Discovering the best within ourselves is a journey that begins in childhood as children become less self-centered and more aware of the world around them.  Helping children begin that journey and take steps along its way is, I think, one of the main tasks of a teacher.  It’s a journey that involves more than our character.  It involves our intellect, our emotions, our creativity.

As stated, the theme implies that finding the best within ourselves brings inner peace.  I believe that to be true.  I also believe that people are basically good and that children yearn to find all that is good within them, whether it’s in the work they produce, the relationships they establish, or the decisions they make.

Helping a child discover his or her best self has to do with belief and expectation – belief in the inherent goodness of children and the expectation that each child will find that goodness.  I think the best teachers intuitively understand this.  I am not interested in hiring teachers who do not understand it.  A child who thinks his teacher doesn’t believe in him will not thrive.  A child who is allowed to submit work that doesn’t represent her best effort will not grow.

Children who reach within themselves to find that which represents their best effort and their best decision making are much more likely to be at peace with themselves than children who are allowed to get by with less.  (The same is true with adults, of course.)  Doing our best brings joy, confidence, pride, and peace.  Teachers who helped me do my best are the ones I remember and cherish.  Those are the ones we want at Glen Urquhart.  They are the ones who encourage children to find the best within themselves by believing in them and by expecting it from them.

The essay that really grabbed my attention was written by Sherry Turkle, a psychologist at MIT.  It was titled, “The Robotic Moment.”  I’ve had a passing interest in robotics, primarily as a result of “Star Wars” and R2D2.  I’ve always thought of them as machines, as most of us probably do, but R2D2 foreshadowed Turkle’s predictions.  What’s game-changing about the future of robots, according to Turkle, is that robots will eventually become companions.  As she states, “I will see the development of robots that people will want to spend time with.  Not just a little time – in which the robots serve as amusements – but enough time and with enough interactivity that the robots will be experienced as companions, each closer to a someone than a something.  I think of this as the robotic moment.”

I admit that I find this prediction a bit unnerving, a feeling that I also had when watching “Watson,” the IBM supercomputer, compete on Jeopardy several weeks ago.   As most of you readers probably know, Watson won the competition against two of Jeopardy’s most successful contestants.  I’m sure the scientists who constructed Watson were elated, but how did Watson feel?  He/She/It, of course, didn’t feel anything, and that’s what makes me uneasy.

Sherry Turkle goes on to predict that robots will become “sociable technologies” that “will be presented as potential nannies, teachers, therapists, life coaches, and caretakers for the elderly.”  They will become “preferable to an available human being.”  A graduate student at a conference Turkle attended asserted that she would happily trade in her boyfriend for a robot if the robot could produce “caring behavior.”  The implication, of course, is that this would be a relationship with little or no risk.  That seems to be what people are looking for – no risk relationships.  Are we looking at a future in which robots will become our preferred companions because they don’t threaten us and only serve to comfort us?  As appealing as it sounds on the surface, I certainly hope not.

All of this also brought to mind the classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams.  Written almost a century ago, it still has lessons for us about what it means to be “real.”  As an analogy to human relationships, we become real through the process of being loved, which involves tremendous risk.  Are we going to be asking how robots become “real?”  (Actually, I’m already asking that, and I think the answer is, “they don’t.”)  The sad lesson from Sherry Turkle’s essay, I think, is that it’s a commentary on a tendency to want to avoid risk.  It seems on the surface that it would be wonderful to enter into every relationship with the knowledge that in the end it will always be happy and fulfilling, but that’s not “real.”  Real relationships involve the risk of disappointment and unrequited love, as well as the hope of fulfillment and unconditional love.  It’s part of what makes us human.  Would I like to have a robot to do certain tasks around the house?  Certainly.  Would I like to have a robot as a substitute for a human companion?  Never.  That truly would change everything, and it’s a future I don’t want to experience.

This past summer, Newsweek magazine produced a cover story on the crisis in creativity in the United States.  (“The Creativity Crisis,” Newsweek, July 19, 2010, pp. 44-50.)  One sentence in the article really caught my attention: “The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded.”  I believe we’ve been making that same statement at Glen Urquhart School for years.  We feel that nurturing children’s innate creativity is one of the things that we do best, and it’s no secret that creativity is one of the pillars on which our teaching philosophy rests (the other two being knowledge and character).

According to the Newsweek article, creativity in the U. S. is declining because of television (surprise, surprise), video games, and simply the lack of a concerted effort to nurture creativity in children.  I do agree that sitting in front of a television does little, if anything, to nurture creativity.  I would not put all video games in that category.  At least they’re interactive, and some require divergent thinking, but that’s a topic for another day.  I think the third reason is the most important because, in general, those who lead our public schools have allowed themselves to think that high stakes testing, such as the MCAS, dictates how they should teach, and that it means focusing on facts, rote memorization, and adherence to a core, standardized curriculum.   As the Newsweek article points out, that is not necessarily the case.  Students can learn the information needed to do well on high stakes testing in a curriculum that nurtures creativity and requires divergent, as well as convergent, thinking.

GUS has had a reputation for years as the school on the north shore that most nurtures creativity.  People seem genuinely surprised when they find out that our students also do quite well overall on standardized tests and go to secondary schools well prepared to meet their demands.  Surprise, surprise!  Do you mean that even in math students can be taught to think creatively?  Yes, I do, and I mean that for all the other subjects as well.  Creativity is not the province of the art room.  It also belongs in the science room and the math class.  Lynne Warren understood this more than three decades ago, and she founded a school that thirty-three years later is still nurturing creativity in children.

The article in Newsweek goes on to state that the decline in creativity is most serious for students in the elementary grades, from kindergarten through sixth grade.  Our goal is to counter that trend.  We believe that experiential education, integration of the arts into the academic classroom, and project-based learning are ways in which creativity is nourished.  Our graduates have been proving that for the past thirty plus years.  The crisis in creativity in the U. S. is driven by politicians and educators who believe that creativity and academics cannot exist within the same classroom.  We know better.

Trust and Go Forward.

Raymond Nance

Did you know that when NASA was searching for the first person to walk on the moon, the filter that became most important to them was finding people who had failed and recovered? I learned this interesting fact while watching a video of a speech by Randy Nelson, President of Pixar University. It’s an interesting video about the kinds of people Pixar is looking to hire, but it’s also instructive, I think, about how educators and parents should view risk taking and failure.

According to Nelson, NASA had an abundance of applicants, almost all of whom had impressive resumes with a lot of depth. It was impossible to filter them into a manageable group. There were just too many people who were successful. What they settled on was looking at people who were not merely successful but people who had also failed and recovered. Recovering from failure requires innovation, and that is what NASA needed. It’s also what Pixar needs, and those are the kinds of jobs that our students will find most interesting when they enter the job market.

I worry about the length to which parents and teachers sometimes go to help children avoid failure. It is almost an axiom in our culture that children should never experience failure. We go to extremes sometimes to protect them from failure and to ensure their success. Of course, any good parent doesn’t want to see his/her child get hurt, but good parents also want their children to experience the joy of taking risks, experiencing setbacks, and finding ways to achieve success in spite of the setbacks. This can happen in almost any setting: academic, social, athletic, artistic.

It’s a balancing act. We don’t want our children to be harmed; we do want them to experience overcoming failure to find success. What I worry about is allowing that teeter-totter to get out of balance, to put too much weight on the avoiding failure end. I see that sometimes when parents come to the rescue of their children when they’ve misbehaved, attempting to place the blame somewhere else. Children eventually pay a big price for that. I see it when parents get too involved in school assignments, resulting in work that is more reflective of the parent’s ability than the child’s. I see it when teachers accept less than a student’s best effort in an assignment, especially when the student ends up getting a good grade on the assignment. I see it when parents or teachers interfere too much in a child’s social life. Dealing with conflict on the playground, for example, is one of the ways in which children figure out social norms. Adults need to step in when there is bullying or fighting involved, but sometimes adults step in too early, depriving the child of the opportunity to learn on his/her own. (Read The Blessing of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel, as well as Best Friends, Worst Enemies by Michael Thompson and Catherine Grace.)

I believe that a healthy school environment provides opportunities for children to take risks, to experience failure, and to find ways to overcome that failure. I see our teachers work this magic daily. One little kindergarten boy was recently distraught over his inability to draw stars. His teacher, Christy Doxsee, allowed him to struggle a bit. She didn’t immediately come to his rescue, but she did provide the right emotional environment and structure for him to eventually become successful. It’s a small example, but it’s symbolic of the right balance. Those small successes when you’re five years old become bigger successes as you grow older if you are allowed to take appropriate risks and to figure out solutions in the face of failure.

Trust and Go Forward,

Raymond Nance

Head Boar

I’ve heard independent school administrators talk about this phenomenon as well. Receiving valuable gifts is commonplace for some teachers at some schools. I know school heads who lament the practice but find it difficult to end. Even though teachers love to get really nice gifts (who doesn’t?), it creates an awkward situation for them, and it changes the relationship between that teacher and the student. It also creates a very awkward situation for those students who don’t have either the means or the intent to give a “pricey gift.”

At GUS, we addressed this problem a long time ago with the institution of the “Snowflakes” project. It’s a way to honor teachers that also provides a community service and avoids the problem of teachers receiving expensive gifts. I’m not sure whose idea it was; the program already existed when I arrived here in 1997. The past several years GUS teachers have been “honored” to the fantastic sum of more than $7,000 each year, money that goes directly to support the community outreach efforts of Beverly Bootstraps. At $2 a snowflake, that’s more than 3,500 tributes to our fantastic faculty from our fabulous students and parents.

It’s an emotional experience every year when we present the check to the director of Beverly Bootstraps at the Solstice Assembly. I am moved by the generosity of our families and the fact that this represents a true outpouring of appreciation for our faculty. Pricey gifts are nice, but the good feeling that comes from the Snowflakes program lasts a whole lot longer.

Trust and Go Forward,

Raymond Nance

Head Boar

Having a Facebook page has been quite interesting.  I’ve reconnected with several old friends, as well as some cousins that I haven’t seen in a long time.  I’ve also been “friended” by a few GUS parents.  I’ve also come to a few conclusions (subject to change, so I guess it isn’t accurate to call them “conclusions”):

1.  Facebook has proven to be useful, at least to me, for keeping up with people who were important to me in my past, as well as my present.  I’m a lousy correspondent, partly because I literally hate the physical process of handwriting.  I would rather type for two hours than write something by hand for ten minutes.  I’ve lost more than one friend because of that.  Facebook makes it much easier to keep in touch with a lot of those people.  I’ve even reconnected with a Turkish citizen who was a foreign exchange student in my high school.  We had a very friendly relationship at the time, but I hadn’t heard from or about him in 46 years.  (I told you I’m a lousy correspondent.)  (Yes, I’m that old.)  Anyway, he’s living in Germany now, teaching chemistry (I hated chemistry), and it’s good to hear from him.  It’s also been interesting to reconnect with other high school classmates, some of whom I didn’t know very well at the time.  Their lives have taken various turns that I certainly never would have predicted.  Some probably feel the same about me.

2.  There are definitely risks associated with Facebook.  Sometimes I have found out things about people that I really don’t want to know.  It can seem like an invasion of privacy at times, even though people are responsible (theoretically) for the content of their page.  I’m a bit uncomfortable “friending” current parents of GUS students.  I see my relationship with parents as being on a more professional basis, and it sometimes feels a bit awkward when looking at people’s pages.  The line between personal and professional starts to blur, so I’ve decided not to “friend” current GUS parents unless there happen to be really good reasons to do so.  There is now an official Glen Urquhart School Facebook page, and I encourage parents to become “fans.”  That seems to me to be a more appropriate relationship.

3.  There’s a lot of stupid stuff (pardon the vernacular) on Facebook as well.  There seem to be a lot of silly games that hold no interest for me.  Maybe I’m too serious, but I see most of those things as a waste of time.  (I’ve been told more than once that I’m too serious and that I should channel my “inner child” more often.  I’m willing to accept that as fair criticism.)  On the other hand, it’s pretty exciting when a posting on Facebook really makes me think, or provides me with a link to an interesting article or web page.  What a great way to share information to a large audience.

Speaking of which, isn’t that the primary goal of Twitter?  The people of Iran really proved that last summer.  That was powerful.  My goals with Twitter, Facebook and my blog are twofold: one is to keep “friends of GUS” informed about interesting things that are happening at school; the other is to provide links to various media that provoke thought about education.  I hope I can stimulate some thoughtful, reasonable discussion about the education of children.  I promise not to tell you what I had for breakfast.  I guess the bottom line here is that Facebook and Twitter, like so many other things, can be used for good or evil.  It all depends on how someone chooses to use these new media.  Several of my friends have told me that they think I’m just following a fad and basically wasting my time, but I don’t think so.  I think this is the way the world is going to communicate for quite some period of time.  It’s certainly the way our children are learning to communicate.  I just hope we can raise the level of discourse and teach our children, through modeling, among other ways, that any new tool is just that – a tool that we can and should decide how best to use.

Trust and Go Forward.