Several administrators at a recent conference asked my opinion on year-end student awards and assemblies. At their schools, they typically rewarded students who had straight A’s or who had GPA’s above a certain cut-off point.
“I want to be happier. I just don’t know how.” In my work as faculty, presenter and leadership coach, I hear this confession from adults, 18-80. We live complex, stressful and often disconnected lives, often bombarded by media that convinces us that buying all kinds of stuff will make us happy, beautiful, successful, prestigious, and even more loveable individuals. Sometimes it does, in the short run. The real problem, however, is that this media-created trance can blunt our quieter universal quest for deeper joy and kindness. But there is very good news. Deep happiness is within reach.
A new school year is about to begin. First, we need to get over the lingering regret about what we didn’t accomplish — the closets that remain unkempt, the books we meant to read, the friends we were certain we’d see more of and the excursions with our kids that we never got around to taking. It’s water under the bridge as they say.
This is my first year as a full time teacher, after working for many years in education as a part-time teacher, researcher, and coach with Challenge Success. Throughout the year I’ve seen the complexities and nuances of how student stress works up close. Stress doesn’t just come from one place. It’s not only teachers assigning too much homework, or a hectic school schedule, or one too many extracurricular activities. It’s deeper than any one of those things. It’s cultural, and it’s something we not only feel, but also go in search of.
Everyone wants to be successful in high school. Success comes in a variety of ways: academic success, social success, financial success (except babysitting hasn’t really been cutting it). But the kind of success that I’m describing is not something that comes in the form of a transcript or an Instagram post with this or that person. A couple of weeks ago, as college notifications were rolling out, my friend and I had a long chat and reflected on the end of high school. The conclusion we came to was one that will always stick with me: the people who truly succeed in high school are the ones that can look back and say “Wow, I had a blast doing the things I loved and I would not change a single thing.”
On the wall of the library, a discolored gray slab of concrete with chipped gold paint proclaims our school motto: “Achieve the Honorable.” It glares down upon an expansive collection of books, each awaiting a curious student. It hangs above shining computers, the drab concrete words contrasting sharply with the innovative technology. It lords over students who scramble to fulfill society’s lofty expectations for success, scribbling last-minute homework to the rhythm of “achieve, achieve, achieve.”
Thursday was the technology professional development day at the District, and although I thought the day was excellently planned and carried out, and I was impressed with all the presenters, when I left, I felt battered and pessimistic. I have been trying to figure out why.
On paper, Castilleja is not so different from other schools. There are other private schools, even all-girl schools, that can claim the same benefits and advantages that Casti can. At least, I used to think this was the case. A few weeks ago, I discussed the practice of Senior Talks with a friend from a different school. Her school is much like Castilleja – small, all –girls, but located in a different state. They also have senior talks, where seniors speak about an important experience or idea that they want to convey to their peers, in a speech that is often moving and deeply personal. However, at my friend’s school, the best senior talks get voted on in a competition to win scholarship money. At Castilleja, the only prize you get for a senior talk or 8th grade speech is flowers …
What’s the most important determinant of students’ growth in college? According to Nancy Sommers, a researcher at Harvard, it’s not feedback or carefully designed assignments or skill acquisition, though these are central. These aspects of learning, Sommers finds, are overshadowed by another, less obvious but more important: students’ attitude. Specifically, a shift in attitude, away from evaluative and instrumental views of education (e.g, “I complete school work to get a grade, or because I need a degree to get a job,”) and toward a sense of purpose and connection.
In Cupertino, California, Hung Wei, a mother and local school board member, has worked passionately for almost a decade to improve the mental health of Asian American students. Throughout the school year, she gathers her teen staff members from Monta Vista High, a campus with a mostly Asian American student body, to produce Verdadera, a school publication that Wei founded. Verdadera, which means “truthfully” in Spanish, is devoted to honest expression and mental health. In every issue, students write about matters closest to their hearts: love, secrets, dances, body image, sexual identity, relationships with parents, and also intense academic pressures, competition, loneliness, depression and fears for the future.
The Washington Post ranking of US high schools has just been released and, as you can imagine, parents around the country are either congratulating themselves on the great choice they made or having an anxiety attack because their child’s school didn’t make the cut. While we could argue about the methodology used, we mostly want to convey that school choice should be about where your child fits and can succeed as much as anything else. We thought hearing from high school counselor and CS board member Lisa Spengler on how she helps her students choose a high school would help provide some perspective on an alternative way to think about high school choice.
One SAT Saturday in mid-September, between frantically cramming vocabulary and mathematical formulas, my friends and I started the typical pre-SAT complaining: how we should have studied harder and how we should have taken more prep classes — how this girl got a perfect score and that guy cheated on the math portion. You know… the usual. After a few minutes of bantering, one of my friends announced that she wished she had bought Adderall. A drug commonly known as the “study drug”, Adderall is a psychostimulant used in the treatment of attention-deficit hyperactive disorder, or ADHD. She felt too tired from studying for tests, writing essays and filling out college applications from the week before to fully concentrate on the college-prep test. To some, Adderall abuse may sound foreign, but Adderall and abuse of other attention-deficit drugs is growing among high school and college students across the nation.