Holding Space for the Lives of Young People: What Matters Most?
Things to consider as we prepare for next year
The end of a school year is always a bittersweet time. Students leave and move on to new adventures. The dynamics of a school community change as returning students grow and new individuals enter. Educators enter that rare space of being able to truly reflect, focus, and think about what occurred during the year and how to chart a future vision.
Summer is the time I feel most connected to my practice, be it through reading, attending conferences, or meeting up with former colleagues to pick each others brains. This summer is shaping up to be particularly transformative for me: I am currently traveling in Japan to attend the Hakuba Forum and then will spend time at the Grove School with Train Montessori and the Association Montessori Internationale.
Whatever your summer plans are (and I hope that they include time for rest) I want to leave you with a some questions to ponder about planning for the next school year.
In many ways, we are in one of the most turbulent times in recent memory. Our young people are not okay, for many reasons. Much of that is the fault of adults and systems we’ve created which do not truly support the needs of the child, but instead seek to conform them to our arbitrary standards. Peter Gray just wrote a great post about how our “High Achieving Schools” are actually detrimental to children’s physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. You can check out his Substack here:
.In my work to plan the next school year, I was newly conscious of an undercurrent that I have felt at most schools that I’ve worked with: find the list of “things” from the previous year and find a way to replicate or modify them for the upcoming year.
Tradition and building on strengths is a good thing. But in this moment of having time to truly breathe and to reflect, each aspect of our schools deserves to be interrogated by the following questions:
Is this aspect of the school experience enriching the students in their holistic development?
Does this contribute to students feeling fulfilled, cared for, and connected with one another?
Are our students OK and ready for this, and if not, how do we meet those needs?
That’s it.
It’s simple- and yet that’s what makes it so hard.
The following questions immediately flood my brain whenever I attempt to distill my educational choices through this lens:
What about college and career readiness? What about “academic rigor?” What will the parents think?
These questions boil down to one very difficult one:
Are we prepared to defend meeting the needs of our students, especially if that is at odds with the cultural expectations that we may face?
And let me address the elephant in the room: parents.
I have worked with parents all around the world. We did not always get along, but I am proud of the parent partnerships I have built over the years.
In all of my interactions with parents, there has never been a doubt in my mind that each parent wants their children to be fulfilled, to be happy, and to live lives of purpose. And that is where we can bridge the gap between what serves children in reality, and what our culture of traditional schooling says they need.
In other words, if we do our homework, reading, research, and exploration, we can be prepared to show that the alternative path we choose, which radically places student wellbeing at the center, also centers the needs and desires that parents have for their children.
I won’t go on about the nuances of bringing our communities on board with a truly humanizing system of education, but I will invite you to sit with that that would look like.
What would you need to do, this summer, to align what you do with your students whole, human needs?
What would you change- and what would you keep the same?
And how will you educate parents along the way to ensure the important work of humanizing education can be sustained?
I’ll be thinking about these this summer and will share along the way.
Update on Breaking the Paradigm of Traditional Education
Thank you to all of you who have subscribed and been loyal readers to this Substack page. I started this in January as a way to bring clarity to my own ideas, and I am so thrilled that it has resonated with so many of you.
I know there are still comments that are left unanswered- and I promise I am coming back to them! It’s been a busy few months and I am looking forward to having more time to think, write, and respond this summer.
I’m also really excited to continue expanding The Enlightened Educator Project, which is looking for 1-2 more schools to join us for a cohort this fall. We currently are working with Montessori schools but are open to any environment that wants to truly invest in your student-facing faculty and staff!
Our mission is to develop mindful, reflective, and resilient educators to make education more humanizing and sustainable for all. Learn more about our school cohort model here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lE1Z3lQFkiZ9YZtPlvkSutdverMrBcz_/view?usp=sharing