My wants as a parent are a little lofty and maybe even a little weird, but they are shaped by my professional work in independent schools. I have been a learning and behavioral specialist in NAIS schools longer than I have been a parent.
My wants may not get my kids into an Ivy League school, or even the best state universities, but they will ensure that my children have a positive experience. My son and daughter will spend the first 18 years of their lives in school, and I hope their experience will fortify their brain chemistry for a purposeful life.
So, what can our schools do, and what can they be, to prepare students for lives of purpose? My wants as a parent are for school to…
Feel More Like Summer Camp
I want my kids to come home tired, and perhaps even dirty, a little worn by the activity of the day, and so engaged in what they were learning that they will not shut up about it. I want them to have beautiful scenery to learn and to grow in—both indoor and outdoor spaces—for calm and quiet, for noise and discourse, for work. I want them to have a space they feel inspired to take care of and clean up, not because those are the rules, but because that is the norm. That is how they learn to give thanks for what they are given.
I want their teachers to play with them from age 3 through 18. Play is where we learn the most. There’s nothing more important than having unique, inspired, passionate adults around them who still remember how to inject play and laughter into classrooms from kindergarten to precalculus. My hope is for my kids to try many activities and succeed at something so completely that adults go, “Wow, who would think a kid could do that?!” And their peers go, “Yes! You did it! We did it!”
Be Diverse
I want my kids to have friends that look different and think differently, and for those differences to be acknowledged and celebrated. I want their naturally kind minds to have to grapple with atrocities of our past to better understand the present.
I want them to learn that they can always make room at the lunch table, and that doing so strengthens their character and their community. I want them to learn how to see from outside of their own prospective, to read and watch widely, and experience different cultures, traditions, faiths, religions, and people. That is the only way they will be prepared to successfully share this planet.
Have Lore And Common Language
I want the excitement and the anticipation of the rites of passage, the community traditions, to fill our house at every transition. “The Bizarre Bazaar will be this year! The Moon Launch! The Pirate Games!” I hope my kids feel so connected to their school that they would willingly sing and dance there at any age; that the grounds hold memories for them; that they feel something akin to coming home when they cross the school’s threshold two decades later.
Normalize Struggle
I want my kids to be brought to tears by their challenges: to have to walk away only to try again the next day, to learn to ask for help, and to keep trying until they understand what they can accomplish with practice and self-advocacy. I want their teachers to be masterful at forging resilience, but never without empathy.
I want my kids to fail at something—to feel like they let their team down or to disappoint themselves. And I want their teachers and their teammates in older grades, to sit with them and say, “I know how that feels.” This is as important to development as scoring the goals or getting the A.
Teach Collaboration
School should have space and expertise for students to air conflicts constructively, to cool their tempers, and to practice pro-social and collaborative skills. I want a support staff that feel as much a part of the teaching and learning as the faculty. If my kids are hurting and thus decide to hurt others, I want the adults, swiftly and directly, to model another way—to validate their feelings and remind them of the right thing. Consistently. Firmly. Kindly.
A culture of kindness pervades even when no one is watching or when it is not being modeled by the outside world. Everyone within the school’s ecosystem should operate with the core belief that kindness scales up.
Be Honest
I want administrators to patiently walk me through difficult conversations. School leaders should understand childhood as a long and sometimes tumultuous road, but also act like the experts that they are. They do not omit information that is hard to hear to preserve my tuition dollars, but because they understand that they work in service of my child’s future.
I want administrators who will acknowledge human variability, help me feel confident in my child’s unique path, and point me to resources, strategies, and options to support my child when I need help.
Do Meaningful Projects
Not building popsicle stick towers or dioramas or models at home, but instead, I want my kids to (age-appropriately) learn about the world’s problems, miscommunications, and injustices. I want them to have opportunities to explore solutions to those problems with their peers, their teachers, and experts in the field.
I want them to learn the many ways in which knowledge can be applied and the purpose it can bring them, even before that knowledge is fully realized. They can always learn more later. These days, we carry the world of information in our pockets. I need them to understand how to learn, not for a grade, not for a test, not for an outcome, but for learning’s sake.
Prepare My Child For The Technological Workforce
I want my kids to understand the complexity of A.I., of digital and social media, of virtual spaces and what that means for the human experience—good and bad. They should develop fluency and work creatively on these devices that shape our lives, but they should also learn to consciously ask what value it adds.
Enrich Family Life
Schools should get to know families and help build community––by doing things like offering faculty childcare or organizing a Saturday hiking club or an international parents’ group. Enriching family life also means knowing when to slow down and fight back against the culture of busyness that pervades modern life. This could look like offering breaks from homework and flexible means for getting work done—for the child that does better reading in the morning or the parent juggling multiple drop-offs and caretaking for their parents. Schools that are forward-thinking will design for this when they build their schedules and their policies.
I know from my experience as both a parent and a professional that independent schools can and should shepherd young people toward a purposeful life. I don’t mean a successful one––in that narrow definition of success that is defined by college pedigree, advanced degrees, or zeros on a paycheck. That will be up to my kids and will depend on the state of the world when they graduate, which is something I cannot foresee or control. Rather, independent schools should enrich childhood, and inspire my children to the fulfilling, boundless lives that we all hope to live.