I spent the first half of this week attending the biannual conference of Heads of ISAS schools in Santa Fe (New Mexico). ISAS, or to give it the full title, the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest, is one of Awty’s two major accreditation agencies, and its Heads’ conferences are always a treat, with wonderful atmosphere of genuine collegiality and guest speakers of outstanding quality.
On my way to Santa Fe, I took a quick weekend diversion to Moab (Utah), the location of two of my favourite areas of arid terrain – Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. An important reason for doing so was to meet up with a group from the Geographical Society of New South Wales which was passing through on a study tour of National Parks of the Western
USA. After I return to Australia in a few months from now, I will be organising and leading some study tours for the Geographical Society, and it was great to see several familiar faces so far from home in Moab.
One morning while in Moab, I managed to get up an hour and a half before dawn in order to drive out to Canyonlands National Park and watch the sun rise through Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park. The photo at the top of this blog and the one to the right are just two of a large set of images I managed to get as the sun rose. When I experience this kind of visual splendour, sacrificing a bit of sleep loses all
significance. All of the other photos illustrating this week’s blog are also from the Moab, Santa Fe, Taos and Acoma areas - they should help you to understand why I love Geography so much!.
I especially enjoyed two of the presentations at the ISAS conference. One was a one and a half hour session in which we were honoured to hear the retiring President of
NAIS, Pat Bassett, share his thoughts on some of the 25 factors that make great schools great. I loved this presentation and found it highly affirming, as it seemed to paraphrase Awty’s own
draft Strategic Plan that is designed to take Awty
through to the next level of greatness. It was energising to have the direction of our draft Strategic Plan endorsed so strongly by implication by someone of the outstanding calibre of Pat Bassett.
Pat Bassett emphasised the importance of focussing on the vision and the mission of the school, adopting best practices that are seen to have worked elsewhere, making a strong financial commitment to faculty professional development,
emphasising the so-called five sustainabilities (demographic sustainability, environmental sustainability, global sustainability, financial sustainability, and programmatic sustainability), committing to meeting the individual learning needs of the diverse student population that every school has, and so on.
I found one of Bassett’s points especially intriguing. One of the factors that he claims makes schools great is redefining the ideal classroom setting as one of intimate environment, not small classes. He says this because the former can occur in schools or classes of any size and even online, while the latter can miss the point of intimacy. I have often found the arguments for smaller and smaller (and thus costlier and costlier) class sizes to be flawed, superficial and anecdotal in that they tend to rely on emotion and teacher workload issues rather than solid data that demonstrates an improvement in
learning outcomes (at least when discussing the impact of a change to an already small class from say, a maximum of 18 students, down to a maximum of 16). Bassett’s argument about environmental intimacy rather than class size as such is (to use an Australian colloquialism) “spot on”.
There is much more I could say about Bassett’s 25 factors, but rather than simply reiterate his points, I’ll simply direct you to the presentation he used with us that is now found on the NAIS website – if you are interested, please see the PowerPoint file that can be downloaded from http://www.nais.org/Articles/Documents/25%20Factors%20Great%20Schools%20061213.pptx.
Wonderful as Pat Bassett’s 25 points were, I think the highlight of the conference from my perspective – even better than the lovely farewell speech and gift I received from ISAS’ Executive Director, Rhonda Durham – was a presentation by Paul Tough on the topic “How Children Succeed”.
Paul Tough is author of the top-selling book by the same name – “How Children Succeed” – which I first became aware of just a
few weeks ago when one of the lovely parents here at Awty presented me with a signed copy as a farewell ‘thank you’ gift. I therefore felt very well prepared to hear Paul Tough’s presentation which, I was somewhat relieved to find, was not a simple re-statement of the contents of his book as some authors are prone to deliver at educational conferences.
Paul Tough’s basic thesis was that while most parents and most schools see intelligence (as measured by test results) as the key factor that leads to success in life, qualities that fall under the label of ‘character’ are actually far more important. He identifies
eight of these character traits – grit, self-control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, curiosity and consciousness – as being especially important, adding helpfully that they are also far more malleable than intelligence if approached the right way.
Tough believes that these eight skills are better predictors of academic performance and educational achievement than IQ, and therefore they ought to be the direct target of interventions in schools. I really liked this approach, because it makes a strong case for differentiated instruction that meets different students’
individual needs to the greatest extent possible – just as our draft Strategic Plan and Pat Bassett have both advocated.
It would be difficult to do justice to all the excellent points that Paul Tough made in his presentation. Perhaps I can convey something of the flavour of his challenges to us as parents and as educators by citing his thoughts on the need for students to be taught how to achieve a balance between comfort and adversity, managing failure, and overcoming the chronic problem in many schools today that “everyone must succeed”. (The words that follow are my attempt at making a
transcript of part of Paul Tough’s words as he spoke, so although it may not be word-for-word accurate, I am confident it correctly encapsulates his thoughts and ideas).
“I think of my own son, and I think there is something very deep in my DNA that just wants to protect him from all adversity of any kind. But what I think a lot of parents are coming to realise is that in doing this – trying to protect our kids – we are often doing more harm than good. This idea, that a certain amount of adversity might be good for our kids, has been gaining some support in the psychological literature. There is a study that has been done by a group of psychologists at the State University of New York in Buffalo. What they did was to take 2000 adults and they gave them two tasks. One was this – an adversity check-list, a questionnaire, a list of different adverse events in childhood – not terrible traumas, but things like parents getting divorced, someone in the family loses a job, a fire or a natural disaster. You get a check for each of these events that happened
in childhood. The second test was a basic psychological test of happiness, mental health, well-being, and so on.
“For the most part, the researchers found that the relationship between these two lists was what they expected. Some people who had lots of adversity in childhood might check off 12 to 15 boxes, and they weren’t doing well at all on the measures of well-being (in adulthood). Their adversity had really gotten through their skin and it was affecting their mental health.
“But then they noticed something curious. There was a group of about 200 adults in the group who had not checked off a single box on the adversity questionnaire. They had not experienced any real adversity in childhood at all. And so the researchers looked at the slope
on their graph and they thought these must be the happiest, best adjusted people of them all.
“But of course, they weren’t. Their mental health scores were no better than those who had scored 9 or 10 adverse experiences. And the people who were doing best were those who had experienced 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 adverse experiences. It turns out that the relationship between happiness and childhood adversity is an inverse U-shaped quadratic equation.
“But knowing that still led to the question ‘why?’. Why is some adversity good for us? I think it is because it gives us an opportunity in childhood to practice failing – to learn how to manage failure.”
Later in his presentation, Paul Tough acknowledged that the way in which we develop character is something of a conundrum for both teachers and parents. He concluded his address by saying something like this:
“I think there are two conversations that we ought to have about children and success. One is about how to help our own kids, and the other is about how to help kids across town or in the next city. And what I want to argue is that these are really the same conversation, and the more we think of them as being the same, then the better
we will do on both fronts.
“Children need the same things to succeed, whether they are living in a poor neighbourhood or in the wealthiest suburb. They need love, support, and just a little bit of adversity.”
Of course, Tough said much more than this during his 45 minute address, and he gave several eye-opening examples and intriguing anecdotes to illustrate his points. Needless to say, his address was warmly received by all of us who are
Heads of Schools, as we experience on a daily basis the challenges in children that are caused by too much adversity or too much pampering.
Paul Tough’s argument for balance was indeed a compelling one for anyone whose prime concern is the formation of young people to cope with both the successes and the challenges of adulthood.
Parents at Awty may be encouraged to know that this is a theme I have been pushing continually during my time here at the school because it has such a strong direct bearing on students’ learning outcomes and success in later life. Therefore, a key goal in the list of goals I have negotiated with all three Division Heads for their appraisal in the year ahead is that they must investigate the adequacy of the school’s provisions for students with individual needs (academic, financial, physical, etc) and they are recommend any changes that are required in time for implementation in the next budget cycle.
As Pat Bassett and Paul Tough have argued so compellingly, this simple step – now in place here at Awty – will transform many of the lives of Awty’s present students for the better for many decades to come.