By Ari Gerzon-Kessler

As a father, former teacher, and principal, and currently the leader of my district’s family partnerships department, I do not underestimate the challenges we are contending with today as both parents and educators. A recent national survey of more than 3,000 high school students found nearly a third reporting they were unhappy and depressed more than usual (Leo, 2022). Suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents.

Despite these and other obstacles our children are facing during these turbulent times, they have the potential to become a resilient generation that thrives. As I discovered in conducting research for my book, On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together, when children feel buoyed by strong partnerships between home and school, they feel nested inside a community that feels connected rather than fragmented. 

We need to prioritize helping our children feel deeply connected to themselves, others, and the world. For our children to flourish, we need to design home lives centered around a robust sense of community and strong relationships. “Parents who focus on keeping the relationships with their children strong are better able to help them deal with adversity,” write Amanda Sheffield Morris and Jennifer Hays-Grudo in Raising a Resilient Child in a World of Anxiety.

If our goal is truly to cultivate the whole child, seriously reflecting on the following seven questions is essential. I’ve asked these questions of educators, and they feel just as relevant to us as parents. Please use these questions as a checklist to gauge where you are excelling in your parenting and where you can grow your capacity.

1. How often are we as parents infusing positive emotion into our conversations, stories, and other learning opportunities?

Information without emotion is not retained. Conversely, emotion drives attention, and attention drives memory and learning. Sam Intrator, a teacher and writer, spent a year observing high school classrooms and asked students what they were feeling or thinking in the moments when they were highly engaged, or what he called “inspired.”

In synthesizing his results, Intrator discovered that, “The inspired moments of learning shared the same active ingredients: a potent combination of full attention, enthusiastic interest, and positive emotional intensity.” When we engage with our children at home, we can identify the activities that bring forth this emotional potency for them. We can also be what John Gottman calls “emotion-coaching parents,” helping our children to label their feelings, express them appropriately, and understand the sources of them (Sheffield Morris and Hays-Grudo, 2024, 117).

2. Where and how are you creating the spaces for your kids to feel seen, heard and truly known?

“There is no world but this one. And all we want is to be seen in it,” writes novelist Jess Walter. Regardless of their age, young people have a tremendous desire to be witnessed and appreciated for who they are. It’s important for us to regularly ask how we are inviting our children to bring their full selves. My mother, Rachael Kessler, was a pioneer in the field of social and emotional learning (SEL). She led me and hundreds of other students to engage in “Mysteries Questions,” where we could share our deepest wonderings about ourselves, others, and the world. When I listened to my questions and those of my classmates being read aloud anonymously in seventh grade, it was the most heard I ever felt in middle school and the most connected I ever felt to my peers.  

3. How are you helping your children cultivate rich inner lives and explore their spiritual yearnings?

Recent research has demonstrated that teenagers with a strong personal spirituality are 35-75% less likely to experience clinical depression (Miller, 2021). Sometimes our children spontaneously encounter gateways to spiritual experiences, but there is tremendous value in guiding them towards tastes of various spiritual traditions. Raised in a Jewish and Christian household, one of the most transformative experiences of my childhood was when my mother sent me on a retreat with the renowned Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, when I was just eleven years-old. The heavy dose of silence, spiritual teachings, and practicing mindfulness within a larger community left a permanent imprint. 

4. To what degree are you building strong ties with your children’s teachers?

Fostering a strong relationship between families and educators is a two-way street. As I know intimately from my two decades plus in schools, there is much more we can do as educators to forge more trusting and reciprocal partnerships with families. However, parents reaching out to initiate or enhance these connections can make a vital difference. As I explore in great depth in my book On The Same Team, classrooms and entire schools are transformed when we consistently strengthen the bridges between families and educators. Research shows that “when children and youth see their families, schools, and communities in authentic, meaningful collaboration, it supports their learning and development, inspires motivation, cultivates critical thinking, strengthens cultural identities, and creates safe spaces for each and every child” (Caspe & Hernandez, 2023). Cultivating this relationship often begins with a single phone call or text.

5. How are you creating opportunities for your children to direct their own learning?

Inside the school walls, much of learning today is still driven by the teacher’s intentions, interests, and aims. As my colleague Tish Jennings has discovered in her research, “Autonomy is a key predictor of well-being that is greatly overlooked in our schools.” Outside of school, many of us parents fill our children’s lives with a host of activities and commitments that are “enriching” but do not often foster this sense of autonomy. One of my greatest learnings as a parent early on was to allow my daughter to direct much of what happens during play time, instead of following my tendency to initiate what I think she will find enjoyable or meaningful.

6. How are you teaching your children to find nourishment in silence, solitude, and stillness?

We need to help our students learn how to better befriend themselves. I was recently at a hot springs a few hours from my home in Colorado. Beside me was a young man, who, despite being surrounded by a stunning moon and peaceful waters, spent his entire time in the hot waters watching videos on TikTok. 

Solitude is an important source for meaning, self-connection, and creativity. It also supports us to bring our best selves to our relationships. My mother called silence, solitude, and stillness one of the seven gateways to the soul. In a world where our children confront more stimulus than any previous generation, it’s vital that we create space for them to discover the sweetness of these three S’s. 

7. How are you providing the rituals and rites of passage that build resilience, character, and a sense of belonging?

There is a direct link between risk-taking and our capacity to learn and grow. As Joseph Campbell famously said, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure” (Campbell, 2014). In terms of living a full life, there is such value in overcoming adversity. 

Rather than trying to prevent them from experiencing any hardship, we need to support our children in taking risks and encouraging them to embrace failure. As my colleague, Richard Hood, puts it, “Failure is a necessary condition for learning. That’s why we have practices for teams, rehearsals for theater, and drafts for writers… I like the acronym FAIL: First attempt in learning.”

If we make this intentional effort to more fully cultivate the inner lives of our children, we can move artfully from a time of peril to a time of possibility, an era of despair and isolation to an era of hope and connection. 

The urgency for educators to commit to diversity and equity work in their schools calls for a framework that will help narrow achievement and opportunity gaps. This book offers the guidance you need to nurture strong family-school partnerships that are essential for student success. Check out Ari’s book On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together (Solution Tree, 2024).

About the Author:

Ari Gerzon-Kessler leads the Family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District (Colorado) and is an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships. He has been an educator since 2000, having served as a principal, bilingual teacher, and SEL trainer. Ari is the author of the book, On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together (Solution Tree, 2024).