Tag: Learning

Facilitating a Reflective Transition from School to Summer

  The pace of activities and anticipation of summer can add to a sense of frenzy in these final school days. Children are excited about vacations and swimming. Parents are ready to shed the early morning commute to school and the pressures of homework duty. It’s tempting to race blindly forward into the sunshine without …

Elements of a Confident Kid… Open-minded

– willing to consider different ideas or opinions.1 About open-mindedness Why would open-mindedness be a hallmark of a confident kid? We all have developed cognitive structures from our environment and our set of experiences that form the basis of our understanding. When we receive new information, we begin to build upon or adjust those structures to …

Persistence through Life’s Adventures

Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure. – Amos Bronson Alcott “The driveway is too bumpy.” “I hate wearing bike helmets!” and “I don’t want to ride with training wheels” are all of the “reasons” my son vehemently cites for not learning to ride a bike when his friends …

Elements of a Confident Kid… Belief in Self

/be – lef/ : a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing. : a feeling of being sure that someone or something exists or that something is true.1 About a belief in self: Confident kids believe in their ability to learn and achieve whatever goal they …

The Birth and Re-birth of Identity

Every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment. – Ellis Peters The birds chirp outside of my window building nests and resting on the newly budded branches surrounding my office. As spring reveals new growth, we watch our children grow and develop, their transformations at times readily apparent and rapid. At a family …

New Year’s Reflections

We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience. –          John Dewey January is always a time in which my family and I reflect on the past year and dream about our hopes for the future. We try and step back and look at the big picture before diving into our specific plans …

The Fear of Failure

It may be that the most important mastery we achieve early on is not the mastery of a particular skill or particular piece of knowledge, but rather the mastery of the patience and persistence that learning requires, along with the ability to expect and accept mistakes and the feelings of disappointment they may bring. –          …

Junior Teacher

The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is him/herself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. – Paulo Freire The beginning of the school year presents an opportunity to get a fresh start with …

In Praise of Specificity

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. –       John Ruskin  How does praise – the expression of a favorable judgment[i]  – fit with raising a confident child? Is it good or bad? Is there such a thing as too much or too …

Are Questions the Answer?

Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. – Roger Lewin What do you know about the biggest creatures on earth? What nighttime dream do you remember most vividly? Why do you think you remember it? What super power would you like to have? When have you been most …

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