He said, “Right through your legs!” He’s always taunting me!

“What the heck? We always use the basketball nets as a goal! You’re not being fair making us move.”

“You can’t score from a goal kick!”
“Who Said?”
“That’s always been the rule.”
“Not yesterday when you scored from the goal.”
“That was different.”

“You are such a bully. You’re always saying mean things to me and telling me what to do.”

The boys attracted to this game are similar in so many ways. The game often ends in conflict and I wonder why they even want to play with each other. There are some kids who genuinely enjoy soccer, who don’t engage in the arguing, but many of the boys seem to want to get into arguments. Do they like this? Do they like each other? If not, why do they continue to play with each other? Why can’t they be as wise as their principal who sees life as too short to play games with people I don’t really like.

And therein lies the difference. At some point I stopped caring about playing with people who I didn’t really like. This has something to do with the personal impact that others have on how I see myself. I have my own identity. I have defined myself. Others have much less impact on how I see myself so I can easily separate from people who cause conflict or just who I don’t like. My soccer playing boys define themselves by how others see them. There is the overwhelming coercion of others shaping their identity in ways that conflict with their values and nothing but chaos can ensue.

So what is a principal or parent to do? The answer lies in developing RESILIENCE – a set of qualities that helps a person to withstand many of the negative effects of life’s difficulties. And how do we develop a resilient child?

First a child has to believe that their own efforts can make a difference. They need to be able to take responsibility and make decisions. My friends on the soccer fields see themselves as powerless, or at least, they see everyone else as causing the problem. They need Meaningful roles and Responsibilities. This could include doing well at academics or non-academic activities at school, sporting events, volunteering, caring for siblings, and even chores at home. In order to take responsibility, they need something that they are responsible for. Given responsibility at home or at school, they begin to define themselves as someone who can cause change. They see themselves in a different role.
Next, they need to be Willing to take responsibility for making the game better. But being willing to take that chance means that they must Trust others. In order to trust others, our boys do not need to love others, but they do need to experience the people around them as reliable, feel respect for them, value them. The adults around them have to provide this model. The adults need to be someone to whom our boys feel Attachment. A secure attachment relationship creates a secure base from which a child feels safe to explore the world. In fact, one sign of resilience in children is the ability to ‘recruit’ caring adults who take a particular interest in them. This trust helps children believe that someone will be there to help when they risk taking a chance. The more they know that we’re there should they need us, the more willing they are to act.
These boys also must also have Autonomy – the ability to make decisions. Young people who are autonomous know that it is OK to make mistakes and that you can learn from mistakes. They take reasonably well calculated risks. Autonomous children and young people are good at self-regulation — they gain increasing control over their own emotions and behavior. They develop insight. Young people who have good insight into their own difficulties, including a realistic assessment of their own contribution and the contribution of others to those difficulties, are more likely to be resilient problem solvers.
These are the skills that we need as we grow older. It enables us to walk away from a game that we don’t like, or to make suggestions that actually make the game better. They are skills that take a lifetime to develop. This is why we don’t let 11 year olds drive – they have the intellectual ability to do so, they don’t have the emotional ability to do so. (Of course neither do half of the drivers on the road). But the roads we travel – be them highways or soccer fields, become less stressful, less confrontational as we learn to navigate them with skills that help us build our identity and our resilience.

Danny Glover reminded our students that being powerless is not as dangerous as being powerful and using the power badly. Spencer West, a man with no legs who carried himself with his hands and arms – no wheelchair, reminded us of the power of determination. The singer Nellie Furtado, showed us the power of compassion as she broke down during a reunion with a young Maasai woman who she met on a trip to Kenya.

Our students told me that they learned about the power that they have. They learned that there were students around the world who are working together to build schools, to help with drought relief or who are supporting villages who are trying to build alternative businesses to bring themselves out of poverty. They learned that they ARE making a difference, that people are living better lives because of their actions! They learned that together, from individual actions, from Me to working together, that school children around the world, the collective We, are making huge impacts around the world.
Not bad for one day.

We are bringing students so that they better understand that kids their age can lead global change! After all it does seem to be the movement of our time. We Day is a concrete, very positive manifestation of this movement. It will be interesting to see what our kids take away from this.

Stay tuned…

He writes several very interesting ideas.

“If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it.”

“As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.”

Worth the read.

As I watched my five-year old (Mary Clare) board the bus for her first day of Kindergarten this morning, I couldn’t help wondering about the education she will receive over the next 13 years in her public education.

Will Mary Clare  be educated in a similar fashion to her grandfather and father or will she experience something a bit different?

Will Mary Clare be part of an educational system that is driven by standardized test scores or a system that focuses on individual strengths and a love of learning?

How long will the excitement to board the bus and go to school last for Mary Clare? As I focus on these questions, I wonder how other parents feel when they watch their students leave for school each day. What questions and hopes to they have? Are they concerned about standardized test scores as much as our policy makers are?  Or do they have similar parental concerns to mine?
My hopes for Mary Clare are pretty simple.  I want her to be part of a system that values her as an individual and allows her to follow her passions.   A line from a blog post from Will Richardson hit home for me in regards to the path that our nation’s schools are headed down with our focus on standardized testing.

We’ve become so dependent on the test to tell us about our students that we know less and less about who they really are. And without really knowing them, how can we help them reach their individual potentials? 

The last thing any of our Mary Clares needs is the same lock-step routine our schools have been following for the last century. Mary Clare needs an educational setting where risk-taking is encouraged and problem-solving is the focal point.  If the most important thing is for Mary Clare to come up with the right answer to a question that can be Googled then all I need to do is get her to improve her keyboarding skills.

On the eve of our first day with students, I wonder how the parents of our students feel?  On the same note, I wonder how our students feel?

Hopefully they do not feel like the theme of Seth Godin’s post from this week titled“Back to (the wrong) school.”