Goal Setting

When we come to the end of a cycle, it's usually time to set new goals. I found this article by James Clear really helpful in helping me to think more deeply about the difference between setting a goal and changing a system.

Winners and losers both set goals, but winners understand that accomplishing a short term goal without changing the system that produced it doesn't create sustainable outcomes.

I like this quote from Clear's article.

"Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results. When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the systems level. Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves."

If you'd like to read more about goal setting, here's a link to his article.

Today is Earth Day

Today is Earth Day. I'd like to quote the final paragraph of Nathaniel Rich’s new book, “Losing Earth”:*

“Everything is changing about the natural world and everything must change about the way we conduct our lives. It is easy to complain that the problem is too vast, and each of us is too small. But there is one thing that each of us can do ourselves, in our homes, at our own pace — something easier than taking out the recycling or turning down the thermostat, and something more valuable. We can call the threats to our future what they are. We can call the villains villains, the heroes heroes, the victims victims and ourselves complicit. We can realize that all this talk about the fate of Earth has nothing to do with the planet’s tolerance for higher temperatures and everything to do with our species’ tolerance for self-delusion. And we can understand that when we speak about things like fuel-efficiency standards or gasoline taxes or methane flaring, we are speaking about nothing less than all we love and all we are.” *Special thanks to David Leonhardt for sharing this in his daily blog

Is The End Game For Our Students College Acceptance?

Our Mission

Greensboro Day School develops

the intellectual, ethical, and interpersonal

foundations students need

to become constructive

contributors to the world.

A recent note from an alum and past parent urged me to reconsider our mission statement to include a sentence saying that we are a college preparatory school. He believed that parents chose our school to ensure that their children get into the best possible colleges and that if we left out  "college preparatory" many parents would not seek us out.

On the surface, I agree with him. Our parents do expect us to prepare their children for entrance into the best possible colleges and we have an excellent track record of doing just that. But, what a short sighted view of the purpose of a well rounded high school education.

Ex-Yale professor William Deresiewicz, in his recent book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, speaks of the "elite" who attend prestigious universities, many of whom come from independent schools like ours.

“The irony, then, is this. Elite students are told that they can be whatever they want, but most of them end up choosing to be one of a few very similar things. Whole fields have disappeared from view: the clergy, the military, electoral politics, teaching, even academia itself, for the most part, including basic science. It is true that today’s young people appear to be more socially engaged, as a whole, than kids have been for several decades: more concerned about the state of the world and more interested in trying to do something about it. It is true, as well, that they are more apt to harbor creative or entrepreneurial impulses. But it is also true, at least at the most selective schools, that even if those aspirations make it out of college — a very big “if” — they tend to be played out within the same narrow conception of what constitutes a valid life: affluence, credentials, and prestige.

We believe that high school should be a time of exploration and discovery about both who a student is and who that student may want to become. Through providing an engaging curriculum taught by teachers who care about students and the subject matter along with a broad array of opportunities in music, art, ceramics, theater, sports, community service and various clubs we believe that students will find opportunities to learn more about themselves and their interests.

Participating in activities outside the classroom should not become badges earned to be placed on a college application, but rather fully engaged in for self-discovery and learning. 

Growing up elite means learning to value yourself in terms of the measures of success that mark your progress into and through the elite: the grades, the scores, the trophies. That is what you’re praised for; that is what you are rewarded for. Your parents brag; your teachers glow; your rivals grit their teeth.

Finally, the biggest prize of all, the one that draws a line beneath your adolescence and sums you up for all the world to see: admission to the college of your dreams. Or rather, not finally — because the game, of course, does not end there. College is naturally more of the same. Now the magic terms are GPA, Phi Beta Kappa, Fulbright, MCAT, Harvard Law, Goldman Sachs. They signify not just your fate, but your identity; not just your identity, but your value. They are who you are, and what you’re worth.”

“The result is what we might refer to as credentialism. The purpose of life becomes the accumulation of gold stars. Hence the relentless extracurricular busyness, the neglect of learning as an end in itself, the inability to imagine doing something that you can’t put on your resume. Hence the constant sense of competition. (If you want to increase participation in an activity, a Stanford professor told me, make entry to it competitive.)”

The problem here, as I see it, is the potential for our students to fall into the "credentialing" mind set where they are constantly setting their goals and measuring themselves by what they believe others - their mothers, fathers, relatives, teachers, potential employers, and friends - want to see or want them to be. Someone else is always telling them who they are and who they should be. And, at the end of their formal schooling what do they do when real life hits them and they need to make their own decisions?

I am in great hopes that our students and their parents will choose a college not based on which college is more prestigious, but the one that most fits with their family values and the student's passions and interests. As Maya Angelou reminds us, "Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."

Overcoats

It's already the New Year and I'm still working on my resolutions!

In addition to my resolutions of weight loss and expressing more gratitude, I'm going to work hard on one that my father frequently reminded me of while I was growing up; resolving not to put on the “overcoats” that could keep me from developing into my full self.

He explained that “overcoats” were stories or beliefs that people put on you ranging from what they thought about your religious beliefs, to your height, the color of your skin, or the work position you held. He even pointed out that the world's beliefs of what it means to be a man, how you earn a living and raise your children were "overcoats" that could be problematic. He let me know that I was in charge of making the decisions about who I was and what "overcoats" I wanted to wear, warning me that other folks would want to throw a lot of their beliefs on me.

He shared that if I chose to accept the “overcoats” made by what others thought, I could become so burdened and weighed down by them that I wouldn't even be able to reach the buttons to peel them off! He warned that I might become stuck, immoveable and frozen in what others thought and expected of me and unable to make up my own mind.

We all have "overcoats," or beliefs that we have accepted and that we would like to take off. My resolve this year is to peel off the “overcoats” that don't represent my best self and let more of my true self shine through. I think I might discover some parts of me that have been covered up!

Do you have any “overcoats” you would like to take off this year?