I recently read the letter you wrote to me, your senior self, when you were about to start high school at Menlo. You were long-winded, idealistic, and, yes, very nervous. You included two pages of motivational quotes, a long list of goals including a 4.0 GPA and a desire to start on the water polo team, and even predictions about the four years that lay ahead.
This will be the concluding post in the “Unsolvable Love” trilogy, 30 more epigrams that endeavor to honor and respect the ever-changing, many-sided complexity of the parent-child relationship.
I recently spent time with some friends who are sending their 6thgrade son to farm school. Their son is a bright, engaged student and young person. He isn’t going to farm school because he can’t do “real” school. His parents aren’t conspiracy theorists, or off-the-grid enthusiasts, or Luddites.
As I mentioned in my last Challenge Success blog post, I have taken up the challenge of trying to condense what I have learned about family life over the years into a series of aphorisms that (hopefully) illuminate in valuable ways the many fascinating facets of the parent-child relationship.
In fall 2015, Challenge Success launched a research-practice partnership with three northern California camps. These camps believed deeply — like many of you — that summer camp provides kids with long-term benefits and essential learning experiences, but they wanted to better understand if and how this was true.
Over the years I have offered countless lectures, workshops and seminars for parents on the wonders and woes of childrearing. Invariably, during the question-and-answer phase, an attendee will make an inquiry along the lines of the following: “If you could leave us with just one piece of advice, the most important takeaway from your presentation, what would it be?”
Here’s the deal: There are over 3,000 4–year colleges and universities in the United States. There are more than 1,500 accredited 2-year institutions – which are great options for lots of kids for lots of reasons. All kinds of kids go to all kinds of schools, and go on to live all kinds of lives. I know this. And yet, as a parent of a high school senior bound for college, I sometimes find it challenging to remember that (as Frank Bruni reminds us) – where he goes is not who he’ll be (and where he goes is certainly not who I am as a parent).
(Some) parents felt as if our proposal was lowering the standards to make it “easier” for students in high school. But we aren’t lowering the standards: we are redefining them. We are “challenging” what they define as a child who is “successful.”
Student-athletes at Head-Royce School face stressful challenges balancing the demands of school and sports. As an initiative to improve student-athletes’ health and well being, Challenge Success Club members decided to host a student-led H block discussing the issues and struggles of being a student-athlete in November 2017.
During the next few weeks you may find yourself in the company of high school seniors and may think that a logical topic of conversation is the college admissions process.
In November, The New York Times published an article titled What Colleges Want in an Applicant (Everything). Understandably, the topic of college admissions is often fraught with anxiety and frustration, and the details within this article may have heightened people’s concerns about the process.
I love school. As a child in elementary school, I would be so excited to get the school supplies list and go get things like new sharp colored pencils and books.