JA Missives

Since everything seems to come back to Taylor Swift and AI these days, I’m going to leverage them to talk about what I think the purpose of school is. Let’s talk about the tricky business of letting temperamental things grow (focus on the bread in this image, not Taylor), and also, about being human, (not robots) while doing it. First, some important context.

Theme One: Letting Things Grow 

It may be helpful to know that both I and Taylor Swift (and a lot of other teachers I know)  have a shared obsession with sourdough bread baking, and if you know you know, that keeping a live culture of sourdough starter thriving in your house, over days, weeks, months and even years, is an act of faith, and trust, of giving the right kind of care attention, not too much, but just enough. It is kind of an act of obsession, love and sacrifice, not unlike parenting, and teaching. For what is worth knowing, I started my sourdough era right after we sent my oldest daughter off to college–it turns out to be way more temperamental than she ever was.

Theme Two: Humans 

While I am pretty comfortable with the creative possibilities of AI and the ever important role of technology in education, this is just a brief reminder about “NOT AI” generated, real, live, complex, HUMAN teacher and student relationships…and why they still matter. What is a lower school for  (for now anyway)? 

Back to Theme ONE: Letting Things Grow

Few parents, when holding their new sweet sleeping baby, think “I am so excited for you to experience separation, struggle, friendship insecurities, discomfort and confusion!” What happens in school can sometimes be counter to our/your normal parental instincts -which is usually to keep them mostly always close, and most things familiar and predictable. But we know learning opens new pathways, and walking on them, increasingly independently, and without you, can feel like a risky proposition, even though you know that risk IS required. Your child may be more, or less, ready for this than you are, on any particular day. 

We celebrate the word “struggle” and we encourage children to “do hard things” – you’ll hear it around in schools, often followed by cheers. Mostly this will make children feel proud, but sometimes, uncomfortable. It’s ALL ingredients for growth. They are changing, and some of it is happening outside of your view.

Changes in BABIES are quick to see, we measure their age in WEEKS, after all! School aged kids are different, they are growing in visible, and invisible ways. They are developing an inner life, their thoughts increasingly hidden from view. So, we stop counting their age in weeks, and start counting in years. (5th graders land somewhere between 520-572 weeks old, but who’s counting.) 

The image of the many moods of a sourdough starter represents any child on any particular day, at home or at school. Low or high energy, learning at their “peak”, or deflated and fading? We check on them too often, or not often enough, and either can deflate them. We feed them, but wonder why the growth is slow, or not like we expected it to be, and we wonder what ingredient is missing, and how can we fix it, or we blame something, someone, anything, for the slow down, even the weather. And then suddenly you look away for a minute, and there, it grows, and sometimes, in a burst…It’s a gentle touch that often does the job – an act of faith and trust, mixed with the right kind of attention, but not too much, just enough. We nurture the positive, while learning to step back- letting it work some stuff out on its own, and, little by little, this helps things grow, a lot. And sometimes, in bursts. 

Theme TWO – Humans (aka teaching and learning, at a human pace)

The way we live and perceive our lives and that of our children these days is, frankly, frantically, and with fractured attention. While writing today, I probably checked my email 100 times and my phone interrupted me about as much.

Teachers of course, at least for now, are NOT AI generated. And they are all here to deliver on the kind of human connections that fuel trust and growth. So much of how we learn depends on the relationships we experience and how they change us.

We ask so much of teachers…to meet our kids right where they are, to build their unique potential, their stamina, to inspire their curiosity. And teachers know — that the most important ingredient they need to do all of that is to FIRST, slow down and simply connect with a child. We strive to do this on any given day, even when any one of your children may, or may not, have eaten breakfast. 

It’s a gentle touch that often does the job  – an act of faith and trust, mixed with the right kind of attention (not too much, just enough). And when we see the child “rising to peak” , we’ll set them out, to  foster respect for and responsibility to a sometimes frantically changing world.

It takes a truckload of trust in teachers for parents to let children walk through the threshold of school, and have patience in the partnership to let all of us help your child thrive. And while we couldn’t ever promise a totally conflict-free ride (and why would we want to?), we can promise teachers are laser focused on cultivating a culture of positive growth , in weeks and months, and years. Slowly. Day by day.