Originally posted on ReMarks & Reflections, the Official Blog of Mark Silver
I am so happy to see all of you tonight for the 2019-20 Back to School Night. It is an exciting moment to be at Hillbrook.
- We are 384 students strong, including nearly 45 percent who identify as students of color and nearly 25 percent who are paying below the top flexible tuition rate. This year, for the third year in a row, more than 50 percent of our new students identify as students of color.
- We are in year two of our redesigned schedule that includes innovative structures like Reach Beyond Block and integrated studies blocks and that helps us better meet two critical goals – to more effectively individualize the student experience and to allow for increased opportunities for students to reach beyond campus and make a difference in the world
- We hired our first ever full-time Director of DEI, Gulliver LaValle, creating an opportunity to further deepen our DEI work and reaffirming our commitment to being an intentionally diverse community, something that has been at the core of the Hillbrook experience since 1935
- We are nearing completion of the Hub, a state-of-the-art maker space that will integrate all types of fabrication in one place on our campus. As a school that has been leading the maker movement since 1935, we are thrilled that we will be opening a space this coming January (knock on wood) that will enable us to build upon the leading edge work we are already doing in science, technology, engineering, art, and design
- And we have one of our strongest teams of teachers ever, with a group of dynamic new lead teachers and resident teachers sprinkled among our extremely talented experienced faculty. And, let’s not forget, we have a fabulous new Head of Middle School Amy Hand.
Tonight we are reaching the end of the beginnings, as I often say, and tomorrow for me feels like the start of the “real year”. That shift will bring increased routine and comfort for parents and children, as we get past the high energy and occasional bumps of the early year. It also will bring with it the inevitable triumphs and challenges that happen as we partner together in your children’s educational journeys. In that spirit and recognizing that it only gets more “real” from here on out, I wanted to take a moment tonight to reflect upon this year’s theme, “Take Risks,” one of the school’s four core values.
As educators at Hillbrook, we live the value – take risks – every day. Since our beginnings in 1935, we have believed that to achieve our vision – to inspire children to achieve their dreams and reach beyond themselves to make a difference in the world – we need to create a culture that inspires questions, honors bold ideas and actions, and encourages collaboration. The Village of Friendly Relations that surrounds us this evening is a living testament to our founder’s commitment to taking risks. The Village sprang from the imagination of one of Hillbrook’s founders, Mary Orem, who in the mid 1930s was concerned about the increasing rise of facism and intolerance around the world. She wanted to find a way for children to learn how to work together, to solve problems, and, in the process, she hoped that this real world learning opportunity would help lay the foundation for world peace. The children designed the houses, acquired loans and purchased the supplies from town, and proceeded to build this small working village which included a general store, a bank, a tea house, and a place to publish the Happy Times, the school newspaper. Mary’s idea was so original that it ended up in an edition of Sunset Magazine in 1939.
Over the last ten years, we have deepened our commitment to this founding vision, becoming one of the first schools in the world to have a 1:1 iPad program and remaining today as one of less than 500 schools in the world that have received the Apple Distinguished School designation, reimagining learning spaces in ways that ensure student choice and engagement are at the center of the learning experience, creating a Resident Teacher Program that has led to one of the most collaborative, co-teaching models in the country, and launching the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship and the newly redesigned schedule I mentioned earlier that place reaching beyond at the heart of our academic and co-curricular program. And lest you think the Village of Friendly Relations is not a living part of our school, I encourage you to peak into the windows of the Hillbrook History House, which is soon to be our new podcast studio. Mary Orem’s audacious hope – to help create world peace – clearly remains alive and well at Hillbrook.
At this year’s Opening Flag, I introduced our “take risks” theme to children by talking about the story, “What do you do with a chance?” In this story, a little boy learns the importance of taking risks. Through the book he discovers that while taking a chance sometimes may lead you to fall flat on your face and be embarrassed in front of all of your peers, the opposite – playing it safe – means that you miss out on the opportunity to start something incredible. At the opening flag, I asked the children, “How might you take a chance?” As adults, I would challenge us to consider a slight variation on that question: “how can we support our child in taking risks?”
I have three thoughts.
- First, children need the freedom to be able to take risks. One of the biggest challenges in today’s highly scheduled, fast-paced, and sometimes anxious world is that children do not have enough time for unstructured play and for opportunities to take different types of risks – physical, emotional, social – outside of the constant oversight of adults. While we clearly need to keep children safe, we also need to remember what parenting expert Wendy Mogel talked about more than 20 years ago in her book, “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.” She wrote, “Real protection means teaching children to manage risks on their own, not shielding them from every hazard.”
- Second, we need to watch how we react to the mistakes our children make. Recently I came across the work of Kyla Haimovitz, a researcher at Stanford who was an advisee and collaborator with Carol Dweck, the researcher who popularized the term growth mindset. Haimovitz looked at how parental reactions to children’s mistakes influence whether children have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. She looked in particular at what she termed a “failure mindset,” and found that parents who believed that “failure is a debilitating experience have children who believe they cannot develop their intelligence.” The key? Don’t rush to fix your children’s mistakes. If a young child spills milk on the floor, don’t just clean it up for them and pour them another glass. If a child forgets their homework, don’t immediately drive to school and bring it to them. If a child refuses to bring a coat to the park and then complains that they are cold, think twice before offering them your coat to keep them warm. Natural consequences – having to figure out how to clean up a mess, having to talk to your teacher about not turning in homework, or being cold while at the park – are powerful learning tools.
- Finally, if we are truly allowing our children to take risks, they will have moments of genuine failure and pain. Real failure rarely feels good, and it can lead to a whole range of big emotions, including frustration, anger, and sadness. In those moments, we need to honor our children’s feelings by validating them and then, as I noted before, doing all we can to give them the space to find a solution on their own. Risk takers need to develop resilience and grit, and those are things that can only be learned through real life situations and challenges.
Clearly, taking risks is not for the feint of heart, and yet your children do it every day at Hillbrook in ways both big and small. Whether trying something for the first time, telling a joke to more than 400 people at Flag, or being given the opportunity to reflect on what matters to them and figuring out what they are going to do about it – we create the space for children to be brave, to be authentically themselves, and to develop the knowledge, skills and confidence they will need to be the best version of themselves and, in the process, change the world.