With the beginning of another school year fast approaching, I hope this issue of the Tartan finds you and your family well. Mid-August is always a conflicting time for me as I look forward with genuine excitement to the start of school all the while wondering how summer seemed to pass so quickly. As we come together as a school community, we extend a warm welcome to all new members of the St. Margaret’s family and wish everyone, new and returning, the very best for a great school year.
Throughout the summer I have reflected often on the messages delivered to our school community last spring by visiting speaker and author, Madeline Levine. Thanks to the generous support of the PTF, Dr. Levine spent two days at St. Margaret’s elaborating on thoughts so powerfully presented in her book, The Price of Privilege. While so much of what she says is worth repeating, one of the topics she covers connects directly with a question often asked on college recommendation forms, “How does the applicant deal with set-backs?” Increasingly, we too find ourselves discussing how our students (and their parents) deal with the inevitable disappointments and failures that accompany the personal growth and development of school-aged children. For many students and their parents, failure of any kind is unacceptable and the corresponding pressures on students to be perfect seem to escalate continually. From her experience as a practicing psychologist, Dr. Levine comments that, “Parents who persistently fall on the side of intervening for their child, as opposed to supporting their child’s attempts to problem-solve, interfere with the most important task of childhood and adolescence: the development of a sense of self.”
In the past four years, we have spent considerable time discussing, analyzing, and refining our mission as a school. Our commitment to educate the hearts and minds of our students for lives of learning, leadership and service is directly connected to and rests heavily on our collective success in helping our students develop a healthy sense of self. We speak often of the “portrait of a graduate,” that vision of what the successful student looks like when he or she steps forward at commencement to receive a St. Margaret’s diploma. For some the “portrait” is comprised almost entirely of quantitative characteristics – college choice, grade point average, rank in class, awards received, records held, etc. For others, however, the portrait is focused less on accomplishments and more on personal qualities that students carry with them into the next chapter of their lives. Do our graduates have a healthy sense of self – are they independent and autonomous, do they know what they do well, can they think for themselves, do they understand what it takes to develop and sustain lasting interpersonal relationships, do they have a solid moral foundation and are they able to deal with setbacks?
As we begin a new school year, I look forward to working together to help “our children” develop into successful graduates – autonomous, competent, caring, and resilient. This is no small accomplishment, however, for in our culture today the obstacles and challenges are many. None of us likes to see children stumble or fall, but as Dr. Levine says, “Difficult as it can be for parents, it is imperative that we allow our children to go out in the world, to try their hand, to bang up against difficulties, to learn how to fall down and then get up again. We must understand that when we allow our children these kinds of opportunities, we are actually helping them develop both the internal regulation and the sense of agency that ultimately will allow them to make good choices about themselves, their health and their relationships. By allowing them to get occasionally bruised in childhood we are helping to make certain that they don’t get broken in adolescence. And by allowing them their failures in adolescence, we are helping to lay the groundwork for success in adulthood.
Finally, Dr. Levine offers advice for all of us at school and at home. “What [our students] really need is to be educated about the values of perseverance and perspective, and to understand that learning and performance are not always the same thing. They need to see that their parents (and teachers) value effort, curiosity, and intellectual courage.” These are laudable goals and so much a part of what we stand for as a school.
In anticipation of the great work that lies ahead as we work together to love and care for “our children,” I extend to all of you the very best wishes for a healthy, productive and fulfilling school year. I very much look forward to seeing you in the parking lot, around the school or at the second annual Tartan Family Round-up on September 8.
Warm regards,
Marcus D. Hurlbut