings, the location of some of the earliest graduation pictures.  The beautifully restored room in the front of the second floor of 2119 was where Miss Brown taught art history and where later Miss Wheatley taught English.  A front parlor in 2125 still looked remarkably like Miss Lurton’s room.  Miss Shearman reigned in 2129’s upstairs living room facing the street.  According to Suzanne Frazier Martin ’57, Miss Shearman always left the window open regardless of the weather. Suzanne sat by one of them and remembers snow piling up on the left sleeve of her Holton blazer. 

On this lovely residential street, you can imagine the sounds of school girls talking, giggling, calling out to one another.  You can see them arriving at school on foot, by trolley car or in the limousine Wilton Shorts drove. In so many ways, the city was their classroom.  It was easy to go to the Library of Congress to do their research and Miss Brown naturally required her art history students to visit the National Gallery regularly.  They simply took the trolley, stopping for donuts along the way. 

Mariann Roberts Harris, the junior college graduate who hadn’t been back in 58 years -- and the person who remembered stopping for donuts on the way to National Gallery -- left dinner Saturday night with tears in her eyes, promising she’d come again.

As many of you undoubtedly know, Thursday is Earth Day -- actually the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day.  I think about sustainability issues all the time –every time I turn off an unnecessary light or put paper in a recycling bin.  I’m old enough to remember the first Earth Day and I grew up in a community where Theodore Roosevelt, one of America’s great conservationists, loomed large as the dominant historical figure – he spent his summers in Oyster Bay where we lived.  In fact, the house where I grew up abutted the Theodore Roosevelt Bird Sanctuary.  One of my earliest memories is my grandmother’s campaign to prevent Robert Moses from building a bridge from Oyster Bay on Long Island, to Rye, New York across Long Island Sound.  She opposed the bridge because the access roads would necessitate the destruction of the many old houses built close to the roads and because the roads, traffic and pollution would destroy the salt marshes, essential wetland ecosystems.  She won and the bridge was never built.  I remember the horror and devastation of an oil spill in the harbor and my father’s disgust with the use of DDT which destroyed the bald eagle population that nested on Cooper’s Bluff.  
Given this background, it won’t surprise you to know that I was heartened by recent articles in The Washington Post reporting on the regrowth of native forests on the East Coast and the rebounding of the blue crab population in the Chesapeake Bay (see “Forests growing back in U.S. face man-made tests” [April 5] and “Chesapeake Bay crabs are making a big comeback” [April 15]).

It’s terrific that, as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, there is some good news in our immediate area.  However, in contrast to the Post articles, three other recent experiences focused my attention on the negative effects of climate change.  First, while on spring vacation in Costa Rica, we visited the Monteverde Cloud Forest (this is the area of Costa Rica the fourth graders study in Science – last year learning about birds and this year about frogs in the region).  Normally clouds enshroud this region creating a moist, temperate rainforest.  As we walked through the cloud forest without a cloud in the sky, our guide repeatedly told us global warming was changing the climate.  The fourth graders had reported the disappearance of some frog species and the guide likewise noted that climate change is impacting a variety the cloud forest ecosystem.  

Last Sunday, quite by chance, we watched Disney Nature’s Earth, a documentary which follows three families, polar bears, whales, and elephants, through the course of a year.  Climate change affects all three groups but the father polar bear most acutely.  The shrinking ice flow prevents him from finding his normal diet of seals.  After swimming great distances, he ultimately returns to land exhausted but near a walrus herd.  Walrus are too large and dangerous to be a polar bear’s normal prey.  Unable to isolate a walrus pup, weakened by hunger and weeks of searching far afield for food, and wounded by a walrus tusk, he lies down and dies.  

Finally, I heard on NPR about an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York entitled “Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront.”  I should probably say that while I have lived in California, Connecticut, and now Maryland, I am at heart a New Yorker  -- a Yankees fan who talks fast and sometimes forgets the niceties that characterize human interactions in most of the country.  I grew up in the New York suburbs, spent the first twelve years after college in New York, and, maybe even more importantly, wrote two of my three undergraduate independent research papers on colonial New York and planned to write my dissertation on a topic related to religion in the city.  It is a place I find endlessly fascinating.  So you can imagine how I might be intrigued that MOMA had commissioned five teams of engineers, architects, and landscape designers to respond to the findings of Mayor Bloomberg’s Panel on Climate Change, specifically that rising sea levels could submerge much of the metropolitan area.

While I have only viewed the exhibit on line, I have several strong responses.  First, the projects are incredibly creative.  One uses recycled glass to build an artificial reef to disperse the power of tidal waves; another creates a floating city; a third re-imagines transportation, utilizing waterways; yet another proposes developing oyster beds in the Gowanus Canal (a place known to most New Yorkers only as a reference point for traffic reporters), rejuvenating wetlands that would help reduce the impact of waves while also creating a food source and a recreational area.  I was also struck by the historical references: the design with canals hearkens back to the Dutch origins of the city, even using the city’s first name, New Amsterdam.  In the 19th century, New York’s oysters enjoyed world renown and New Yorkers ate thousands of oysters everyday; the oyster beds revive ancient aquaculture and culinary tradition.  This exhibit also epitomizes the kind of creativity Tina Seelig, the Stanford engineering professor I referenced several columns ago, is promoting.  Each of the five teams set up shop at PS 1 in Queens and spent five months in charette.  They worked collaboratively and intensively under a time limit, producing unique and thought-provoking results.  The interdisciplinary nature of the exercise, I believe, helped make the solutions as interesting and creative as they are.  Mid way through the design process, in January, the public was invited to observe and comment – a strategy that reflects the flat world of the internet where the creative process is open rather than closed (witness the open source movement).  Finally, the whole exhibit starts from the premise that the sea level will rise.  While it’s optimistic in proposing some seemingly feasible solutions to this eventuality, it’s also sobering because it accepts this drastic environmental transformation as a reality.

We need to celebrate the return of crabs and forests, but we as Americans still consume too much, create too much waste, and produce too much green house gas or we wouldn’t be devising designs for a New York that looks like Venice.  As a school, we have a responsibility to raise children who are attuned to the fragile condition of our planet and who can develop and apply solutions to preserve the earth.  In this spirit, let me say that both Lisa Pence and Bob Tupper remarked that everyday should be Earth Day, and I agree.  And, indeed, there are lots of things that we do all the time.  
•    Sodexho buys a significant percentage of our food locally and they send leftovers to DC Central Kitchen; they also make coffee grinds available for composters.  
•    We have initiated trayless Tuesdays: when we don’t use trays, we use less water and energy washing dishes and people waste less food.  
•    In upper school, we teach Environmental Science and Global Perspectives: Sustainability, a joint Landon-Holton course for seniors which “aims to help students achieve a better understanding of the relationship between globalization and issues of sustainability.” Along with their academic work, the students and the teachers in this class have challenged themselves to reduce their carbon footprint.  Mr. Tupper reports that “quite a few of us are eating a bit less meat, and driving less, at least at times.”   
•    Two of the Middle School mini-mesters had environmental topics: Renewable Energy and Ecosystems and Art.  
•    The theme for Swing Choir and Chamber Singers at Sunday’s concert is “Songs of the Earth.”   
•    You’ve already heard about our discounted energy purchases; the installation of low flow flushing mechanisms on toilets; and the replacement of incandescent lightbulbs with energy efficient fluorescent bulbs.  
•    Holton sponsors our section of River Road and we conduct two River Road clean-ups a year and the Middle School community service projects often include environmental activities.  
•    We have two organic gardens, one by the Lower School and one by the Marriott Library, tended by faculty, students, and parents.  
•    We have a school-wide Sustainability Committee that continues to examine our practices and make recommendations for more sustainable operations (the new Potomac bus is one result of the committee’s work).  
•    In Upper School there is a very active Environmental Club.
o    Their leaders give green tips every E Day at Morning Assembly.  
o    The Club sponsored Holton’s own Earth Hour (since we were on vacation for the official Earth Hour on March 27).  They hosted a vegetarian dinner eaten by candlelight that was one of the most delicious meals and most fun events I’ve attended in a long time.  It should definitely become a tradition.  
o    In honor of Earth Day, the Environmental Club is sponsoring an electronics recycling drive.  You can bring the following items to school and the club will make sure they are properly recycled instead of ending up in a landfill:
    cell phones/home phones
    batteries
    mp3 players
    laptops/desk top computers
    printers
    ink cartridges
    cds/dvds
    tvs

•    In observance of Earth Day, each Lower School class will be visiting Booze Creek one day this week during lunch.  As 5th Grade Science Teacher Christy Diefenderfer says,
As the girls are searching for insects and crayfish, we hope to discuss with them the importance of water and the importance of each habitat.  Part of wanting to care for the Earth is understanding the complexity of what makes up each habitat and having real experiences with all of the organisms in that habitat.  If one does not actually see the different flowers or experience catching different insects, then hearing they are gone or finding out their population is decreasing does not seem like a great consequence.

When not wading in the creek with their dip nets, the girls will be enjoying a picnic lunch in the amphitheater.

All of this is great, but it’s not enough.  So while everyday should be Earth Day, we might as well use this day as stimulus to make some resolutions – treat it as an environmental new year’s.   I already try hard to recycle.  I turn off lights whenever possible and I drive a hybrid car.  I try to prevent our family from taking unnecessary car trips and we compost.  But I know my carbon footprint is high, so I have a few very modest resolutions:
•    I will use less water when I wash dishes, brush my teeth and shower (the last will be the hardest – I love long hot showers);
•    I will unplug chargers when not in use and make sure my computer is turned off and unplugged when I’m not using it.
•    I will find a mug I like so I don’t use paper cups for my tea.
•    I will endeavor to have one meatless dinner a week (this will be a real challenge in my carnivorous male household, but I’m launching a campaign).

I realize it’s not much, but everything has to start somewhere and I believe the most important step we need to take is to change our habits, and that is most effective when done gradually.  I’ll let you know how I do.

Some of you may have read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind which was the faculty’s summer reading in 2008.  Although I’m not particularly right-brained, I loved this book which basically argues that today’s economy puts a premium on right-brained attributes such as creativity.  He also points to the importance of empathy, meaning, synthesizing all of which he believes the 21^st century economy will value because they cannot be outsourced. 

Pink’s newest book, Drive, in many ways a continuation of his first book (with more orientation towards business), aims to illuminate what motivates us.  He argues that we are really seeking autonomy, mastery, and purpose in our lives.  When we find or achieve these conditions, we also find fulfillment.  In fact, autonomy, mastery and purpose are more important, more compelling, than money or fame; therefore, we are more motivated when we enjoy autonomy, have purpose in what we do, and are pursuing mastery than when we are rewarded with money or some other kind of tangible award. 

I will tell you honestly that I’m not sure whether Pink has completely sold me this time.  He does, however, support his premises with a lot of scientific data, much of which is drawn from the work of others I have cited in this column, particularly Martin Seligman and his work in positive psychology and Carol Dweck along with Malcolm Gladwell. 

Pink’s research does offer some very intriguing arguments about motivation.  In today’s economy, he posits, the kind of carrot-stick reward and punishment system that forms the basis of most business management no longer works.  To put it another way, a lot of people work for reasons other than money or power. 

First, he describes a study by psychologists Mark Lepper and David Greene in which preschoolers who were rewarded for drawing afterwards drew less than their classmates who were not rewarded.  The effects of the reward lasted for at least two weeks.  This kind of reward is called a contingent or “if-then” award.  With such awards, the person gives up some autonomy because s/he is responding to some kind of outside direction (even if that direction is very ill-defined)  (location 502-17).* Psychologists replicated studies with contingent rewards multiple times, all with the same results.  One of the leading psychologists in this field, Edward Deci (who holds an MBA in addition to his PhD in psychology), observes, “Careful  consideration of  reward effects reported in 128 experiments lead to the conclusion that tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation” (517-24)

The Federal Reserve commissioned a study to examine the effects of monetary rewards on performance.  Because it was a less expensive location in which to conduct the study, the researchers went to India where they offered volunteers three levels of awards to complete a series of tasks such as throwing tennis balls at a target, solving anagrams, or remembering a series of numbers, exercises that tested motor skills, creativity, or concentration.  The three levels of awards were the equivalent of a day’s pay, two weeks’ pay, or five months’ pay.  It turned out that people performed inversely to the award: those receiving the smallest reward performed the best; those receiving the largest reward performed the least well. (538-553)

In another example, volunteers were presented with the candle problem: they had a box of tacks, a book of matches and a candle and they had to find a way to attach the candle to the wall so that the wax wouldn’t drip on the table and do so as quickly as possible.  The more money offered for the quick solution, the more slowly the volunteers solved the problem.  (570-582)

He has still more studies that show that offering rewards stifles creativity and stunts problem solving.  There is also evidence that rewards reduce altruism; encourage unethical behavior; promote the opposite behavior from what was intended; and can even be addictive. 

A study of blood donors found that when offered payment for their blood, they were less likely to donate.  However, if given the opportunity to contribute to a charity as a reward for giving blood, approximately the same number of people donated as when no monetary reward was offered.  (624-47)

Quotas and goals can backfire.  Think about Enron.  When people are given quotas to meet as a measure of performance, they often cheat.  The same apparently happened with the production of the Ford Pinto in the 1970s. (673-83)  At a daycare center in Israel, the staff started charging parents a fee when they were late picking up their children (a common practice here in the States as well).  The researchers monitoring this initiative found that the frequency of late pick-ups actually increased after the implementation of this policy.  Picking up their children became a transaction rather than something with the potential to inconvenience people with whom the parents had a relationship (the staff) and therefore the incentive to pick up on time diminished.  (695-718)

Finally, there is even evidence that reward systems can actually become addictive.  Rewards may provide short term gratification, but people always want more.  By contrast, when we are learning or working towards a goal for its own sake, the reward is inherent in the activity.  The Russian economist Anton Suvorov explains, “Rewards are addictive in that once offered, a contingent reward makes an agent expect it whenever a similar task is faced, which in turn compels the principal to use rewards over and over again..”(732-40)  Moreover, MRI’s show the same chemical released in response to the rewards as in addictive behaviors. (732-53)

I couldn’t help but think of all this research as I was listening to a news report this morning explaining that the funding is about to run out for the initiative in the DC public schools that is paying children for going to class and for getting good grades.  I was skeptical about this program from the outset, and these studies confirm the wisdom of my skepticism. 

Pink summarizes this research, saying that “extrinsic rewards can be effective for algorithmic tasks – those that depend on following an existing formula to its logical conclusion.  But for more

Right-brained undertakings – those that demand flexible problem-solving, inventiveness, or conceptual understanding – contingent rewards can be dangerous.  Rewarded subjects often have a harder time seeing the periphery and crafting original solutions.” (609-23)

So what does all this potentially mean for our students and daughters (and for ourselves)?  I’ll talk about that next week.

*I read Drive on a Kindle which does not have page numbers put instead location numbers.  These citations refer to the Kindle location numbers.

 

My family and I had another great trip to Costa Rica this spring vacation.  As I have said before, Costa Rica is a fabulous place to visit, full of fun activities, fascinating flora and fauna, and beautiful landscapes.  Adventures like that provide much material for a column like this, and my first draft actually included a detailed description of my following my fear – my considerable fear of heights – by jumping off a 100’ high tour to soar into the rain forest on a rope.  However, the vacation also offered ample time for more sedentary and less hair raising activities, and ultimately I decided to share my thoughts about one of the books I read. 

I don’t know if all of us have great gaps in our educations, but I certainly do and the fact that I had never read Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird is one of them.  I took a lot of English during my schooling, but it never came particularly easily to me, especially as compared to history.  Therefore, I don’t pretend that any of my observations about To Kill a Mockingbird have any literary or critical merit; they are merely the thoughts that occurred to me as I read and as I’ve thought about it pretty constantly since Saturday when I tearily closed the back cover . 

Since I’m sure most of you have read it or at least seen the movie, I won’t spend much time on the plot except to remind you that it is the story of Scout, who is seven to eight during the course of the story, her brother Jem, who is ten to twelve, their maid/cook/caregiver/surrogate mother Calpurnia, and their father, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the small southern Alabama town where they live in the 1930’s along with various relatives, neighbors, friends, and country folk.  You may also recall that while there are a number of vignettes, the novel focuses on Atticus’ legal defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman.  The children’s fascination with a reclusive neighbor whom they never see provides an important subplot that Lee ties to the main story neatly and movingly at the end. 

Even if, like me, you’ve never read To Kill a Mockingbird, you probably know that Atticus Finch represents one of literature’s great men of integrity.  He is unfailingly compassionate, kind, courageous, and wise.  I’ve talked about parenting quite often in this column, but we could skip Carol Dweck and growth mindsets and all the positive psychology out there, and just use Atticus Finch as a role model.   So here is my interpretation of the parenting lessons from Atticus Finch.

Teach Children Empathy

Atticus applies the same qualities to his parenting that he does to the rest of his life.  Early in the book, he tells Scout, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  He follows this precept with his children and over and over again he urges his Scout and Jem to put themselves in others’ shoes.  As Jem grows up and changes, acting moody and introspective, Atticus helps Scout to understand that he is going through a phase. 

After a mob threatens Atticus who, anticipating a lynching attempt, sits outside the jail where Tom Robinson is being held, Scout is perplexed as to why someone Atticus had described as a friend would want to hurt him.  Atticus explains, “Mr. Cunningham’s basically a good man.  He just has his blind spots like the rest of us.” 

After the trial, when Bob Ewell, the patriarch of a family Atticus earlier describes as living no better than animals and the father of the girl Tom Robinson allegedly raped, spits in Atticus’ face, Atticus analyzes Ewell’s behavior:

Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute.  I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with.  The man had to have some comeback, his kind always does. . . . He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.

Treat Children with Respect, Be Patient, and Honest, but Never Forget who is the Adult

Atticus listens to Scout and Jem and treats them with respect.  When Scout doesn’t want to go to school, he never dismisses her complaints but rather works out a compromise to ensure that she can keep reading, which is what she really wants. 

 Atticus is patient with them and always answers their questions.  He even explains complicated legal issues like the entailment a farmer is dealing with; when Scout asks what rape means, he tells her very matter of factly, even though she’s only eight. 

Although he respects his children and in many ways treats them as adults, he himself never relinquishes his role as the adult and the parent.  Despite every ploy Scout devises to persuade him to let her quit school, Atticus never contemplates letting her stay home: whether she likes it or not, she has to go to school. 

Help Children Learn to Deal with Adversity

Atticus knows that defending Tom Robinson will provoke strong reactions; that most of the white population will believe on principle that Tom is guilty and that they will vilify Atticus for vigorously defending him.  Atticus knows this will be difficult for his children.  But he doesn’t try to insulate them from the criticism and harassment; instead, he has his sister come live with them for the summer, providing extra support at home, and arms Jem and Scout to manage the attacks they will inevitably experience.  In keeping with his overall approach to life, he tries to help the children understand why people are acting the way they are – asks them to “climb into [the other people]’s skins,” but he also never excuses the racism and small mindedness that characterizes so much of the population.  He repeatedly tells Scout and Jem not to respond to the taunts by fighting.  “No matter what anybody says to you, don’t let them get your goat.  Try fighting with your head for a change,” Atticus advises Scout.  On another occasion he tells Jem that “Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad. 

And Accept the Consequences of the Actions

Atticus also never protects them from the consequences of their own actions.  When Jem finally can no longer stand Mrs. DuBose’s vitriolic invective and in a rage strips off the tops of her camellia bushes, Atticus sends Jem straight down to talk to her.  When Jem protests having to read to her every day, Atticus does not relent.  Likewise, when at the very end, Atticus assumes that Jem has killed Bob Ewell, he argues vehemently that Jem needs to stand trial for the murder.  “I don’t want my boy starting out with something like this over his head.  Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open.  . . . I don’t want anybody saying, ‘Jem Finch. . . his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that,’” he declares.  The fact that Jem lies unconscious upstairs, having narrowly escaped death himself, detracts nothing from Atticus’ commitment to what’s right.

Teach Children True Courage

Atticus  tries to teach them real courage, not bravado.  While he gains their respect when his shooting of a mad dog reveals that he is a dead shot, he points them instead to their neighbor Mrs. DuBose, a morphine addict determined to conquer her addiction before she dies.  Atticus has Jem read to her everyday, as part of her self-imposed treatment.  She succeeds and dies beholden to nothing.  That is the kind of courage Atticus wants his children to admire.”  Even more importantly, Atticus himself demonstrates that kind of courage – when he sits outside the jail to deter the lynching mob, every time he stands up to the deep-seated racism endemic to the society where he lives, and, of course, in the way he defends Tom Robinson even though he knows he can’t win.  

Be a Role Model

Above all, Atticus Finch lives an honorable life, and in doing so he consciously serves as a model for his children.  After being harassed in the school yard because her father “defended niggers,” Scout asked Atticus if the accusation were true.  Though he tells her not to use the word “nigger,” he responds “Of course I do.”  Scout keeps asking him questions and he explains a little about the case and then tells her that some people don’t think he should put much effort into defending Tom Robinson.  So then she wants to know why he’s doing it, to which Atticus responds,

“For a number of reasons.  The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.

Children listen to what we say, but they watch even more carefully what we do.  Probably almost everyone who’s ever read To Kill a Mockingbird believes the world would be a better place if it were populated by more Atticus Finches; in part that’s because there would be more role models like him for children to emulate. 

 

 

 

 

Many of you have probably read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success.  If you haven’t, I highly recommend it.  Those of you who are familiar with this work have probably already made a connection between some of Gladwell’s findings and Dweck’s mindsets.    Gladwell studies people who are extraordinary in some way: geniuses, business magnates, rock stars and software programmers as well as what explains different rates of success among seemingly similar groups.  For whatever reason, we have a great desire to believe that people rise from humble origins to great success, all on the basis of their natural abilities.  These figures populate American folklore: Benjamin Franklin, the Horatio Alger characters, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln – even Barack Obama made much of his growing up with a single mother, implying poverty and difficult times. 

Gladwell argues that despite what we may want to believe, “People don’t rise from nothing. . . . in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot.” (19)  One can read this book in two ways – you can decide that it’s depressing because only circumstances outside your control determine your success: being born in January or February if you’re a Canadian youth hockey player or in the 1830’s if you were going to be a 19th c. American business tycoon or in 1930 to Jewish immigrants engaged in the garment trade in New York City if you were going to become successful New York lawyer; cultural legacies can cause plane crashes as the Koreans and Colombians learned (remember the Avianca airplane crash in 1990 on Long Island?  It was about a mile from the house where I grew up – according to Gladwell the deferential Colombians couldn’t communicate effectively with the brusque JFK air traffic controllers) or destine you to a life of violence if you live in Harlan, KY.

But let’s get out of a fixed mindset, and look at Gladwell’s research in a different way.  As the quotation above implies, hard work is a key part of almost every group’s success.  Notably intelligence, especially off the charts, genius level intelligence is not.  But more about that later.  Canadian boys born in January and February have an advantage because, given a December 31 cutoff date, they are the oldest on their teams giving them a variety of obvious advantages.  However, those natural advantages of size and maturity get magnified because they get to play more at a more competitive level, an advantage which grows geometrically over time.  In the process, they distance themselves from their friends born in the fall who fail to make the most competitive teams and therefore have less playing time and less challenging competition.  So a birthday gives one an advantage, but it is only part of the explanation of success which is also attributable to practice, practice, practice.

Gladwell takes on Asian prowess in math and offers a fascinating explanation for this phenomenon, one that again relies on hard work.  Most Asian peasants, and certainly those from South China (where most immigrants to the US come from), make their livings growing rice.  Gladwell explains that growing rice is extremely hard and exacting work.  A farmer’s rice yield relates directly to a host of cultivation factors including the amount of fertilizer, the distance between the plants, how level the paddy is, and the amount of water.  In addition, rice cultivation is very labor intensive and nearly a year round activity, meaning that Chinese rice farmers work many more hours per year than their farming counterparts in other parts of the world (3000 hours annually for a rice farmer v. 1200 hours for an 18th c. European peasant, according to Gladwell).  Finally, the complexity of rice farming prevented the development of a serf or slave economy in China; Chinese farmers have always been autonomous.  All of these characteristics create a culture and economy where hard work and careful, precise calculations pay off with a measurable reward of abundant harvests.  The South Chinese believe in their own agency – they have a growth mindset.

These are the identical qualities that make a person excel in math.  We Americans tend to think that being good in math is an innate ability, but that’s simply not true.  Gladwell cites a Berkeley mathematics professor named Alan Schoenfeld who observes that math is much more about attitude than ability.  “You master mathematics if you are willing to try.  .  .  .  Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard.” (246)  Again, employing a growth mindset leads to success in math.

Gladwell has another theory of success he calls “The 10,000-Hour Rule.”  The basic gist of this rule is that to become truly exceptional, you need to do something for 10,000 hours.  To support this theory he sites Bill Joy, the founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Gates and the Beatles.  Through a series of serendipitous circumstances, both Bill Joy and Bill Gates had unusual access to sophisticated computers in the early stages of their development which allowed them to practice programming hour after hour, spending way more time learning the possibilities of a computer than almost anyone else.  Likewise, the Beatles were hired by clubs in Hamburg, Germany where they played for eight hours at a stretch seven nights in a row.  And they took these gigs multiple times over the course of two years, performing a total of 270 nights.  Gladwell claims that by the time the Beatles really hit the big time in 1964, they had performed live approximately 1200 times, a unheard of amount.  Bill Joy and Bill Gates spent 10,000 hours programming; the Beatles spent 10,000 hours playing music.  They were all gifted but so are other people; more than anything else, the opportunity to practice explains their extraordinary success.  Remember that old adage your grandmother would quote?  Practice makes perfect.  As usual, she was right.

Finally, Gladwell argues that high levels of intelligence in no way predict success.  In fact, he devotes two chapters to “the trouble with geniuses.”  Despite what we might expect (or might before reading Dweck and Gladwell!), above a certain level of intelligence, probably an IQ of about 120, being smarter doesn’t make a difference.  In fact, a famous study conducted in post-World War I America by Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman showed that extraordinary intelligence did not ensure extraordinary success.  Of the 1,470 extremely gifted individuals Terman started following as children, none achieved national recognition.  He actually he passed over two children (because their IQ’s weren’t high enough) who later became Nobel laureates.  About 20% of the group turned out to be really quite unsuccessful: dropping out of college; never going to college; failing to secure or hold jobs commensurate with their IQs. Terman ultimately concluded “that intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.” (90)

Above a certain level of intelligence as measured by an IQ test, what the psychologist Robert Steinberg calls “practical intelligence” determines success.  He describes practical intelligence as “knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”  Gladwell goes on to characterize it as “procedural” and “practical.”(101)  While analytical intelligence (the kind measured in an IQ test) is something you are at least partially (about 50%) born with, practical intelligence is something you learn, primarily from your family.  It was practical intelligence that the bottom 20% or “C” group of Termites (as the study participants were called) lacked.  Without practical intelligence, you can’t capitalize effectively on your analytical intelligence.  My guess is that if we tested the C group for mindsets, we’d also find that they had fixed mindsets. 

Practical intelligence is different from simple hard work, but it’s not necessarily different from persistence which is key to the success of the Chinese rice farmers and the Beatles (who could have declined the grueling gigs in Hamburg).  Certainly people with growth mindsets are more likely to be persistent, and to try a variety of avenues to achieve their goals.  I imagine they are also more likely to develop practical intelligence regardless of their backgrounds.  So we come back again to Holton’s motto: I will find a way or make one.  If Gladwell studied Holton students, he would find an environment that rewards hard work and attention to detail and that develops practical intelligence. Dweck would find a culture founded on a growth mindset.  Both would conclude, I think, that Holton is a place that breeds success.  But we already know that – Gladwell and Dweck just help us to understand why. 

Have a great spring break!

Last week, I promised I would share with you Carol Dweck’s recommendations for how we as parents, can foster growth mindsets in our children.  The simple advice is that we need to praise effort rather than innate traits. 

Remember that those with a fixed mindset believe that achievement and success depend on intelligence and talent which are static characteristics – we’re born with them or we’re not.  How we perform reflects our natural talents; exerting effort is unnecessary; indeed, to work hard would indicate that you lack talent.  By contrast, when those with a fixed mindset fail, it suggests that they lack intelligence or other innate abilities – failure breeds a sense of defeat and an unwillingness to take on challenges.

By contrast, people with growth mindsets believe that intelligence and talent grow with practice.  Our abilities are not set but expandable.  They see failure as an opportunity, and challenge as a chance to learn more. 

We naturally gravitate towards one mindset or the other, but we are all capable of adopting a growth mindset.  In addition to being aware of our own mindsets and how they play out in our lives and our relationships, we also need to be conscious of our children’s mindsets.  We need to encourage those with growth mindsets and nurture growth mindsets in those with fixed mindsets.  

As parents, we have tremendous influence in young people’s lives.  Things we say and do have an impact even when we’re not at all conscious of that fact.  Dweck advises us:

In fact, every word and action can send a message.  It tells children – or students or athletes – how to think about themselves.  It can be a fixed mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them.  Or it can be a growth –mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development. (173)

The following are examples Dweck gives of the kind of feedback we should NOT give:

            “You learned that so quickly!  You’re so smart!”

            “Look at that drawing.  Martha, is he the next Picasso or what?”

            “You’re so brilliant, you got an A without even studying!” (174)

What’s wrong with this praise?  It imparts the message that true achievement comes without effort; that you value accomplishment that comes easily.  The inverse of this implication, obviously, is that results borne from effort are not as praiseworthy.  So what happens when children who have received this kind of praise don’t do as well?  They are demoralized.  Moreover, they are reluctant to tackle new tasks that may take more work because putting one’s nose to the grindstone holds no value.  Indeed, failure proves that they’re not talented or capable.  As Dweck observes, “If success means they’re smart, then failure means they’re dumb.”(175)

Dweck tested this theory in seven different studies with hundreds of children.  She reports getting “some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen: Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.” (175)

So, you say, then how should I encourage my child?  You want to emphasize effort, practice, taking on challenges and working their way through them:

“You really studied for your test and your improvement shows it.  You read the material over several times, you outlined it, and you tested yourself on it.  It really worked!” – This example involves supporting using multiple strategies to study in addition to hard work.

“I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.” – This example praises persistence and flexibility.

“I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class.  It will take a lot of work – doing research, designing the apparatus, buying the parts, and building it.  Boy, you’re going to learn a lot of great things.” – This example praises hard work, willingness to take on challenges, and associates learning with those two qualities.

“I know school used to be easy for you and you used to feel like the smart kid all the time.  But the truth is that you weren’t using your brain to the fullest.  I’m really excited about how you’re stretching yourself now and working to learn hard things.” – Girls for whom school (or whatever field you choose – sports, music, art) comes easily are very likely to have a fixed mindset.  That’s logical – natural talent explains most readily the ease with which they excel.  But natural talent only carries you so far, especially if you have a fixed mindset.  We really need to help these children when the going gets harder (which it will – mine came in 10^th grade math which, where I went to school, was algebra 2, trig and precalc rolled into one course – all of a sudden I really had to work to understand it).  If we don’t, they will not realize their potential. So I particularly like this example which directly moves a student from a fixed to a growth mindset by stressing the value of challenge over the easy route. (177-78) 

Dweck also provides advice if someone works hard but doesn’t do well.  In these cases, it’s important to acknowledge the effort expended while encouraging the child to keep at it:

“I liked the effort you put in, but let’s work together some more and figure out what it is you don’t understand.”

“Everyone learns in a different way.  Let’s keep trying to find the way that works for you.” (178)

What about a situation when the child didn’t apply the effort s/he should have and therefore didn’t do well?  It’s important to acknowledge the lack of effort and urge a constructive approach.  Dweck give the example of a boy doing a slapdash job on his homework.  The following are suggestions about how to address him:

“I feel sad when I see you missing a chance to learn.  Can you think of a way to do this that would help you learn more?”

“Let’s try to think of a way to lessen the pain and still do a good job.  Do you have any ideas?”

“Remember how I told you how tedious things help us learn to concentrate?  This one is a real challenge.  This will really take all your concentration skills.  Let’s see if you can concentrate through this whole assignment!”  I like these last two responses because they acknowledge the boy’s position – he doesn’t want to do the homework – but they don’t let him off the hook. (183)

Finally, Dweck provides counsel for one of the more difficult situations we as parents face: a child enters some kind of competition expecting to succeed and doesn’t win.  She gives the example of a girl participating in her first gymnastics meet, doing well but failing to bring home the ribbon she had anticipated.  There are lots of possible responses, such as just telling her she was great regardless of the outcome; blaming the judges for poor judging; dismissing gymnastics, saying it doesn’t really matter; or assuring her that she has the ability and will win next time.  There are problems with each of these responses.  The first probably isn’t true – she didn’t do as well as the other girls; by blaming the judges, she takes no responsibility for her own performance; saying it doesn’t matter implies that anything she doesn’t succeed at isn’t important; the last emphasizes ability over effort. 

A better response would be:

Elizabeth, I know how you feel.  It’s so disappointing to have your hopes up and to perform your best but not to win.  But you know, you haven’t really earned it yet.  There were many girls who’ve been in gymnastics longer than you and who’ve worked a lot harder than you.  If this is something you really want, then it’s something you’ll really have to work for. (181)

This response acknowledges how Elizabeth is feeling, but is honest, and gives her direction about what she needs to do to win – if that’s what she wants (it’s important to give the option of not being competitive, too, if she just wants to pursue gymnastics for fun).  Nothing about ability is mentioned – it’s all about commitment and effort.

With a little effort and consciousness on our part, we parents can adjust what we say (since reading this book, I’ve been even more careful about what I say to my son) and nurture growth mindsets in our children.  Doing this should be particularly easy in the Holton context because what is the motto but prescription for a growth mindset?  “I will find a way or make one” – it’s all about effort, perseverance, experimenting with different approaches, and taking on challenges.  Mrs. Holton assuredly had a growth mindset!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I first met English teacher Elizabeth Buko she described herself as a “serial bookbuyer.”   I had one of those flashes of self-recognition – that’s me, a “serial bookbuyer.”  From a practical standpoint, what this means is that I have lots of books that I don’t have time to read, every one of which seemed enticing and essential when I bought it.  One of the many great things about writing this column is that I am reading a higher quotient of these books than before.  The latest one I pulled off the shelf is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., a work some of you may remember Lisa Pence recommending a few years ago.    Dweck’s basic premise is that the degree to which we are successful, in virtually any endeavor including our relationships, depends on our mindset – do we have a “fixed mindset” or a “growth mindset?”  You won’t be surprised to know that you want a “growth mindset,” not a “fixed mindset.” 

Those with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and talent come from effort, not native ability.  Failure presents an opportunity to learn and improve.  People with growth mindsets welcome challenges as opportunities to grow.  Brain research, which shows that as we use our brains new pathways develop (even in adults) – actually expanding the brain’s functioning – supports the growth mindset premise. 

By contrast, people who operate from a fixed mindset believe that success and achievement all depend on innate talent or intelligence.  Because they are naturally gifted, they should be able to do everything effortlessly; or the reverse, expending effort would suggest that they aren’t actually as brilliant as they are.  Likewise, they don’t ask for help – why would they need it?   Fixed mindset individuals are afraid of failure; the only explanation for failure is that they are not actually smart or talented.   As you might imagine, according to Dweck, this mindset can become self-fulfilling.  When a fixed mindset people fail (or even just produces an average performance), they shy away from the next challenge or opportunity because they are afraid of failing again, further proving they aren’t as capable as they think. 

This theory has noteworthy implications for all of us (and certainly relates back to happiness research – in the long run, growth mindset people MUST be happier than fixed mindset people).  But the implications for parents, teachers and coaches are particularly significant.  Importantly, mindsets can be taught: just because we have a fixed mindset currently does not mean we are permanently destined to that orientation; we can develop a growth mindset. 

Sports offer a particularly easy venue in which to show the benefits of a growth mindset because achievement is so public for both athletes and coaches.  As Malcolm Gladwell observes in Outliers: The Story of Success (which I’m going to talk about in the future), we tend to believe that great athletes achieve their status purely by virtue of talent, when in fact practice and dedication explains their success.  Indeed, according to Dweck, many people populate the ranks of athletic superstars who originally had little future: Michael Jordan, Mohammad Ali, and Babe Ruth all fit this description.  Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team and wasn’t accepted by his first choice college; Mohammad Ali had the wrong body type and terrible form to be a good boxer; and Babe Ruth couldn’t hit.  In every case, they persevered, sought advice, and practiced, practiced, practiced.  Because they had a growth mindset, they took what appeared to be a modest talent at best and turned it into extraordinary success. 

Dweck gives contrasting examples of two coaches: Bobby Knight of Indiana and John Wooden of UCLA.  Bobby Knight had a fixed mindset.  He only cared about winning and when his team lost, he castigated his players.  During twenty-nine career at Indiana, he had three national championship teams (and an Olympic gold medal team), but Dweck quotes Isiah Thomas, who played for him, as saying, “You know there were times when if I had a gun, I think I would have shot him.” (204)

John Wooden coached UCLA’s basketball team for twelve seasons, winning ten NCAA championships.  When he began at UCLA, they barely had a basketball program, much less one of the best in the country.  Wooden, by comparison to Knight, strove for something beyond winning.  Instead, he wanted the best effort from every one of his players.  He said, “Did I win?  Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions.  The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?”  When you make your best effort, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.”(207)  He built teams of fine players whose potential he brought out. 

Effective teaching is harder to identify, but Dweck offers up Jaime Escalante, the famous East Los Angeles math teacher whose story the movie Stand and Deliver tells.  Anyone who has seen that movie can attest that Escalante personified the growth mindset; as a result, students whom no one expected to do calculus, excelled. 

Dweck also cites her own research, largely with middle school students.  In one study, hundreds of students, all of whom had similar IQ’s, were given ten fairly difficult questions.  After they had finished this task, they were divided into two groups.  One was praised for doing well because they were smart; the others because they had worked hard.  Despite, starting at the same place, after the response to the first questions, their reactions and performance began to diverge.  When offered a new set of more challenging questions, most of the participants praised for ability declined the task, while 90% of those commended for their effort chose to tackle the harder questions.  Dweck observes that,  “after the experience with difficulty, the performance of the ability-praised students plummeted, even when we gave them some more of the easier problems.  Losing faith in their ability, they were doing worse than when they started.  The effort kids showed better and better performance.  They had used the hard problems to sharpen their skills, so that when they returned to the easier ones, they were way ahead.” (73)

Even more disturbing, when the ability- praised or fixed mindset students lied about their scores when asked about them later. 

In another study, middle school students were divided into two groups: a control group who were taught study skills and lessons aimed at improving academic performance; and a growth mindset group who were taught the same lessons plus information about how the brain expands with effort; in other words, they were encouraged to think with a growth mindset.  The students’ teachers, who were unaware of which students were in which groups, immediately saw improvement among some of the students, the ones, it turned out, in the growth mindset group.  One student improved from failing to an 84.  At the end of several weeks, the researchers reviewed the students’ math grades.  The control group had shown no improvement while the growth mindset group showed significant improvement.  Dweck explained that the control group was “not motivated to put the skills into practice” (221)

So, all of this raises the question, how can we as teachers, coaches and parents help our children, students, and athletes develop and cultivate a growth mindset?  I’ll talk about that next week.

 

 

I spent three days last week in San Francisco with more than 4000 other independent school educators at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Annual Conference.  Going to this conference is fun for several reasons: first, who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to go to San Francisco?; second, it’s a chance to catch up with colleagues, especially this time with my friends from my Los Angeles days at Marlborough School; third, and most importantly, the program always features inspiring and thought-provoking speakers along with workshops that offer new ideas or approaches to school life.  NAIS is the membership body for all independent schools throughout the country, so the themes presented at the conference indicate the directions independent schools are or, in the minds of our leadership, should be heading.  As members of the extended independent school community, I thought you might be interested in learning about those directions

As it has been for so many individuals and businesses, the last year has been a challenging one for independent schools, hence the theme of the conference: “Adapt, Survive, and Thrive: Unleashing the Superpower Within.”  Pat Bassett, the President of NAIS, in his annual report, congratulated independent schools for weathering the year better than anticipated: enrollment at NAIS schools dropped an average of 4%, considerably less than expected, and giving to our schools remained strong, only slightly below the previous year.  But the main message of the conference was that to survive and thrive, we must adapt.  Indeed, we must change.  That message came through loud and clear from the moment attendees registered and received a copy of Chip Heath and Dan Heath’s new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (they are the authors of the bestselling Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die). 

Pat Bassett himself consistently sounded the message of change.  Using a construct from the US Army War College, he posits that we are living in a V.U.C.A. world, a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity -- a description that certainly rings true to me.  We are, he says, facing three disruptive realities

• disruptive economies: the “new normal”;
• disruptive demographics: puzzling diversity; and
• disruptive technologies: competing visions of schools of the future. 

(Pat borrowed this notion of disruption from Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn, a book that many of us in the Holton administration have read; indeed, Brad Rathgeber thought it was so important for me to read it last year that he gave it to me for Christmas – I got the hint!)

These issues are not new, but current economic conditions, especially combined with the decline in school age children, have accentuated the necessity of attending to them.  How do we create a model for operating independent schools that is financially sustainable; basically, how do we become less tuition dependent ? -- the most challenging of the three issues.   How do we enroll enough of the most appropriate students when there are fewer of them? How do we ensure that the programs we offer provide both the education that our students need for success in college and in life and that families find compelling enough to invest tuition dollars in our schools?

We at Holton are already working on all these questions.  The purpose of the marketing study we conducted last year is to help us develop a plan to continue attracting the best students in a changing demographic environment (the population of school age girls in Bethesda has declined 19%!).  The strategic planning process aims to position us strongly in all three areas in the years ahead.  Finally, the curriculum review process is a focused effort to determine and implement the optimal 21^st century education for our students. 

While I find all these issues interesting, the nature of educational programs definitely intrigues me the most, and I tended to choose conference offerings that informed “visions of the schools of the future.”    My favorite workshop, entitled “Innovation as Extreme Sport,” was presented by Tina Seelig, a professor and executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), the entrepreneurship center at Stanford’s School of Engineering.  A very dynamic and engaging personality, Professor Seelig believes that every problem is an opportunity, and that in fact no one is ever going to pay you to solve non-problems.  But for students to learn entrepreneurship they have to have hands-on experiences, preferably ones that push them out of their comfort zones and force them to rely on gut instincts.  Limited resources and limited time stimulate creativity, so she assigns projects like giving each group $5.00 and five days to make as much money as possible.  Some groups came to realize that the $5.00 wasn’t actually very valuable, but their own skills and opportunities were.  So, for example, one group sold their tutoring services (they’re Stanford students, after all); another gave themselves away for a couple of hours to local businesses and asked for contributions for their time.  Each group was expected to make a three minute presentation at the end of the five days and one group sold that time to a business eager to promote themselves to a class of Stanford engineering students.  Seelig has taken this kind of exercise global.  If you’d like to see how students from around the world can add value (and value isn’t limited to monetary value; it might be social value, entertainment value, etc.) to post-its over a five-day period, go to www.imagineitproject.com/?p=1481

Although Prof. Seelig’s projects are consciously low tech, technology was the theme that permeated most of the sessions related to “visions of schools of the future,” starting with one entitled “Visit a School of the Future – NOW” which showcased how the Urban School in San Francisco is using digital tools to enhance learning.  I was particularly intrigued by some interactive programs they are using for language instruction.  Likewise, the “Thought Leaders Summit: Building Schools for a Digital Age” featured thinkers with a decidedly technological bent: Milton Chen, senior fellow and executive director emeritus, The George Lucas Educational Foundation; Shelley Goldman, professor of education, Stanford; Monica Martinez, president of New Tech Network; and Megan Smith, vice president, new business development, and general manager, Google.org.  As you might imagine, there was a lot of conversation about technology, as well as project based learning, fostering creativity, student directed learning and inspiring teachers.  Interestingly, there were also a number of references to the great progressive educator John Dewey who said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life.”  Milton Chen actually believes that the use of technology is making education more intimate and individualized; that we are going backward (in a good way) to the individualized learning of the one room school house.   According to this panel, people are already using MP3 players to teach reading and we should be looking forward to ways we can use the largely untapped power of our cell phones for educational purposes!  That could certainly make for an interesting about turn in school policy.

In many ways the epitome of a “school of the future,” Holton’s own Online School for Girls received a lot of attention at the conference.  At the opening session, Pat Bassett called out the heads of school of the four founding schools, including yours truly.  Our pictures were on a huge screen and we waved to the assembled thousands!  Holton’s Director of Technology and President of OSG, Brad Rathgeber, along with colleagues from OSG schools Harpeth Hall and Westover presented a highlighted and very well attended workshop in the Schools of the Future Series.   OSG was the buzz of the conference!

Our students don’t need to wait for the school of the future; they can take OSG courses now.  And next year, there is a terrific array of offerings open to our 11^th and 12^th grade students, all taught asynchronistically:

• AP Computer Science
• AP Psychology
• Genetics
• Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations
• Women in Art and Literature
• Art and Code and Graphic Art

Three of our teachers, Christopher Wilson, Marsha Scherbel, and Patty Carver are teaching OSG courses.  Their experiences working in this web 2.0 environment is having a significant impact on their teaching in a regular classroom.

I returned from the NAIS conference stimulated but also affirmed that Holton is thinking about the right questions and taking the right steps.  OSG joins our marketing effort, our strategic planning process, and our curricular review to help Holton realize that vision of a school of the future .