Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – Growing Pains.
One of the things that I have consistently said to families this Fall is that we are not simply adding grades 9, 10, 11 and 12, we are expanding from a JK-8 to a JK-12. That process will result in many positive changes for the school, including significantly enhanced programming in the Middle School. We are already seeing the benefits of this process, as our Middle School has rolled out a full set of clubs this year and a new Robotics team. We know that the addition of the high school will lead to even more improvements, as we align our academic program across 5-12 learning continuums and create an ever more challenging program that finds that just right challenge for each student from 4 – 18.
While we are extremely excited about the changes that are and will be happening, I am also well aware that people and communities typically respond to change, as longtime school consultant and psychologist Rob Evans notes, with “ambivalence and resistance.” As he writes, “We often hope for change, for our own lives and relationships and careers to be different. Yet at the core we remain conservative creatures, our psychology marked by a powerful preference for predictability. We routinely resist change when it occurs, especially when imposed on us by others. This conservatism is not political but a deep impulse to preserve continuity and familiarity in life.”
He goes on to explain that a big piece of the resistance comes from the things that are lost amidst the change. In other words, while people may be excited about the new things that are being created, they are also impacted by the things that disappear or are lost as part of the change. These result in very real growing pains, as organizations try to balance celebrating the new opportunities with helping people navigate the things that may no longer be there.
As a school, we are facing one of these changes right now, as we try to navigate in real time with families in Middle School our high school counseling process. Historically, our high school counseling program has been best-in-class, run by our very talented secondary school counselor Eden Maisel. Twelve years ago, I appointed Eden to this new role we were creating and she has done an exceptional job helping families navigate the high school admission process. With the creation of a JK-12, we are in the process of sunsetting this role. JK-12 schools do not have a person who is helping families look at high school options because the school has a high school in which it expects students will enroll. At established JK-12 schools this is not an issue. At a school that is just transitioning from a JK-8 into a JK-12 with a really talented secondary school counselor this has not surprisingly become a source of real concern for some of our families.
Given parental feedback these past few weeks, we are reevaluating how best to transition the role over the next few years. At a minimum, we expect at this point to have Eden continue playing a modified version of the role next year, similar to what she is doing this year. Hopefully, that provides the reassurance families are seeking as they try to navigate the decision-making process for their own children. Ultimately, we know that we will fully shift away from the role at some point, knowing that as a JK-12 we want to dedicate the resources and expertise to making our own program exceptional. In the meantime, we will continue to lean into the growing pains, knowing that change is hard and yet also knowing that what we are doing is good for Hillbrook today and into the future.