Muddy's Blog

We live in a data-driven era. Technology has given us the possibility to sift through more data in five minutes than our ancestors could have considered in a lifetime. Many of those in government who are championing educational reform have turned to tests like the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) to quantify progress being made. At schools like Pike, many families become very concerned about standardized tests like the SSAT, as their children consider applying to secondary schools. So, how important are these tests, and what do they really tell us?

I admit to being a long-time skeptic of fill-in-the-bubble tests. Multiple-choice tests tend to ask for specific data and are not as effective at determining whether children understand more abstract concepts. It is difficult to write multiple-choice questions that are not overly specific or misleading. Also, by citing specific percentiles to describe a child’s performance, these tests can create the illusion of scientific precision that even the designers of the tests say is not accurate. Yet, it would be wrong to state that the tests have no validity or value. They do give us an outside standard against which to measure our students and their progress, and we do review the results of standardized tests each year to see if there are areas where our students have not performed as well as we might have predicted. While there might not be a statistically significant difference between students who are ten percentile points apart, there are certainly differences between students at opposite ends of the spectrum of students being tested.

Fairly regularly, there are articles citing how poorly American students fare in standardized testing (e.g. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-11/u-s-schoolchildren-lag-asian-peers-on-academic-tests.html ). Even though such studies can look like they are presenting irrefutable facts and are comparing apples to apples, there are always questions that should be asked, such as, “What type of thinking do these tests call for, and what groups of students are taking the test?” For instance, in many countries, weaker students are weeded out of the system early on, which is not the case in the US. Also, I find it interesting that Asian families are often trying to get their children into American schools despite these scores. On an exchange to China that I was part of several years ago, it was clear to me that there was a real interest by Chinese educators to learn more about how American schools fostered creativity in its students. Are standardized tests assessing a student’s ability to crunch numbers, or to use that data to come up with new hypotheses? This question is one of the reasons Pike has joined with twenty other independent elementary schools from around the country and the Educational Testing Service to design an assessment that looks at teamwork, creativity, ethics, resilience, time management, and curiosity. It has been a fascinating experience, and we are still in the design phase. Can a standardized test measure these areas? We will see.

As far as how parents of children applying to secondary schools should view standardized tests, there are no simple answers. Do the scores play a role in the admission process? Yes. Are they the determining factor? No. So, how seriously should they be taken? Should we hire a SSAT tutor? As you can see, there may be more questions than answers. You may have heard that there has been some concern from some of our peer schools on the North Shore that variations in this year’s test have resulted in lower scores than those schools would have expected from some of their students. We have talked to the Director of the SSATB, Heather Hoerle, about this year’s results, and here is part of her response:

“The 2012-13 standard test data are demonstrating the expected bell curves for each administration this year, which means our tests are doing exactly what they are designed to do – perform at the .50 level, with an average difficulty of 50%. Practical use of our test scores depends on interpretation of the data over time, and in introducing new SSAT forms this year, we have equated back to performance on prior forms.”

While the overall data have been consistent, we did see individual drops for some students from their seventh grade numbers. It is important to remember that they move to a different level of the test from seventh to eighth grade. Another variable is the fact that our students are adolescents, which by definition means they are in a period of their lives when their behavior and performance can be erratic. I have been speaking with secondary school admission directors, and they have assured me that they will continue to look at all the data, rather than any one grade or test score, in an attempt to understand the whole child. I can tell you from years of experience that these admission officers are real experts at what they do and are truly looking at strengths more than deficits. Therefore, what about the questions at the start of the paragraph? The scores are a factor, not the factor. Test preparation can help ease a student’s mind and give him or her strategies, but our students have done well with and without that preparation. I advise families to talk with their very able secondary school advisors as they make that decision for their child.

Standardized testing has been with us for a very long time and will be here for years to come. It does provide some information and can raise interesting and important questions. The challenge as I see it is to not let the tests become an end in themselves, which can then distract us from our primary task of educating our children in a much broader context than any multiple choice test can ever assess.

Three years ago, a well-known school cut its professional development budget in half as they sought to deal with budget issues.  On the other hand, The Pike School has always  done a wonderful job over the years of investing in its faculty through professional development and has given it a prominent place in our new strategic plan.  Some might ask if there is a measurable benefit for the resources invested in professional development.  I want to share some thoughts I had after attending the annual Elementary School Heads Association conference this week as evidence for the value of professional development.

Most of my focus will be on the formal sessions, but I would be remiss if I did not mention the value of having time to talk informally with colleagues.  The Head of School position can be a relatively solitary one in that there are often times when decisions need to be made and since all members of the community could be impacted by the decision, a head may find it hard to find someone with whom to discuss the situation.  I spent quite a bit of time giving and getting advice on a range of topics from succession planning to issues of discipline to managing strategic plans.  I am confident that these conversations will be helpful and the people with whom I talked will be valuable resources in the future.

The keynote presentation was given by John Hunter, a fourth grade public school teacher from Virginia.  I encourage you to watch his Ted talk at http://youtu.be/0_UTgoPUTLQ.   Our strategic plan talks a great deal about 21^st century skills and here is an amazing example of how one teacher has empowered his students to consider real world problems and to think critically and creatively about how to solve them.  I spoke to Mr. Hunter after his presentation and told him that wearing my hat as an eighth grade teacher, I found his work intimidating.  He is a very modest man, but I told him that many see him as an exceptionally gifted teacher and worry that we could never be able to create something as amazing as his World Peace game.  He reminded me that he has worked on this project for 34 years, that it started as a simple board game and that it is only a small part of his work (90 minutes a week for 8 weeks).  He said that the larger themes of never underestimating the abilities of our students and replacing the concept of the sage on the stage (teacher as deliverer of information) with teacher as coach who challenges students to be independent learners are applicable to all of us.  As I think about my own teaching and the teaching of our faculty, I believe we have been on this journey.  Mr. Hunter’s presentation re-energized me to continue this work both as a teacher and as a supervisor of teachers, and I believe that direction will benefit our students.

The other major speaker was Richard Weissbourd, a child and family psychologist who is on the faculty of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and School of Education.  He is the author of The Parents We Mean To Be: How Well-Intentioned AdultsUndermine Children’s Moral and Emotional Development and The Vulnerable Child: What really Hurts America’s Children and What We Can Do About it.  In his research, he has spoken to many children and gained an interesting perspective.  65% of the children interviewed  said they would rather be happy than good.  40% of them said that they believed their parents valued achievement more than good character.  Weissbourd believes that we have promoted happiness as a primary good more than at any time in history.  For most of our history, we saw suffering and taking on the problems of others as a way to be good.   By trying to eliminate adversity in children’s lives, we can be denying them happiness down the road.  Are we raising children who are too focused on themselves and their own needs and feelings at the exclusion of others? He believes the primary goal of parenting should not be happiness or self-esteem of our children but rather their maturity and morality.  Maturity includes the ability to balance and coordinate our needs with those of others and the ability to see their perspective – Non Sibi Solum indeed!

The other area he addressed he called achievement stress.  He described a father and son playing catch where the father praised every good throw and catch and said nice try on the misses.  That constant assessment meant his son learned that every action is assessed which can cause stress.  He cited statistics to show that children in communities like Pike suffer from elevated depression and anxiety, and he believes that much of that comes from this achievement stress.  My wife and I spent our walk to school discussing the question “Is a B an acceptable grade?”  We all want our children to do as well as possible, but what message are we sending by making every assessment a high stakes event?  We do see more children suffering from school anxiety than was once the case.  Could it be they need a break from feeling every action will be evaluated and need to be improved?  Finally, he asked us to consider the true motivation behind our parental desires to help our children excel.  Is it for their well-being or our own desire to be proud of our children?  These are hard and even painful questions, and they have no simple answers.  We cannot simply stand back and ignore our responsibilities as parents and yet neither should we create a climate that results in children who are emotionally unhealthy.

So, why professional development?  To give educators the time to reflect on large and important topics in a way that may not be possible amidst the normal day that is full of planning and executing lessons, assessing the results of those lessons, planning with colleagues, meeting with parents, covering duties like recess and study hall and more.  I should be reflecting on the issues mentioned above and considering how as a teacher and a Head of School to be more effective in my work.

Recently, someone forwarded me an interesting article about an NPR interview of Paul Tough, the author of a new book entitled: How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character.  ( http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160258240/children-succeed-with-character-not-test-scores) Mr. Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, which was published in 2008. He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, where he has written extensively about education, child development, and poverty. His journalism has also appeared in the New Yorker and GQ and on the public-radio program “This American Life.”

In the New York Time Book Review, Annie Murphy Paul praises Tough’s book.  ”Most Americans subscribe to what Tough calls the “cognitive hypothesis” – that success is driven primarily by the kind of intelligence that’s measured by I.Q. tests- brainy skills like recognizing letters and words, detecting patterns and performing calculations.  Tough believes in the “character hypothesis” – that success depends more on noncognitive skills like persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.”  Because we agree with Mr. Tough, we continue to work with other leading independent schools and the Educational Testing Service to develop an assessment instrument for those noncognitive skills.  So, how can we help develop those skills?

Mr. Tough says that when children are very young, we need to give them all the love we can.  There is no such thing as too much support or nurturing in the early years.    Mr. Tough writes of his three-year-old son and says he knows there is a time coming when he, as a parent, will need to step back.  ”But now I really find myself wrestling with this question of how to make this transition into standing back more, and giving him more challenge and letting him fall down — sometimes quite literally — and skin his knee and not pick him up and let him pick himself up.”  As parents, we know that he is right and that we will need to step back.  Then, why is it so easy for many of us to become the “snowplow parents” I have written about before, who feel the need to clear our children’s paths of the stress and pain that we know can be found on that road?

In the interview, Mr. Tough does not go into the specifics of how one moves from nurturing a child to helping that child become independent.  It is not as simple as being there for them all the time, until a certain age, and then simply stepping away to let them become independent.  My experience tells me that even with my adult children (ages 22, 26, and 28), there will still be times when I may need to be there for them in challenging situations.  In fact, I assume my 82 year old father feels the same way about my brother, sister and me. How can we distinguish between the times when we are fulfilling our parental responsibilities and the times when we are enabling our children rather than letting them forge their own destinies?  I do think our unconditional love for our children and the challenging times in which we live often make us mistake the latter for the former.  I would suggest that if we are on the fence about whether or not to step in, we should err on the side of letting our children try their wings.  Also, I believe the concept I was once taught of survivable falls comes into play here.  I would not let my child play next to an open third floor window for obvious reasons, but I might let him/her climb a tree to a certain height, even though some risk could be involved.  We live in an era where we are bombarded with news of every possible situation going wrong.  My concern is that if we make all of our parental decisions based on worst possible outcomes, our children’s lives will be diminished and made less meaningful.

I know how difficult these decisions can be, and they can feel even scarier and more momentous as our children get older and the stakes increase.  Yet, if we have empowered them to take responsibility for their own journeys and taught them the value of persistence and hard work, we have given them the steering wheel of their own life, and I believe their chances for success and happiness are even greater than if we always have our hands on the wheel.

Our Parent Association will be showing a film called “Race to Nowhere” on Tuesday, May 22nd to members of the Pike community and the larger public. It has become quite a popular documentary that has been shown to parent groups all over the country. You can learn about the film and the many initiatives connected to it by going to www.racetonowhere.com. From having read reviews of the film, I knew that the main idea was that we are raising a generation of children who are stressed out to the point of depression and even suicide. As you know from our effort to have our community read Wendy Mogel’s The Blessings of a B-, we are concerned that our students are growing up in a much different climate than some of us might remember where there are more expectations and commitments and less time for children to explore on their own and find ways to entertain themselves. Therefore, I was surprised at my reactions to “Race to Nowhere.”

The movie relies on testimonials and case studies from many students and parents to tell its story. Many of the students (who seem to be mostly of high school age) describe a relentless onslaught of hours upon hours of homework, athletic and artistic commitments, and adults who do not seem to understand the toll of these expectations. A particularly poignant moment is the commentary of a mother whose daughter committed suicide despite having seemed to be successful and well adjusted. It is a haunting section of the film and raises the level of parental anxiety we all have for the well-being of our children. Are we expecting too much or not enough? Are we being too strict or too lenient? Are we giving them the appropriate amount of autonomy or are we failing to meet our parental responsibilities? The director of the film makes a strong case for giving children more time to create, daydream, play, and spend time with friends by ratcheting back our expectations. If they are given less homework, have fewer tests and instead have more ongoing assessments and belong to fewer teams, clubs or groups, then they will enjoy school more which could lend itself to more effective long-term learning. What do you think?

I have come to believe that when looking for a solution, the best place to start is often somewhere in the middle. Are there children who are drowning in a sea of expectations and at real risk? Certainly. Their stories are the most powerful and the ones that stick in our minds. However, my experience tells me that those stories are often very complicated and can represent the exception rather than the rule. We rarely find one plan that serves the needs of all children. I fear as a society that we have come to define stress as a negative in all circumstances. The reality is that stress is an important part of life as is learning to cope with it. Too often as a parent and teacher, I have let the tears of a student or child of my own spur me to action to make things better. I am certain there were more than a few occasions where those children would have been better served by letting them learn that they were capable of finding a solution to the stressful situation they were facing.

This film has done the public a big service by continuing the centuries-old dialogue about how to best raise our young people. I believe that some of them do need relief from the stresses in their lives while others could use more challenges than they currently face. The ability to make those decisions effectively is a big part of the reason I have always been an advocate of independent school education. By combining committed and talented teachers with relatively small classes and advisor/anchor groups with caring and supportive parents, we have the wonderful opportunity to view each child as an individual and tailor their program accordingly.

As I write this, I am at the National Association of Independent School’s annual conference in Seattle. Every year, I wrestle with whether or not to leave Pike to come to conferences like this. I worry about untaught classes, email piling up, meetings that need to be rescheduled and more, and yet, here I am. WHY? Our mission statement says, “The Pike School seeks to develop within its community a life-long love of learning…” because we think teachers and parents need to continue to learn, particularly as we live in a world that changes faster than ever before. This conference has helped me think about many important topics.

We began the day by hearing from Bill Gates who spoke of the impact he sees technology having on education. In a letter, he wrote, “Innovation is the means and equity is its end goal.” I love his commitment to use technology and his own passion and resources to make the world a better place for all people. It was inspirational to hear him talk about the primary importance of education in building a better world. He attended Lakeside School, an independent school in Seattle, and told us that since he never graduated from Harvard, Lakeside is the only time he graduated from a school. He credited his teachers with allowing him to follow his passions which did not happen in college and challenged us to be wise enough to know when to push our students and when to allow them to follow their own path. He was asked what skills he believes our students today need. He said that they will need to be able to use the latest technologies to wade through torrents of data to find what is truly relevant. Also, he said we need to help them be life-long learners as they have access to limitless possibilities to become more informed from searching for a quick fact to taking a six hour online course to master some new skill. He reassured many in attendance that person to person contact is often the best method to connect, but the tools we have today do allow us to build connections that were once impossible. Finally, he encouraged us to find ways to let teachers have the time to do more collaboration and research to build ever stronger programs for children.

Next, I heard Soraya Darabi, another independent school graduate, who began her career as a manager of digital partnerships at The New York Times and now leads a mobile application called Foodspotting and reports on online communities for ABC News. She described her life path as a digital native and how her experience could inform our work in schools. She said schools should engage with social media to stay relevant, foster a culture of innovation and participation, increase the internal digital literacy of school communities, and to create positive brand awareness. She was asked about the tension in schools between our desire to have our children read and write in depth and the shortening attention spans of children who have grown up in a Twitter world of 140 characters or less. She did not have time to answer that question, but I do believe we need to think more about that issue. She apologized for making us sit through a 45 minute presentation after saying the best practice model we should follow are the popular TedTalks which are limited to 3 to 13 minutes. Should schools change to adapt to this trend or should we be counter-cultural and help our students be able to read a longer piece or write a paper that would not fit onto Twitter? Food for thought.

The final speaker of the day was Dr. John Medina, member of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine and author of Brain Rules. He began by acknowledging that much of the press around the new understanding of the way the brain works is hogwash and he went on to say, ” I am skeptical that neuroscience has much to say to teachers, because we do not really know that much about how the brain works in a way that lets us pick up a glass of water.” He said his talk would be about two of his rules, one having to do with exploration and the other about the impact of stress on the brain. Dr. Medina proved that humans are natural explorers, displaying at infancy an ability to acquire information through a series of corrected ideas by telling us that studies have shown that a 42 MINUTE old infant will mimic a parent who sticks his/her tongue out at a child. This natural tendency reminded me of a visit of the editor of Scientific American to my school more than 20 years ago. He chided our science teachers for taking natural explorers and draining them of their curiosity by having them do lots of memorizing of ideas like Moh’s scale of hardness. It reminded me also of Bill Gates saying this morning that sometimes we as teachers need to get out of the way to let children be their naturally curious selves. The second part of his talk showed us how stress can cause literal brain damage by explaining the chemical processes involved. He cited research that shows that one of the greatest predictors of academic success is emotional stability at home. Introducing a new baby into the home can lessen the emotional stability of that home. He believes that by giving parents counseling before the birth of the baby, one can increase the emotional stability of the home which can in turn have a positive impact on the child’s developing nervous system. Even more food for thought.

I am fortunate to have the opportunity to be able to hear such interesting and thought provoking speakers and look forward to talking about what this information could mean for our community as we strive to serve our children and families as well as possible.

Approximately ten years ago, we changed the Pike mission statement, “The Pike School seeks to develop in its students a life-long love of learning, respect for others, the joy of physical activity and a creative spirit” by replacing the “in its students” with “within its community.” The reason for that change was that we believed all members of our community were working on those traits. Two recent events highlighted that commitment.

Two weeks ago, our Lower School Learning Specialist, Trish Faro, gave a presentation to the Lower School faculty entitled “ELL Learners: Language Difference or Language Disorder?” She began by citing some interesting statistics: according to the 2010 U.S. Census, during the first decade of this century, the Hispanic population increased by 43% and the Asian population also grew by 43%, while the non-Hispanic white population grew by 5.7%. Another fascinating fact was that 30% of the children in our Lower School today speak and/or hear another language at home. Those languages include Greek, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, Spanish, Haitian Creole, German, Korean, Kikulu, Telugu, Gujarati, Japanese, and Polish–quite a remarkable list. The point of the presentation was that as educators we need to be aware of this changing landscape and work to understand what these developments mean for our teaching. I will not try to give a thorough summary of Trish’s presentation, but she raised many fascinating questions and started a dialogue about where we might go from here. She cited research to show that we must be thoughtful about what and how we teach these children, for if we are not, it can have a negative impact on their fluency in both languages. As a result of the presentation, the faculty are keen to better understand this issue. Trish did suggest a few next steps, such as:
• Becoming better able to assess whether a child’s delay in language is due to an ELL issue or a true language disorder
• Formulating strategies to use in the classroom to increase an ELL child’s knowledge and confidence in English
• Accumulating websites to develop English vocabulary and enhance the child’s native language
• Setting up a lending library for children’s use in the Lower School with books written in other languages
We plan to have Trish present her findings to the Middle and Upper School faculties to help them be better aware of these important ideas. As a school, we want to be sure we understand the unique needs of each child so we can best meet his or her needs.

Another example of adult life-long learning was the half day of training the Administrative Team received from Christine Savini of Diversity Directions about effective hiring practices. I have often said that no part of my job is more important than hiring, for if we have success in that area, almost every other area of the school will thrive. One theme that has emerged from our Strategic Planning process is that a primary strength of Pike is the quality of our faculty. We need to maintain that quality while striving to have a teaching force that better matches the diversity found in our student body. While we can be proud of the results of our hiring in the past, it became clear fairly early in our training that we would benefit from a more formal process that would be put in writing. Also, we discussed creating a broader list of places to post openings in order to attract a more diverse pool of candidates. Another idea was to have us keep better records of each search, so that we can examine trends over time and learn from previous searches. We then went through a case study Christine created for an article she wrote for the 2010 issue of Independent School, the official magazine of the National Association of Independent Schools. The article was titled “Bias Among the Well-Intentioned: How It Can Affect the Hiring Process,” and it looked at a situation based on reality that has happened in many schools. It was a reminder that even those who are very committed to diversity may have blind spots as the result of life’s experiences of which they are. It can often play out as being more “comfortable” with some candidates than others for reasons that are hard to define. The case study also highlighted the importance of moving fast enough so as not to lose good candidates but also to not rush into a decision that might lead to regrets later. As we are doing more hiring than usual this year at Pike, the timing of the workshop could not have been better. I believe our decisions this year will be positively influenced by this work.

I feel most fortunate to work in a school and a profession that is devoted to life-long learning, for that dedication allows us to strive to always improve upon the work we are doing today, and I believe our children benefit from our commitment.

Keep track of the responses you get from the next ten adults you meet when you ask them how they are. My experience tells me that well more than half will lead off with how busy, tired or stressed they are feeling. Even people returning from amazing vacations will start by talking about how worried they are about all they have to do as a result of being on vacation. It seems as if that we need to be sure we are at least as stressed as our peers to be sure we have something in common. I have heard of colleges that are hiring rescue dogs to come to the library to help ease the stress of students as they prepare for exams by petting the cute animals. Do we live in a more stressful age and should we spend more time finding ways to eliminate stress?

in his book, Brain Rules, John Medina cites the work of Jeansok Kim and David Diamond to define stress. They say stress must result in a physiological response that can be measured by an outsider, must be perceived as something to be avoided (vacation?), and the person involved must not feel in control of the stressor. Medina goes on to describe how stress has changed over the centuries for mankind. In the early years, man’s stressors were related to survival and were more immediate. Just avoiding becoming the prey of other animals, finding enough food and water, and staying warm were of primary concern. Medina says, “Consequently, our stress responses were shaped to solve problems that lasted not for years but for seconds. They were primarily designed to get our muscles moving as quickly as possible, usually out of harm’s way”. In our society, most of these more basic needs have been met. Therefore, how well suited are we to dealing with the more long term stresses of modern day life?

Spending time trying to find ways to eliminate stress from our lives and the lives of our children is not time well spent in my opinion, as we cannot foresee many events and trends that may result in more stress in our future. Rather, we would be well served to better understand the causes of true stress and find better ways to deal with it. Medina cites the work of scientist Bruce McEwen who believes that “…stress, left alone, is neither harmful nor toxic. Whether stress becomes damaging is the result of a complex interaction between the outside world and our psychological capacity to manage the stress”. I believe we can help our children deal with stress more effectively. We can teach them be able to differentiate between real stressors and mere discomfort. Recently, the Secondary School Admission Test Board surveyed secondary school students about the college admission process. One of them was quoted as saying, “The application process was sheer torture. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life”. While there is no denying the process can create anxiety, I would argue that if this event is almost too much to bear, that child has a great deal in his/her life for which to be grateful. We should remind them of their many blessings. Also, we can remind them that often they hold the key to easing a stressful situation by keeping things in perspective. Fortunately, we do not often have to face the life and death stressors that early man did. Finally, we can set a good example by reminding ourselves of these lessons. Recently, during a visit to the dentist, the assistant asked me how I was doing. I had just enjoyed an hour of hockey with some Pike students and Hall of Famer Ray Borque of the Boston Bruins that had been a delight. My answer to her was “Fantastic”. She was visibly taken aback, probably expecting the more typical harried response I described at the start of this entry. Perhaps if more of us took that tack, we could help each other and our children have a more positive experience.

The wonderful part about school life is that it is always changing. At Pike, we are always looking for ways to improve our fine program. I thought I would use this report to update you on what is different at Pike School in 2011.

PLT Work – You have heard me discuss how Professional Learning Teams are changing life at Pike as our focus is moving from what we teach and how we teach it to more of an emphasis on what are the essential outcomes for our students and how we know if our students are mastering those key concepts. I believe that this initiative has led to more collaboration among our teaching teams and has allowed division heads to have more meaningful conversations with our faculty about their teaching and forms of assessment. I have seen in my own teaching how this change of perspective permits me to better serve my students.

Communication – The new website will go live on December 16th and we are confident that its capabilities will be appreciated by all members of our community. Each of us can customize our own portal so that it will give us access to all that is important to us. The flexibility of design means that we can keep the look of the site fresh which will make it more appealing. As our world moves toward more social networking, we know that our website will make Pike a more connected community. There will be an app that allows members of our community the ability to get the information it wants on our mobile devices.

Open House- We used lawn signs this year for the first time to advertise the Open House and while we cannot say it was a direct cause, the fact is that we had approximately 100 families attend which is many more than we have had in the past two years. We had more interest in Upper School than we can remember in a number of years. The Marketing Committee is looking at our overall advertising strategy and creating a list of specific objectives (i.e. attract more pre-k families) and will then define strategies to reach those goals.

Diversity- We have hired Diversity Directions and its director, Christine Savini, to do an assessment of our diversity work. She looked at all of our materials, spent time doing observations on campus, and met with many members of our community. We expect her written report about our strengths and opportunities for growth right after Thanksgiving. I did meet with Christine right after her last visit, and she did say we have a great deal of which to be proud, and she encouraged us to be a bit bolder in celebrating our accomplishments. One outgrowth of the work of our Diversity Committee was a new look at our Merrimack Valley Program. One of the consultants from Diversity Directions, Betty Brown, met with our MVP parents. She heard overwhelming appreciation for the program from our parents. The area of greatest anxiety was the secondary school process which many saw as overwhelming. As a result of those conversations, we decided to offer SSAT preparation classes to any Pike students in the eighth or ninth grades that receive 75% or more aid. Two families have taken us up on that opportunity.

Accreditation – We will be writing our self-study document for the accreditation process during the 2012-13 school year. This process is very inclusive and will require a great deal of work. I do think that much of the work we have done and are doing (i.e. community survey, strategic plan, diversity assessment, etc.) will have us in a position of strength as we begin the process that will culminate in the 2013-14 school year with the arrival of an AISNE Visiting Team and their resulting report.

Strategic Planning- The process to create a new long range plan for Pike has begun with the hiring of a consultant (Ian Symmonds & Associates), the creation of a Strategic Planning Steering Committee that has met twice to date, the collection of a great deal of data, and the creation of a timeline for the process whose aim is to have a finished plan by the end of the school year. Many members of the community will be asked to join this effort in January and February.

I have been asked if my job ever gets stale after 18 years. I believe this list is evidence that Pike is a vibrant place that is always evolving in interesting and exciting ways, and I am fortunate to be part of such a community. I look forward to our meeting to discuss this report and any other questions you might have.

Where I grew up (in Buffalo, NY), it seemed as if everyone knew how to skate. Given our winters, it appeared to be an obvious life skill. My father taught me to skate, and to this day, as I coach hockey, I use his adage, which was “If you are not falling down, you are not trying hard enough.” At the time, that seemed a bit counterintuitive to me, as the kids who seemed to be such good skaters always fell down less frequently than I did. Only when I became a coach did I understand that even those good skaters were not going to continue to improve if they stayed in their comfort zones.
Recently at an Upper School assembly, a student delivered a speech that has won him several awards as a member of our speech team. Some of his remarks were as follows:
“The fear of failure, also known as Atychiphobia, is described as an extreme, irrational fear that, like other phobias, prevents us from enjoying some aspects of life. Atychiphobia is also considered one of the more paralyzing and common of phobias. So how is this fear of failure getting to be such a problem? A recent study suggested that the fear of failure is the main reason why 80% of people in the world are unprepared for changing their circumstances. Sometimes, we are so concerned about failing at something that we don’t attempt it. Other times, we weaken our efforts so we don’t have to continue to try, or so it appears that we weren’t trying anyway, so when we inevitably fail, it isn’t such a big deal. When a person acts in this manner they have truly failed, for as Stephen Kaggwa once stated, “Try and fail, but don’t fail to try.” “

Besides being very well delivered, those remarks are remarkably insightful for an early adolescent. In fact, many adults are not able to break out of their comfort zones.
As an educator in a world where there seems to be an increasing focus on helping children develop an impressive resume at ever younger ages, I worry that we have not built in enough opportunities for falling down. I remember hearing a story that may be apocryphal but rings true to what I am seeing today. An admission director at a very well-known competitive university spoke to a group of prospective applicants and said, “What we are looking for are risk takers.” After a dramatic pause he went on to say, “Successful risk takers.” I would argue we cannot have it both ways. By definition, if we take risks, we will not always succeed. However, as our Upper School student said, we will not grow or find our true passions if we fail to try. The best schools and parents create environments in which children have the support and resulting confidence that allow them to lean a little further on that skate blade and cut a sharper edge.

I always love to read books that support a message I believe in. As an exercise addict (5,000+ miles a year on a bike), I have always believed that my physical activity had a direct impact on my mood and focus. As I became a Head, long time professional development guru, David Mallery said I should keep up my running for my own well being and to run at noon in downtown so others would know of my commitment to exercise.

John Ratey is the author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. Ratey’s book does a fine job of mixing anecdotal information (which I have a great deal of) with some hard science (which I had none of). I liked his comment that “In today’s plasma-screened-in-world, it’s easy to forget that we are born movers– because we’ve engineered movement right out of our lives.”

Another idea that he discussed is the impact of modern media that does concern me. We all know that news about good or happy events is seen as fluff and not serious, so the news always seems to find the dark side of a story. For example, watch how often even the positive stories end with a comment about an impending problem. Ratey says : “The 24/7 streaming torrent of tragedy and demands flashing at us from an array of digital displays keep the amygdala flying. The negative and the hectic and the hopeless heap on the stress, but we figure we can handle it because we always have. Up to a point. Then, we just want to relax and take a break. So we grab a drink and plop down in front of the TV or go sit on a beach somewhere. It’s no wonder that obesity has doubled in the past twenty years- our lifestyle today is both more stressful and more sedentary.”

Ratey believes that schools that cut out recess and PE to get more time for “real academics” have it backward. Ratey describes Naperville Central High School, west of Chicago that went the other way by mandating more time for a PE program that emphasized fitness with the result being an amazing rise in the test scores of the students. Our children need to move. We saw that in a rainy first week of school. On the day the sun returned, our students exploded outside to recess and were perpetual motion machines. I am glad we are committed to physical activity whether it is on our ropes course and climbing tower, during regular PE classes, class hikes and canoe trips or even getting out of our seats more often in class than was once the case. STAY ACTIVE!