Determination
April 8, 2024
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
“Do your best always.” Years ago, while I was Head at my former school, I saw these simple but powerful words emblazoned on the gates of another school, one with which we did long distance cooperative projects. Located in the poorest neighborhood of Nairobi, the school – despite its physical and financial realities – stressed determination as one of life’s deepest lessons. No matter what the undertaking, giving one’s best effort leads to better results.
This month’s Primary Day value – determination – is a similar bedrock habit that we seek to practice and instill from the earliest ages we serve onward. We very mindfully seek to form powerful norms while our students’ minds, attitudes, and practices are still highly malleable. We also keep our expectations high and consistent, and even our peer culture positively reinforces the message that giving one’s best is simply the PDS way.
Although American culture seems captivated by “natural talent,” even Caitlin Clark isn’t
the superstar she is because of her innate abilities alone. She has excelled because she combines her natural predilections with exceptional perseverance, determination, grit, passion, and practice. She is the epitome of determination and what Stanford professor Carol Dweck in her book Mindset calls “purposeful engagement.” (Our faculty read this seminal book over the summer, and some parents read it for a group discussion in the fall).
Dweck asserts that focused determination unleashes higher levels of achievement, and higher “capacity for lifelong learning and brain development” than previously thought possible. “Application and experience,” she says, “ not some fixed prior ability, [expose] a person’s true potential.” She defines a “growth mindset… as the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.” A “fixed mindset,” on the other hand, is the belief that intelligence, personality traits, moral character, and abilities are fixed and not very changeable. A fixed mindset handicaps one’s ability to realize potential.
At Primary Day we focus with our children on developing determination because it is foundational to developing a growth mindset. The Kenyans may have had it right in boiling it down to something as concrete as “Do your best always.”
Instilling Responsibility
March 6, 2024
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
I still remember that telescope -- the first thing I saved up for on my own -- and the outing my father and I took to Boston to purchase it once I had stashed enough of my allowance and birthday money into an old Christmas card box. I also can still recall the satisfaction I experienced once we set it up and stood in the backyard gazing up at a now closer moon and Saturn.
Saving up for some of the things I really wanted was one of the ways my parents tried to instill within me a growing sense of responsibility. Another was having to clean up a number of my own messes, an instance of which occurred while trying to earn a little extra money to hasten the day I could get the telescope.
One of my friends and I decided to set up a small neighborhood business selling worms door to door to make “everyone’s” fishing expeditions to the nearby pond that much more convenient. We devised this entrepreneurial project since we knew of a ready supply of worms – under the bricks that bordered a number of my mother’s gardens. Whenever I’d go fishing, I’d simply remove a brick or two, extract a few worms, and carefully replace the bricks so as to elude detection. However, when my friend and I decided to go door to door, we removed the bricks bordering an entire garden, sloppily put them back, and hurried off to sell what we saw as a highly perishable and precious commodity.
When I returned home, not having sold a single cup of worms, my deed had been discovered. My mother was quite upset, but remained calm while demonstrating exactly how each brick was to be replaced. Since my friend had gone home, it seemed like it took me an eternity to restore the garden border to a state approaching what it had been before my failed sales venture. So, along the way to that telescope, I learned many lessons about responsibility, which was perhaps another reason I appreciated it all the more when I finally got it.
With the coming of March and our school’s focus on responsibility, I am reminded that there are many ways to instill this virtue within children. Most take a fair amount of parental work and resolve. Many take more parental time than doing the task for the child. However, without this kind of commitment, it is unlikely that children will develop into the dependable, trustworthy people we want them to be.
PDS’ Countercultural Stance Making Respect the Norm
February 7, 2024
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
One of the key challenges in teaching children about respect, The Primary Day value for February, is encapsulated in a fundamental tension. On the one hand, we need to lead children to understand that all people should be treated with respect because they are part of the human family, not because they have “earned” it. Yet, at the same time, we need to teach children that the most likely route to being treated with respect is to act in a way that in fact earns it. Our task as parents and teachers is not made any easier by the cultural moment in which we live.
We all know that children internalize significant lessons from the models that surround them. However I am convinced that their observations around the issue of respect are particularly potent. Children keenly note whether we parents and teachers are courteous or uncivil in both big and small moments, whether we are accepting or dismissive of people’s differences, whether we follow rules or act like they don’t apply to us. Because even young children can understand the concept of respect, they are quick to absorb the way they see us speaking with others, responding to those in authority, and treating those closest to us.
At Primary Day we truly utilize “Beako’s Golden Rule” as an underpinning of our days. Probably few days pass without our teachers emphasizing how important it is to “treat others the way you want to be treated.” We reinforce the huge impact that following this rule can have both on everyone’s PDS experience and on the culture of PDS itself. Treating everyone kindly and respectfully makes everyone feel happier, more secure, more valued, and ultimately more engaged and more successful in all their activities at school. Respect is, after all, a fundamental part of any social system’s effective functioning – or dysfunctioning, as we see in so many areas of public life. At PDS, even though it may seem countercultural, we stand resolutely for respect and its importance in every aspect of everyday life.
But respect is indeed a two way street. Even Otis Redding Jr., composer of that iconic Motown tune “Respect,” points out that “what you want” and “what you need” both flow from “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”
Cooperation and Connection
January 11, 2024
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
While mulling over the state of the world as 2023 closed and 2024 dawned, I thought about how disconnected people have become from one another and how cooperation, our Primary Day value for January, can only be fostered once people connect on some level. Ongoing global conflicts; ongoing political division; ongoing racial, ethnic, and religious divisions; accelerating interpersonal distance brought on by impersonal technology; the list goes on. It all reminded me of a talk I heard a few years ago by Dr. Ned Hallowell, a nationally known child psychiatrist who writes and lectures primarily on two topics: learning disabilities and what he calls “connectedness.” So I dug up my notes.
According to Hallowell, cooperation has to do with one’s ability to interact positively and collaboratively with others. As such, it is the basis for much of what humans achieve. Connectedness similarly has to do with “the feeling of being a part of something larger than oneself.” Hallowell delineates several arenas that offer opportunities for connectedness – family, friends, work, the past, activities we enjoy, and nature to name just a few. He maintains that people can only be psychologically healthy if they form meaningful connections within many of these domains. And then he cited this: one of the key findings of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Mental Health is that there were only two factors that could be consistently identified as predicting which adolescents were likely to stay out of serious trouble (defined as prone to violent behavior, significant emotional distress, alcohol or drug abuse, pregnancy, or academic failure). These factors had to do with the degree to which the child reported feeling meaningfully connected at home and meaningfully connected at school. No other objective data – socioeconomic status, family constellation, parents’ education level, geography, type of neighborhood, etc. – yielded such a correlation.
Hallowell went on to outline that childhood connectedness stands at the root of adult happiness, as do four other factors he said the research has isolated: optimism, positive self regard, a feeling of control over one’s environment, and a tendency towards extroversion.
As we foster opportunities for our children to learn to work cooperatively with one another, and as we provide them with both unstructured and structured chances to interact, we are indeed helping them develop important competencies. For in helping children learn to connect to others, we are laying the groundwork for much of what truly matters in life.
Hope
December 14, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Each year at about this time, I am reminded of a small, eye-catching collage-like creation that the beloved art teacher at one of my earlier schools made for me and my family. It became a touchstone that I gazed at frequently during the holiday season and that I carry in my mind throughout the year.
At the center of this beautifully decorated piece were these simple words: “We will find peace. We will hear the angels. We will see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” There’s a good measure of irony that I find these words so inspirational since they come from Anton Chekhov’s tragicomic play Uncle Vanya, a work ultimately about life’s illusions and misplacing one’s dedication. But seeing the beautiful way our friend illuminated this passage, I am able to separate the words from the play’s context and fall under their spell. To me, Chekhov speaks of faith, hope, peace, wonder, and light – the most important themes of year end holidays celebrating the coming of light.
Over the coming weeks, I hope you and your families are touched by the hope, peace, wonder, and light of this season. I send you all my best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and for a Happy New Year in which “We will find peace. We will hear the angels. We will see the sky sparkling with diamonds.”
The Gift of Gratitude
November 1, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
What is the most memorable way that someone has ever showed you they cared about you? Think about it for a minute. That was one of the questions raised during a talk presented at the Elementary School Heads Association annual meeting I attended in DC on Friday and Saturday.
One of the conference participants shared that it was when her 25 year-old daughter gave her an unexpected gift: a simple but beautiful box that contained 75 pieces of paper, each sheet explaining one of the reasons the daughter loved her mother. Her daughter said she should randomly pick a sheet any time she was feeling down. The mom decided to read a sheet not just then but whenever the spirit moved her. The mom always found her mood elevated by reading her daughter’s observations, which was elevated even more by her thinking about her daughter’s fundamental gratitude, thoughtfulness, and love. The daughter, for her part, periodically sent additional sheets to be added to the box.
What a gift! I imagine it actually did as much for the daughter as the mother. As the daughter wrote sheet after sheet, she no doubt recognized her good fortune and the cocoon of love that sustained her, nurtured her, and encouraged her.
Researchers in the field of positive psychology have consistently found that those who regularly take time to express gratitude, our Primary Day Value for November, report that they are happier and more satisfied with life, enjoy stronger relationships, are more successful in life and career, and are healthier than those who do not express gratitude on a consistent basis. Also, such feelings of gratitude are unrelated to material abundance. It is instead related to those who are happy with, and grateful for, what they have.
This remarkable example of the mother and daughter exemplifies one of the reasons gratitude is a value we seek to inculcate in our children. It enriches the life of the gratitude receiver and the gratitude giver. It just takes getting into the habit of seeing the good fortune that surrounds us, and then turning that outward by expressing gratitude in some way through some kind of overt statement, act, practice, or even journal entry. This month of Thanksgiving underscores the importance of teaching this kind of behavior to our children, not just for November but for throughout life.
“How America Got Mean” vs. PDS Values
October 4, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
From time to time I come across evidence that what we do at Primary Day has larger implications than I perceived. This weekend I had such an experience as I read a complex piece from the September issue of The Atlantic that at its heart validates the creation of our PDS Values program.
The article was by David Brooks, a writer whose informal beat is the state of the American soul. Entitled “How America Got Mean,” the essay sketches out answers to two questions that have preoccupied him for the better part of a decade: “Why have Americans become so sad?” and “Why have Americans become so mean?” Starting from the belief that “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis… [that] undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy,” Brooks attempts to answer the question “What is going on?”
As Brooks’ narrative courses its way through history, he makes the case that standard “stories” explaining our society’s current dysfunction only go so far. It’s not just technology or demography or sociology or economics. Instead, he hypothesizes that “the most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude… is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein… We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.”
Much research has confirmed the neuroplasticity of young children’s brains. As Primary Day students absorb and gain direction from their early learning experiences, powerful results can follow when two of the most important institutions in children’s lives – family and school – work in tandem. That is why families and teachers were integral to the discernment of which values we would emphasize, and it is why together we can make lasting inroads as we mindfully lay the foundation for lives grounded by character, morals, and purpose. Kindness, honesty, empathy, and all the other PDS values are the building blocks of creating a life of meaning and enduring value.
Interestingly, Brooks’ article cited a 2012 paper which found that words used in print and everyday language “related to being virtuous” significantly declined over the course of the 20th century. For instance, the use of the word “bravery” dropped by 65%, “gratitude” by 58%, and “humbleness” by 55%. In 1967 85% of college students reported “they were strongly motivated to develop a ‘meaningful philosophy of life’… By 2015, 82% of students said wealth was their aim.”
Our words and focus matter. Our children can personify and lead the renaissance of kindness, common purpose, unity, and happiness that our society so needs.
Striving Towards a Growth Mindset & Savoring
September 11, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Cooler days with dew on the grass, the scent of fresh mowing aloft, and the need to close windows at night signaled the start of a new year when I was an elementary student and walked with my sister and our friends to our school in our leafy Boston suburb. It’s a far cry from the broiling heat of our first week back. Even though the high temperatures remind us that “summer” often goes into October in the DC area, we have had a jubilant and productive first few days, energetically being back together under the wing of Beako.
Primary Day’s classrooms all begin the year following the guidelines of Responsive Classroom’s first six weeks of school, the goal of which is to create a positive, safe, challenging, and engaging learning environment for the year to come. Routines – upon which children thrive – are being set. Classroom procedures are being modeled and practiced. Behavioral norms, even on the playground and in the hallways, are also being modeled and practiced, as are how to use materials and different areas of the classroom. Hopes and dreams for the year ahead are being formulated. For these most important years of a child’s education, consistency, organization, and mindful planning of learning and social activities undergird all we do.
With all the promise of the new academic year, I’d like to point to two of the many opportunities for the setting of new habits. The first comes from the seminal book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, written by Stanford professor Carol Dweck and read by our faculty and staff this summer. Dweck points out that our thinking about our abilities (and those of our children) can be divided into two modes of thought. A fixed mindset springs from believing that a person’s innate intellectual ability is a largely immutable deep-seated trait. A growth mindset maintains that one’s intelligence and personality can be developed with purposeful application. Dweck’s research and book document how much more can be accomplished when one adopts a growth mindset and mindfully shakes off falling into a fixed mindset. I highly recommend the book to all of you and will host a book discussion on November 14 at 8:30 am. Dweck maintains that we need to focus on effort, application, purposefulness, and growth to reach our fullest potential. Instead of pointing out “how smart” our children are, we need to empower them by focusing instead on the effort they exert, the perseverance they show, and the growth they demonstrate. Mistakes should be seen as opportunities from which to learn and move forward, that the skill or understanding has not come yet but, within reason, will with guidance, stick-to-it-iveness, and effort. A simple way to remember this is “the power of yet.”
A second worthy new habit for this new school year is savoring. In a recent “Hidden Brain” podcast, host Shankar Vedantam began with these words: “Sorrows have a way of finding us, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. Joys, on the other hand, are often hard to notice and appreciate.” Everyone complains; few take the time to look for and savor the good. His guest, psychologist Fred Bryant, suggests “how to make the most of the good things in our lives.” Like with the PDS values kindness, empathy, and gratitude, those who cultivate habits of savoring (and anticipating and revisiting happy experiences) show signs of greater health, positivity, satisfaction, and achievement. Good, blessings, and that which is worthy of savoring surround us – if we form the habit to see them.
So here’s to cooler days, settling in to new routines, forming growth mindsets, and savoring all that is good in our lives – even if we aren’t there yet. Welcome to the 2023-24 school year at Primary Day!
N.B., This year I will be writing a piece once a month; a teacher or administrator will also be writing once a month.
Practicing PDS Values Over the Summer
July 5, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
In a few days you will receive a link to a PDS webpage that will host a wealth of summer academic learning resources, from math activities to reading suggestions, for each of our grade levels. Our classroom teachers and resource team have gathered these resources because we know that over the summer, without our students regularly maintaining their academic skills, there will be a significant loss of learning come September. While summers provide a welcome change of pace, activities, and locales, it is still important to make time for some academic-kind of work at least three or four times a week.
In addition to keeping your children’s reading, writing, math, and thinking skills sharp over the summer, you also have the opportunity to keep alive this year’s very significant focus on our Primary Day values. All of our students can tell you what each of our values mean and most can give you examples of corresponding behavior. One of the reasons our values work has been powerful is that our teachers have been united in using them as the framework for the kind of behavior we expect. When teachable moments arise, our teachers often use the related PDS values to reinforce or describe the related words and concepts we have discussed, read about, wrote about, and thought about from the earliest days of the school year.
We arrived at our list of values after faculty, staff, and parents worked to discern and come to consensus around what they thought were the most important ideals to try to instill within our children. As your family shifts into summer mode, keep talking about kindness, honesty, gratitude, respect, responsibility, patience, cooperation, determination, and empathy. Academics surely are important, but helping parents raise good people is our most essential task. Best wishes to you and your family for a wonderful summer!
The Lure and Language of Nature
July 5, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As summer nears, one of its draws for me is the chance to spend unhurried time in nature. The lure of the island 12 miles off the coast of Maine that I have visited each summer for almost 4 decades becomes palpable once Graduation passes. Writers, poets, musicians, and even researchers have long written about the benefits of spending time in nature. Pressures fade, connections strengthen, health markers improve, as beauty, calm, and rejuvenation work their magic. When we spend more time in nature, we also better sense our place on and our connection to our planet. We notice intricacy, interdependency, patterns, details, and marvels that the pace and routine of our (sub)urban lives deaden. Our planet’s future depends on our sensing and holding these impressions as valuable.
In the file I keep of articles I intend to read, I was amused to come across an opinion piece in The New York Times by Jeff Opperman, a freshwater scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, entitled “Taylor Swift is Singing Us Back to Nature.” Long before the current phenom of Swift’s Eras tour, Opperman wrote back in March of 2021 that her then recent albums Folklore and Evermore reversed a trend he had long noticed: that “the language of nature has been steadily draining from the vocabulary of our culture.”
Opperman writes, “Our culture has experienced a steady and dramatic decline in its connections to nature. American children now spend an average of only four to seven minutes per day playing outdoors, compared with over seven hours per day in front of a screen. By now they are far better at identifying corporate logos from native plants or animals; they can tell the difference been an Apple and a Coke, but not a maple from an oak.”
He believes Taylor Swift’s music counteracts this trend and that it is one of the reasons her music has gained a following amongst more diverse audiences (perhaps even in the “aging Head of School” demographic). Since Opperman is a “nature scientist and not a music critic,” he “analyzed the lyrics of the 32 songs on Folklore and Evermore and the lyrics of the first 32 songs from the ‘Today’s Top Hits’ playlist on Spotify. The result? Ms. Swift uses nature-themed words seven times as frequently as the other pop songs do.” But more widely, “nature-themed words [are] losing ground in our pop culture.” Opperman cites a Scientific American study found a 63 percent decline since the 1950’s. He maintains this is important because, “If we want to change the world to safeguard nature, and ourselves, we first have to see it. Art can do that.”
In the song Seven, Swift sings, “Please, picture me in the trees / I hit my peak at 7 / Feet in the swing over the creek / I was too scared to jump in / But I, I was high in the sky / With Pennsylvania under me / Are there still beautiful things?” Opperman says that “rather than four to seven minutes outside each day… [in Swift’s work] nature, childhood, and friendship are all intertwined and seared deep in memory.”
The coming summer is an opportunity to sear those memories of nature deep in the memory of our children. I think what nature promises is what draws my family and me back to that Maine island year after year. Even my soon-to-be-eighteen year-old craves it.
Developing Helpfulness in Children
July 5, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Neil Mufson, Head of School
This past Sunday I found myself thinking about the “royal treatment” my sister Nina and I would devote to my mother many, many years ago on Mother’s Day. We delighted in making and serving breakfast, doing the dishes, helping in her beloved garden, and performing various chores throughout the day.
In addition, when we were about 6 to 10 or so, annually my father would write a musical for us to perform, with the music and title based on riffs to then popular Broadway shows. He would type out the words on index cards, we would somehow surreptitiously practice, and before the performance we made and decorated a program with all the lyrics and index cards incorporated. The shows I can remember were “Mom, We Love You A Lot,” set to tunes from Camelot, “My Fair Momma,” “The Sound of Momma,” and “Momma on the Roof.” My dad would play the tunes by ear on the piano, as he was so good at, and Nina and I would sing and act out the stories in front of the living room fireplace. I often hammed it up and provided some comic relief, much to my sister’s annoyance.
Except for Mother’s Day, though, I don’t remember being particularly helpful around the house except for setting the table every night, making my bed, and keeping my room tidy. Given the generally traditional nature of my upbringing, that fact surprises me since I am of the generation in which family life revolved around the family and not around the children. My needs were never neglected, but they were never exactly central to everything we did.
While I ended up developing a conscientious work ethic and always did well in school, I don’t think it came from having responsibilities around our home. Not long ago, though, I heard a story on NPR about how to raise children who will be helpful and responsible, and not bossy, around the house and in their social spheres, and not just on special occasions. The piece featured an expert who had done field work in different cultures in the Arctic, West and Southern Africa, and in South America. She scanned hundreds of studies on how families and groups around the world develop responsibility.
What she found was that the children who became the most helpful and responsible had parents who gave children small subtasks of larger tasks to complete – in fact, about 3 a day – and were not put off if the child made a mess or mistakes at first, even if they ended up taking more time than if the parent just did the task themselves. These parents allowed small bits of practice and didn’t worry about precise or trouble-free results.
While my parents may have unobtrusively had us doing these sorts of things, what I most remember were the productions, my father’s generous laughter as we pieced the plays together, and my mother’s absolute delight and joy as we performed and as she made a fuss about our versions of Playbill. When I prepared to sell the home in which my parents had lived for 40 years, I found those old Mother’s Day programs in a drawer in the nightstand next to my parents’ bed. Our regular helpfulness may have not formed until much later, but our shows contained something worthy of saving.
The Balm of Empathy
July 5, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As I have thought over time about the many divisions that exist in our country, I have come to believe there is something we parents and educators must and can do for the sake of our children and the future of our world: a better job of teaching empathy to our children. The reprehensible and dispiriting expressions of hatred, inhumanity, disharmony, racism, violence, and utter incivility that we frequently witness have strengthened my belief about the need to find a starting point. After all, Martin Luther King, Jr. warned us that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
Empathy, our Primary Day value for May, can help to repair our society’s badly broken spine and spirit, one person at a time. In the book Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World, Michele Borba makes the point that empathy can and has to be taught and modeled. By teaching children to be able to tune in to and recognize feelings; by focusing more on character and less on external achievement; by helping children understand others’ perspectives; and by fostering the development of a moral imagination that can conceive of alternatives, we can lay the foundation for more fulfilling, more ethical, healthier individual lives and greater community, even societal, cohesion. By practicing self-regulation, kindness, and collaboration, children learn to behave in ways that promote empathy.
Borba’s book is at once theoretical and very practical. While she makes the case that “stretching your kids’ caring and ‘helping’ muscles must be ongoing,” she provides very concrete steps parents and teachers can take “to help our children become good, caring people, [which] also gives them a huge edge at happiness and success.” This resonates with some of the earliest lessons we seek to instill at Primary Day: Beako’s Golden Rule. It also complements Primary Day’s goal of partnering with parents to raise good people who are ready to create future opportunities in a humane, meaningful, and community-oriented way.
The Unending Human Cost of School Shooting
July 5, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Earlier this week I wrote to you about some of the steps we have taken and are considering at Primary Day to make the campus as safe as possible from intruders. What those steps don’t account for, though, is the human toll of the 129 mass shootings that had already taken place in our country this year at the time of the Nashville shootings. These horrific events may be short-lived, but their impact is eternal. Promising and accomplished lives are cut short; parents are left to grieve their incomprehensible losses; family dynamics and systems are shattered; lives fall apart; communities recognize that they are not safe and will never be the same.
On a more individual yet universal level, school massacres provoke parental anxieties about their children’s fundamental safety. Children ask fearful questions focused on how can it be that adults can’t (or won’t) protect them. What used to be unthinkable has now become commonplace. Death from firearms is now the leading cause of death among children in the United States.
A sadly interesting related piece popped up in The New Yorker last week. Entitled “After the Nashville School Shooting, A Faithless Remedy for Gun Violence” by Jessica Winter, the essay revealed the even more shocking statistic that most childhood deaths by gunfire happen in the home: “85% of children ages 12 and under who are killed by a gun are shot in their own home.” This is another reason Nashville’s U.S. Representative Tim Burchett’s response to gun violence was so stunning: “We’re not gonna fix it – criminals are going to be criminals. I don’t see any real role that we could do other than mess things up, honestly.” While whether school shooters are “just” criminals is questionable, what is his personal solution? Homeschooling his daughter, which leads Winter to ask, “Is homeschooling the right decision for parents who wish for their children not to be shot dead at school?” In fact, the statistics show that “homeschooled children are a higher risk for abuse and neglect, partly because they have less contact with mandated reporters such as teachers and social workers.” Being schooled at home is not causally linked to abuse or being at a higher risk for dying by gunfire, but all the data underscore how far off kilter our society has become.
Concrete ways of empowering your children to overcome some of the side effects of our nation’s constant gun violence are contained in the following resources and links from NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools). Though I seem to be circulating these tips with greater and greater frequency, they point to ways parents can assert some power amidst all the inaction, discord, hopelessness, and irresponsibility of today’s political climate. Primary Day’s world of Beako’s Golden Rule seems strangely removed from, yet perfectly apt for, the reality of America in 2023.
Helping Children Cope with Tragedy
· Talking to Children About Tragedies (American Academy of Pediatrics)
· Helping Kids After a Shooting (American School Counselor Association)
· Promoting Compassion and Acceptance in Crisis (National Association of School Psychologists)
Media Consumption
· Children and the News (American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)
· Explaining the News to Our Kids (Common Sense Media)
· Helping Children Cope with Frightening News (Child Mind Institute)
Responsibility & the Dream Remote
March 24, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As I have been thinking about responsibility, the PDS value for March, and the children’s amazing responses to my question “What is responsibility and what does it look like?” at the recent Beakos, I thought of The New Yorker cartoon from about 10 years ago by Roz Chast entitled “The Dream Remote.” Pictured was a remote control full of buttons related to many day-to-day responsibilities. Beyond buttons for “wake up,” “brush your teeth,” “take out the garbage,” “clean room,” and “do homework,” there were those related to some of the finer points we try to instill in our children – “write thank you note,” “stop picking on your brother or sister,” “pick that up,” “put that down,” and “leave that alone.”
Of course as we try to teach our children about responsibility, there are no such simple devices. A substitute simply does not exist for a parent’s consistent and steadfast efforts to model, teach, and ultimately instill responsibility. In fact, when we neglect this kind of critical teaching or try to find ways to make it easier for our children to learn and meet their responsibilities, we are short-changing them in the long run. It is only by providing age-appropriate opportunities for this kind of practice that we lower the risk of creating “responsibility-impaired” teens and adults (A decade or so later than the Chast cartoon, what does this February 16’s daily cartoon also from The New Yorker say when it shows a dejected Spiderman sitting at a bar with a man who says, “Listen kid – in the real world, great power comes with no responsibility whatsoever”?)
By the way, opportunities to learn responsibility should not be accompanied by the lure of a reward. We need to build on the intrinsic satisfaction our children feel as they meet their obligations and help themselves, their family, or others. After all, we don’t want our children to become dependent on a reward in order to do the right thing.
Though a simple push of a button on “the dream remote” is indeed tempting, there are no shortcuts to developing responsible, dependable, reliable offspring. Plus, we’d probably have trouble keeping track of the remote anyway.
The AIMS Accreditation Process
March 3, 2023
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Next week I will be away from school through Wednesday chairing an accreditation team for the Association of Independent Maryland & DC Schools. Every ten years independent schools undergo an exceedingly thorough, two-year, inclusive self-study during which time every aspect of a school’s operations is examined – from curriculum and teaching to finance and safety. AIMS’ Commission on Accreditation has created a detailed document that guides schools through this process. It also includes lists of every local and state legal requirement schools are compelled to follow as well as more generative questions that ask the school to consider how it might improve in the future.
When the self-study is complete, a team of educators from a variety of AIMS schools visits the school for 4 days. The team is composed of personnel in different roles from schools of various sizes, locales, and type (boarding, single gender, coed, PK-2, PK-12, etc.) The accreditation team reviews the massive self-study before the visit. It is then the team’s task to determine if the school does what is says it does, if it meets all accreditation standards, and if its practice is congruent with its stated mission. The accreditation team then compiles a report describing its findings in every area of school life and including lists of commendations and recommendations.
Once the school has received the accreditation team’s report which has been reviewed by the Commission on Accreditation, it has one year to create an “Action Plan.” This entails documenting the school’s plans to address every recommendation made by the visiting team. The Action Plan is reviewed by the team chair and then it is presented to the Commission for approval. The school then has 4 years to work on and document its progress on every item in the plan. The school is revisited five years from the time of the initial accreditation reports and is evaluated in its plan implementation. Three years later the school starts the self-study process again.
Over the years, I have served on and chaired numerous accreditation teams for AIMS, and I chaired the Commission for 6 very long years. It is a remarkable and intense professional development experience in that it exposes educators to a variety of settings, ways of doing things, and solutions to common dilemmas.
Primary Day had its 5 year visit last fall while we were still under many of the restrictions of the pandemic. We were lauded for our progress over the past five years under the leadership of Scott Lawrence. We are now finishing up some items from our last Action Plan before we begin a new self-study in about 2 years.
While I will be available to respond to significant issues next week, please contact Sami Eghtesadi, our Director of Teaching & Learning, for items with which you would typically reach out to me.
Respect
February 16, 2023
Respect
Neil Mufson, Head of School
If you’ve seen the brilliant, glowing bulletin board just inside our front door, you know for sure that this month’s Primary Day value is RESPECT. The board makes this keystone practice very concrete by noting some simple ways our young friends can RADIATE RESPECT:
- Follow Beako’s Golden Rule.
- Think before you act.
- Include everyone.
- Treat others with respect.
- Be considerate.
- Listen carefully.
- Be kind.
- Think before you speak.
- Apologize when needed.
- Use polite manners.
This month’s focus on such an important practice reminded me of a small volume I came across a number of years ago called Say Please, Say Thank You: The Respect We Owe One Another. Written by Donald McCullough, a professor of theology, the book focuses entirely on the concept of respect. The author’s central assumption is that “people deserve to be treated with respect, not because they have earned it, not because they are always kind or easy to get along with, but because they are part of something bigger than themselves… they [are part] of humanity.”
McCullough maintains that if we “Treat one another with a lack of respect, that lack of respect will spread, not only back to you but toward others. Treat one another with the dignity befitting human beings, and that dignity will in turn multiply. Attitudes and actions are as infectious as a mean virus.”
McCullough asserts that by observing simple courtesies, each of us can help turn the course of our society’s rampant incivility. This suggests a natural place to begin with our children. Taking the time to emphasize seemingly small expressions of thoughtfulness – for instance, consistently saying “please” and “thank you” – “can have a big role in creating a more humane humanity.” By teaching our children to make “everyday” courtesies more “everyday,” we teach them to respect others, which strengthens their connection to others and every community of which they are a part. After all, as McCullough writes, “Our lives are built one small brick at a time, ordinary day by ordinary day. With each little expression of thoughtfulness we help create something of immense significance… a manner that acknowledges the worth of human beings.”
The suggestions on our front bulletin board can indeed radiate outward. A more connected, humane, and respectful world can start right here!
Is Cooperation a Lost Art?
January 19, 2023
Is Cooperation a Lost Art?
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Given our nation’s evermore frayed political climate, the world’s seemingly countless, intractable conflicts, and our planet’s perilous, much-neglected state, it can feel futile to talk with our children about cooperation, The Primary Day value for January. Perhaps, though, it is more important than at any time in recent memory.
Against a backdrop of seemingly unprecedented discord and tension, we have to seize every opportunity to teach our children about the importance of working collaboratively toward common goals. While most individuals cannot influence global events, we can teach our children that they can indeed be more in control of their own spheres if they learn the power of interacting positively and collaboratively with others. Consideration of differing points of view, compromise, and partnership are delicate arts that, with practice, can lead to accomplishments that are far greater than individuals can achieve on their own. By seizing teachable moments in school, within families, and when we are around our children as they interact with their friends, we can help them hone their cooperative skills and gain a better sense of our interconnectedness. Even though some species possess such native tendencies, humans must learn, practice, build, and maximize them.
Economists predict that of the top 10 jobs that Primary Day children will encounter when they enter the work force, 6 aren’t even invented yet; but they posit that all 10 will demand collaboration. This is probably not so surprising since cooperation is at the base of much of what humans achieve. As John Donne observed as early as the 16th century, “No man is an island.”
“Kind World”
January 6, 2023
"Kind World"
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As we begin a new calendar year, I’d like to return us to the Primary Day value with which we began this academic year: kindness. World events and daily life remind us that there is never a shortage of situations in which kindness is important and potentially transformational. As I have already cited on many occasions, research on kindness shows that no act of kindness is wasted. They all improve how we feel about our place in our world, how we impact the lives within our orbit, and how we can even improve the world in general. Ask your children, “What did the Dalai Lama say about kindness?” and most can recall, “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
One of my favorite podcasts is an utterly amazing, inspiring, and now discontinued series called “Kind World.” Each piece is only four to six minutes long, but I found each more powerful than the last. The lead-in describes the podcast as illustrating that “Small acts of kindness may seem ordinary but are actually extraordinary and amazing to others. A smile, a helping hand, or simply listening can be as important as breakthrough therapies.” The episodes go on to tell the story of a single set of circumstances which illustrate how powerful a “simple” act of kindness can be. For example, the episode “Strangers at the Airport” tells the story of a young woman whose plane journey got interrupted in severe thunderstorms and how a family intervened to make her feel safe, cared for, and not alone during an overnight delay at a connecting airport. Even our first and second graders would be able to relate to what the family did to display kindness, how they initiated that kindness, and how their compassion made the young woman feel. They would realize that it doesn’t take big actions to show kindness and have an impact.
While many “Kind World” episodes are decidedly adult-oriented, by listening to them, we can gain a broader sense of how meaningful individual action can be. They give us an inspiring sense of how we can reach out to others – even total strangers – and make a difference in how they feel – and ultimately how we feel. And here’s a challenge worth setting: Can your family regularly reflect (weekly, for instance) on an action some family member took that was a particular act of kindness and the impact it had? Or, did someone treat “one of us” kindly and how did that make us feel?
While empathy can be an abstract concept for our small children, all understand the idea of kindness. It is an important habit to form, practice, and reflect upon. By flexing the kindness muscle more intentionally, we increase the likelihood of its positive impact, of meeting the promise of the Dalai Lama’s truth.
What Patience Can Bring at This Time of Year
December 14, 2022
What Patience Can Bring at This Time of Year
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Each year at about this time, I re-read and re-savor my favorite winter holiday story, Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. One of the things that makes for great literature is a text’s ability to say something timeless yet new each time it is read. Capote’s Depression era tale does that and has at its roots themes about kindness, gratitude, and patience, three of our Primary Day values.
Capote’s tale tells of the special relationship between Sook Faulk, an elderly spinster, and her best friend Buddy, her seven-year-old distant cousin. The plot revolves around their yearly routine of making fruitcakes to give as gifts to the special people in their lives. But beyond the story line, in marvelously crafted writing, lies the richness of their friendship, their love for each other, and their caring about others. Buddy also learns deep lessons about the value of patience.
Sook and Buddy’s connection is strengthened by their annual ritual which includes gathering in an old baby buggy the nuts from an ancient pecan grove, painstakingly shelling them by a fire, patiently squirreling away their pennies for a year so they can buy other necessary ingredients (including homemade whiskey), baking thirty-one cakes in four days, and sending them off to “friends, not necessarily neighbor friends, indeed the larger share are intended for persons we’ve met maybe once, perhaps not all… People who have struck our fancy.” Once the cakes are on their way, there are their other holiday customs to attend to – cutting a tree from deep in the forest, handcrafting decorations, buying their dog Queenie a bone, and making each other a gift, which usually and quite magically ends up being a kite, easily read as a symbol of the transcendence that their friendship and their caring for others bring.
One of the lines that especially caught my eye as I reread the novella this year has to do with a statement Sook makes when she and Buddy refuse a veritable fortune for the treasure of a Christmas tree they have cut. The mill owner’s wife, who very much wants their tree says, “Goodness, woman, you can get another one.” Buddy reports, “In answer, my friend gently reflects: ‘I doubt it. There’s never two of anything.’” That’s probably true of the most valuable things in life, yet it also strikes me that yearly rituals such as those engaged in by Sook and Buddy can indeed multiply and deepen life’s most valued relationships, moments, and expressions of compassion.
The same is true of each family’s holiday rituals. When we’re patient and take the time to get beyond the rush, hype, and the material, there’s that which can bring greater continuity to our lives, can deepen our love, can focus us on what is truly important, and can bind us more closely together. That’s what I hope you and your family will find this and every year, if you celebrate a year-end holiday or not.
Supporting the Development of Healthy Friendships
October 27, 2022
Neil Mufson
Even though Primary Day’s children are only between the ages of 4 and 8, my eye was drawn this summer to a Washington Post article entitled, “Adults Undervalue Teen Friendships.” While the piece pointed to guidelines for helping parents support their teen’s friendships, the article actually pointed towards “the PDS years” in promoting strong friendships, emotional stability, and satisfying, healthy connections to others.
The writer of the article, Amy Laber-Warren, posited that close, positive peer relationships are as potent a force in adolescents’ lives as bad influences can be. In order to foster healthy decision-making and development, teens need at least one close friendship — to confide in, bounce things off of, and to be encouraged and held in check by. But the piece points out that parents often under value these kinds of connections in favor of what adults believe “augur success: doing well in school, helping around the house, participating in sports or community service… [Parents} tend to under-appreciate… the value of close teen friendships… Children who develop supportive, trusting relationships with others their age are more likely to become healthy, happy, and successful adults.”
Some of the factors that can support teens in developing these kinds of relationships are equally important for Primary Day students. Consistent modeling of how to be a good friend and regularly talking about how to behave when presented with common friendship dilemmas are key ways parents can help children form good friendships themselves. Also, calmly talking through how to problem solve when inevitable peer conflicts develop is excellent practice for when run-of-the-mill quarrels arise. Laber-Warren also suggests welcoming children into your home as a way of fostering good friendships, and focusing on quality rather than quantity of friendships. Researchers have found that having a best friend or being popular do not correlate to future satisfying relationships, but having at least one or two good friends does.
Strong friendships are part of what makes life optimally satisfying. Researchers have found that proactively helping children with the “slings and arrows” as well as joys of friendships now leads to greater “academic success, better mental health, more rewarding romantic relationships, and even better physical health” throughout life.
Honesty as a Cornerstone
October 13, 2022
Honesty as a Cornerstone
Neil Mufson
Why is honesty, the PDS value for October, one of the initial concepts we focus on during our year-long focus on character? Because, along with kindness, it is so closely aligned to trust, which stands at the root of almost all meaningful, positive, satisfying, harmonious, and productive human relationships. Also, even our youngest children can understand many of the ins and outs of truthfulness, which is an essential building block of integrity, the broader value we seek to instill.
Plato put it this way: “Truth is the beginning of every good thing... and he who would be blessed and happy should be from the first a partaker of truth, for then he can be trusted.” Mark Twain put it far more practically: “If you tell the truth, then you don’t have to remember anything.”
What both Plato and Twain point to are some of the fundamental verities about honesty that can resonate with Primary Day children, particularly with the benefit of clear adult guidance. Why be truthful even if it can sometimes be very difficult and even a little scary? It’s the right thing. It feels better. It’s less complicated. It often softens consequences and hastens forgiveness. It builds trust. In short, it makes good things more possible.
Contrast all of this with the model we seemingly so consistently see in public life, where saying something repeatedly stands in for truth; where dishonesty and the opposite of kindness have shattered the public trust; and where lies of supposed leaders imperil lives, endanger our planet, and jeopardize justice. We clearly want our children to inherit a better world. But we also want them to develop the power to change it. So we start with kindness and honesty, then gratitude and patience, cornerstones to strong individuals, stronger relationships, and a stronger world.
Partnering with RR & A for Psychological Services
September 29, 2022
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
This school year we are engaging in a pilot initiative to bring the services of consulting psychologists to Primary Day. In the past several months, I have worked with Dr. Rebecca Resnik and Dr. Rachel Singer of Rebecca Resnik & Associates (RR & A), an extremely well-regarded local group of psychologists, to create a multi-faceted program to benefit all constituents of our school: students, faculty, and families.
To begin with, I wanted to make sure we were most effectively handling what psychologists are calling “fallout from the echo pandemic.” That is, I wanted us to be as proactive as possible in meeting any particular emotional and social issues that have arisen for our children due to the restrictions and disruptions of the pandemic. I wanted to have thought and action partners in providing prudent, research-based intervention strategies. This may be as simple as teaching the faculty to identify signs of emerging distress, or it may involve working with classes on topics such as stress reduction, mindfulness, worry, or social dynamics. The topics will be ever-evolving.
However, since I wanted our partnership to go beyond issues we’re seeing in the aftermath of the pandemic, RR & A will also serve as a resource for me, our Director of Teaching & Learning, our learning specialist, and our teachers when we are confronted with complex issues involving emotional health and well-being as well as complex learning issues. Our teams may seek insight when discussing challenging student situations. We may include a consulting psychologist in parent meetings, as appropriate, if you have given permission for your child to be observed.
Over time, RR & A will also lead teacher workshops to help us identify emerging mental health concerns and implement effective interventions within the classroom setting. Similarly they will conduct parenting workshops on topics such as fostering resilience in children, building children’s abilities to navigate social difficulties or setbacks, managing stressors related to parenting, empowering growing independence, or developing strategies to help children gain emotional awareness and regulation. I welcome your suggestions for other relevant topics.
Another very unique capability that RR & A will offer us is on-site therapy for individual students or small groups of students. Of course we would never have RR &A meet with your child individually without your permission, and RR & A will be offering these particular services at the parent’s expense, just as if the child were a client they saw at their site. However, two significant advantages are that receiving psychological services at school would be less disruptive to the child’s weekly routine, and students whom we refer will avoid long wait lists for service.
I will share more with you as our relationship with Rebecca Resnik & Associates develops. I anticipate inviting you to a parent program before our winter break.
Small Acts = Big Impact
September 22, 2022
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
It was a crisp New England fall morning. As I was walking down to my classroom in the Henry C. Sanborn School as a fifth grader, a teacher I barely knew called me over. “Neil, Mr. Mirasola told me that you need more challenging math, and I can’t wait until Monday when you join my class.” I remember feeling slightly flustered but then filled with a kind of glow. I told my parents of about it at dinner. My mom said, “You see, it didn’t take much on Mrs. Gritsavage’s part to make you happy. That was so kind of her.”
“People who perform a random act of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it… That miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others more often.” Such were the findings in the August edition of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, according to “The Ripple Effect of Random Kindness” recently published in The New York Times. Researchers also found that potential kind deed doers often worry that “a gesture will be misinterpreted, or might make the recipient feel pressured to pay it back.” But Tara Cousineau, a psychologist and author writes, “When the kindness impulse arises, we totally overthink it.” In fact, the article points out “an act of kindness is unlikely to backfire, and in some instances can beget even more kindness.”
So what does this tell us about how we can help our children catch the kindness habit? First, it suggests that we as adults have to model performing small acts of kindness – letting a car go in front of you on a busy street; taking time to really “see” the checkout clerk in the supermarket line; sincerely thanking someone whose efforts and work often largely go unrecognized; emailing photos of the first weeks of school to grandparents. It doesn’t take much but mindful effort.
Simultaneously we can direct our children outward when we comment on some of the kind things we notice in our everyday lives. “That was really kind of that woman to let me take the parking spot both of us were headed for”; “That was so helpful of him to hold the door for us since we were carrying all those heavy packages.”; “It made me feel so good when that woman complimented the flowers I had picked out.” At the dinner table, have everyone take turns saying how they showed particular kindness to someone that day; have the kids make a card for an elderly neighbor; ask them who they might like to take some of the flowers to when you’re working in the garden. By pointing out what otherwise might go unsaid, we reinforce for our children what is important to us. It helps when we consciously counter what another recent study found: that 60% of surveyed teens reported their parents value achievement over kindness.
“No small act goes unnoticed,” says the mother of a 9 year-old daughter who was killed when a tree fell on their car during a storm. Despite those horrific, unthinkable circumstances, that mom set up “Keeping Kindness for Halle,” a great success both in memorializing her daughter and in spreading random acts of kindness. As the article ends, it points out that people do not have to learn new skills to practice kindness: “It’s about: What skills and talents do you already have? And how can you turn that into an offering for other people?”
An "Ice Age of the Heart"?
September 15, 2022
Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
An “Ice Age of the Heart”?
Last week I mentioned that this summer the faculty read the book The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci. In it, the author states that despite the discord, violence, tumult, and devastation that often pervade the news,
“The fabric of our life is actually made of care, solidarity, [and] mutual service.
These qualities are so embedded in our daily events that we may not even notice
them. Yet to receive kindness does us good… [But] something similar happens
on the other side of the equation: Giving kindness does us as much good as
receiving it… Kind people are healthier and live longer, are more popular and
productive, have greater success in business, and are happier than others.”
Since everyone’s experience suggests that humans are more likely to thrive in environments marked by kindness rather than conflict, our teachers this year will be paying even more mindful attention to ways we can model, emphasize, and expect kindness in our school community.
We also know that children learn best when home and school actively partner with one another. Hence I’d like to invite you to read Ferrucci’s book and to join a group of parents to discuss it in the library on November 15 from 8:30 - 9:15 a.m.
Kindness sounds so basic, yet as we rush about our lives, it can too easily not receive the emphasis it should receive. Ferrucci maintains that,
“We all are in the midst of a ‘global cooling.’ Human relations are becoming
colder. Communications are becoming more hurried and impersonal. Values
such as profit and efficiency are taking on greater importance at the expense
of human warmth and genuine presence. Family affections and friendships
suffer and are less lasting. Signs of this decline are everywhere, visible
especially when they touch us in the small catastrophes of life. You make
a phone call to talk to a person and you hear a digital voice presenting a
list of options… You wait for a letter from a friend and receive an email. The
farm you love is gone, and in its place stands a cement building. You notice
older people are not as well cared for and respected as they used to be.
Your doctor concentrates on the test results instead of listening to you and
looking at you. And rather than playing ball in the backyard, kids move in
the virtual world of video games… I am convinced that we are going through
an Ice Age of the heart… the causes of which are many: new living
conditions and forms of work, the establishing of new technologies,
the decline of the extended family, the great migrations in which
people are uprooted from their birthplace, the weakening of values,
the fragmentation and superficiality of the contemporary world, the
accelerating pace of life.”
And all that was before the pandemic.
Amidst our lives in a world of exponential change, I look forward to exploring with you and other PDS parents how we can stand against this tide and ensure that our children are in the forefront of a renaissance of kindness in an all too shrill world.
In My Beginning is Not Necessarily My End
June 2, 2022
In My Beginning is Not Necessarily My End
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Ever since discovering T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets while a comparative literature major in college, I have been intrigued by the lines in the poem East Coker that say, “In my beginning is my end… [and] in my end is my beginning.” While Eliot was ruminating on more metaphysical questions about human existence, as an educator, at this point I find these lines memorable because they are only marginally true for primary-aged children when one considers their progress in any given school year.
Think about how and where your children began the academic year. Now consider what they are like as they end it. Many have seen truly remarkable, meteoric growth in numerous areas. While in some ways their “beginnings” can be recognized in their “ends,” in most cases a school year has worked its magic and utterly transformed them.
Similarly, children will not necessarily begin next year where they end this one. The academic skills they have acquired will not be maintained over the summer without a conscious parental effort. While children certainly need a change of pace over the summer, they also need to continue to read, write, and do math. The school’s summer reading and math suggestions that will be coming home shortly are a good starting point, but parents also need to be alert to opportunities to inject this kind of practice (even if it’s unobtrusive) into their family’s regular routine. In that way, to quote Eliot, “The end is where we start from.”
It has been an absolute pleasure working with you and your precious children during this, my first year at Primary Day. I truly look forward to more growth in the years ahead. My best wishes to you and your family for a wonderful summer!
Raising Readers
May 12, 2022
Raising Readers
Neil Mufson, Head of School
In recently going through an old box of school materials, I came across a tongue-in-cheek “field note” in an old copy of The Hornbook, a journal about children’s books. Written by some friends and former colleagues, a husband and wife teaching team named Dean Schneider and Robin Smith, “Unlucky Arithmetic: Thirteen Ways to Raise a Non-Reader,” was a humorous outline of some of the things parents can do to discourage reading. Here are my favorites:
- Never read where your children can see you.
- Put a TV or computer in every room. Don’t neglect the bedrooms and kitchen.
- Correct your child every time she mispronounces a word.
- Schedule activities every day after school so your child will never be bored.
- Once your child can read independently, throw out the picture books. They’re for babies
- Don’t play board games together. Too dull.
- Give little rewards for reading. Stickers and plastic toys are nice. Money is even better.
- Under no circumstances read your child the same book over and over. She heard it once, she should remember it.
- Make sure your kids only read books that are “challenging.” Easy books are a complete waste of time. That goes double for comic books.
Dean and Robin point to some of what we need to provide for children if they are to become engaged, enthusiastic, life-long readers: models; some freedom from the clutter of screen and being over-scheduled; natural kinds of positive reinforcement; and the time and “space” to develop an intrinsic love of books and language.
The acquisition of strong reading, comprehension, and critical reasoning skills, and developing a love of reading are some of the cornerstone goals of a Primary Day education. It is a joy and challenge for young children to unlock the code of written language. Yet is also both a joy and a challenge to cultivate the right conditions for young children to become avid readers. Parents and teachers must work against ubiquitous societal forces. Reading takes patience, time, focus, imagination, and commitment. There is no more important academic skill. Strong reading habits influence countless other competencies, such as the development of competent writing and critical thinking abilities. Reading is, after all, the bedrock that makes so much of our human experience possible. And, fortunately, when properly nurtured, it’s deeply satisfying and fun.
Enhancing Two of the Central Pillars of Primary Day: Teaching & Learning
April 28, 2022
Enhancing Two of the Central Pillars of Primary Day: Teaching & Learning
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As I have become familiar with Primary Day this year, gotten to know the faculty and students, seen the program in action, and reviewed past accreditation reports, I came to believe that two central areas of school life could significantly benefit from even greater, more detailed attention: the curriculum and faculty development. After all, along with the school’s culture, what is more important than teaching and learning?
While our program is wonderfully strong, over the course of the year I saw that we need to “create” the time to very thoroughly review and refine it. A school’s curriculum, while always rooted in its mission, is organic, ever-changing, and always aimed at improvement. An apt metaphor is that of a garden, which also needs careful planning, mindful nourishment, and on-going maintenance.
Similarly, our teachers are true masters, yet in a profession like ours whose essential goal is to enable lifelong learning, we need to make certain that the school itself reflects lifelong learning. As part of that, any school’s teachers should continually be able to learn from relevant research, reflect on their practice, refine their approach and materials, and engage in meaningful coaching and professional growth.
However, when I was realistic about all that our current faculty and staff have on their plates, I came to realize that no one, myself included, had the time to take a deep dive into teaching and learning in the focused way I outline above. Thus, in the winter and as I prepared this year’s budget, I worked with the Board of Trustees to make it possible to fund a new position for 2022-23: Director of Teaching and Learning.
As I searched for someone to assume this role at Primary Day, I was excited by the possibilities. While I will still be integrally involved with all of these important facets of the school, I looked for someone who loves the PK-2nd grade age-group and will
- get to know each child, family, and faculty member;
- lead curriculum review, refinement, development, and documentation;
- ensure that the curriculum has no gaps or overlaps, is well aligned within and between grades, and meets or exceeds the requirements of all the schools in which our students enroll in grade 3;
- further develop our capacity to differentiate teaching to best meet the needs of all students;
- promote meaningful and sustainable faculty growth, collaboration, mentoring, coaching, and evaluation;
- and work directly with students to support and enrich their learning.
While the job description became ambitious, I undertook a search that stretched as far as Brazil. As I conducted my preliminary interviews, I met one candidate who stood out from all the others. I invited her to campus to meet with our faculty and staff. As I got to know her better through several conversations and spoke to her references, I became convinced she offered the right experience and skills to take on this new role.
Thus, I am pleased to announce that Sammer Eghtesadi will join us this summer as our first Director of Teaching & Learning. Extremely personable and engaging, Sami comes to us from the Langley School, where she has served as the Lead Kindergarten Teacher and has undertaken many administrative tasks. She also was an assistant teacher at the McLean School and served for a number of years as the Head Counselor for Grades 1 & 2 in Holton Arms’ summer program. Sami earned her B.S. from Radford University and M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from Marymount University. I know you will enjoy meeting her in the new school year, and I thank you in advance for the welcome I know you will extend to her.
Policy on Teacher Requests
April 14, 2022
Policy on Teacher Requests
Neil Mufson, Head of School
You will find that each year at this time, as we plan the next academic year and head into our spring parent conferences, I will remind families of an important school policy. As we set about formulating class lists for 2022-23, I ask that you not make requests for specific teachers. I strongly believe that both sections at each grade level offer students a great experience. In either class, your child ends up in excellent hands. Similarly, siblings will not necessarily be placed with the same teacher with whom older siblings were placed.
Many factors go into the creation of our class lists. We seek to create a balance of personalities, talents, temperaments, abilities, and learning styles within each section. We place the overall needs of the group as our primary consideration. As educators, we also clearly weigh what we see as individual needs. However, since the creation of a class is a very delicate and considered enterprise, we must take into account many issues more complex than individual wishes or perceptions.
Therefore, during upcoming conferences or at other times, I ask that you avoid putting teachers in the awkward position of making specific requests, which we cannot guarantee. This is not to say that you cannot offer your input as to the kind of classroom in which you feel your child best achieves. In the end, though, I ask that you trust the teachers and me since we truly have the children's best interests in mind. As always thank you for your cooperation and understanding.
In Praise of Boredom
March 31, 2022
In Praise of Boredom
Neil Mufson, Head of School
I can’t remember the last time I was bored. It is one of the things I love about being a Head of School, a career which gives me enormous variety in the content and shape of my days, as well as in the ages and roles of people with whom I interact. Yet, after a delightful spring break that included time for what Italians call il dolce far niente (“the sweetness of doing nothing”), I found myself focused on the valuable role that unstructured time – and, yes, even boredom – has in the lives of children (and adults). My musings led me to search for insight in an article I had read several years back that was entitled “In Praise of Boredom” by the novelist Claire Messud. I found it in a Harper’s magazine issue devoted to a topic always of interest to me: “How to Be a Parent.”
I had started reading Messud in 2007 with the publication of her novel The Emperor’s Children, about three fictional Brown alumni making their way in New York City. I thought I’d capture some glimpses of a common college experience. Not so, but I found Messud’s work compelling because of her clear but lyrical prose and her mostly likable — but interestingly flawed — characters, people who appear to possess only advantages yet struggle with creating satisfying lives. Messud’s characters have difficulty figuring out what to do with their freedom. In small ways they have difficulty tolerating free time, boredom, or just going with the flow. In bigger ways they can’t discern their talents or a direction for their lives.
In her article Messed noted that we are a society that “worships purposefulness” but “we waste resources galore.” She believes that we find direction by having practice figuring out smaller open-ended situations. Thus she urges parents to provide “leeway for idiosyncrasy” and “patience for indirection” with their children because “having no truly empty time, [kids] are unfamiliar with the unexpected and exhilarating flowers that can grow there.” She argues that children need swaths of time “to embark on an endeavor that has no clear aim” so they experience true discovery, develop greater self-reliance, and discern alternative solutions. Psychologists and educators have pointed out the same thing: that when children are too programmed, when their time is always scheduled, when their activities are almost always structured by adults — when they don’t have to figure anything out — they become far less resilient, creative, determined, or assured thinkers.
Messud summed it up this way: “I want my children to embrace doing nothing, to embrace the slowing of an afternoon to a near standstill, when all you can hear is the laborious ticking of the clock and the dog snoring on the sofa, the rain’s patter at the window, the occasional swoosh of a slowly passing car… They’d have to stop, to be still, and then to wait, and wait, and wait, allowing time to fatten around them, like a dewdrop on the tip of a leaf. And then, only then, who knows what they might imagine or invent?”
Whatever your children’s spring break held -- free time, free play, time with family and friends, or travel -- returning to the routine of school, reminds me of the importance of providing some lack of routine, some open and unstructured time. It may be challenging in many ways to provide it, but creating opportunities for “time to fatten around [them]” nourishes their growing independence, ingenuity, patience, and self-direction.
“Keeping Imagination Alive”
March 3, 2022
“Keeping Imagination Alive”
Neil Mufson, Head of School
One of the hidden advantages of a school that serves only 4 to 8 year-olds is that within our walls, children’s imaginations are completely free and can be fully engaged. Even our oldest students can get engrossed in imaginative play. Beako and magic powder are natural extensions of our children’s imaginative worlds. Using one’s imagination is natural and fun, and allows kids to be kids for longer, especially without the presence of older children who can become more bound by “rational” thought.
In addition to emphasizing core academic subjects like math, reading, and writing, Primary Day makes sure students have ample opportunity to stretch not just emerging critical thinking skills but also imaginative and creative thinking. In Writers’ Workshop, we don’t worry too much about facts, even when we are learning about non-fiction. Our literature class in our beautiful library expands children’s horizons and imaginations, just as our Readers’ Workshop program does. STEM involves doing, problem solving, exploring, evaluating, and creating. Art and music introduce fundamental principles of these creative disciplines but let the children’s imagination and creativity make the concepts their own. Our playgrounds are blank canvases for the bountiful use of imagination.
A few years ago, I heard a speaker who said that if you ask a roomful of four year-olds to raise their hands if they are an artist, virtually every hand goes up. By the time children get to fourth grade, only about half see themselves as artists, and by seventh grade, it’s only a few. By keeping that creative confidence up and by regularly exercising imaginations, Primary Day expands children’s capacity to see themselves as creators and finders of unique solutions.
In a November opinion piece in The New York Times entitled, “The Awesome Importance of Imagination,” David Brooks pointed out that while Plato saw imagination as “an airy-fairy god,” Aristotle saw imagination as one of the foundations of all knowledge. Brooks remarked, “One tragedy of our day is that our culture hasn’t fully realized how much Aristotle is correct. Our society isn’t good at cultivating the faculty we may need the most.”
Brooks also quoted Darwin as writing imagination “unites former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and novel results.” Imagination allows us to generate alternate solutions and possibilities; envision others’ experiences; assess different perspectives; dream up new things; and shape the path of our own learning. These are but a few of the reasons Primary Day believes in giving the imagination lots of exercise and space.
The Impact of Kindness
February 17, 2022
The Impact of Kindness
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As I was riding to school this week, I heard a report on NPR commenting on this week’s designation as National Random Acts of Kindness Week. The brief piece highlighted a national initiative championed by a non-profit organization called Random Acts of Kindness. Believing that “kindness is the key to a better world,“ the group tries to “unlock the power and potential of humanity’s greatest asset: kindness.” While the website hosts thousands of ideas, the overall key is to engage in small, random kindnesses as frequently as possible – acts that don’t require organization, detail, or planning, just intention and action. Smiling at strangers, letting someone into traffic, buying someone a cup of coffee, thanking someone, telling someone what their help means to you, letting someone go ahead of you in line at the grocery store, expressing appreciation to those who help us who often go unseen… the possibilities are endless.
Science consistently finds that by taking these kinds of actions, we don’t just do nice things for others, even though that is a significant benefit. We also make ourselves happier, calmer, less stressed, more productive, friendlier, and more approachable. People who engage in random kind acts feel better about themselves – and the humanity of others. The radio essay cited a challenge the mayor of Anaheim, California, issued to his city, which was taken up by the local high school: together, let’s engage in 1,000,000 random acts of kindness. By the next month, cases of bullying in the school had gone down by 50%.
The pandemic has changed just about everything. But kindness has retained – and perhaps multiplied – its impact. What a wonderful legacy to pass on to, and try to inculcate within, our children during these challenging times.
The Advantages of Learning To Be On Time
February 3, 2022
The Advantages of Learning To Be On Time
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As winter churns onward, I have noticed more and more students arriving late to school. Children are supposed to be in their classrooms no later than 8:25 each day. However, you can give your child a significant advantage if you arrive at least 15 minutes before that time. The corollary is also true: by being late more than very occasionally, you place your child at a significant disadvantage.
By arriving well before the 8:25 bell, children have time to settle into the day in a balanced, focused, and relaxed manner. They have a better chance of remaining organized throughout the day since they don’t have to rush to unpack their things, gather needed materials, and begin their routines. They also have time to socialize with their peers; read books; do some drawing or writing; play imaginatively or with our stashes of child-directed resources; or get some extra attention from their teacher. In short, by consistently arriving on time, our young friends can begin their days more positively. They can engage in their class’s pre-Morning Meeting routine in an unstressed, unrushed, more centered way.
Being on time also teaches your child to respect not just time commitments but also others. Tardiness inevitably disrupts the class and the routines of those here on time. Punctuality, on the other hand, is one of the fundamental building blocks we seek to instill in our children because it is considerate and often leads to more effective time management, collaboration, and the strongest possible achievement.
Some of the most effective strategies to improve punctuality include getting to bed on time the night before; packing the backpack with all needed materials before bedtime and leaving it right in front of the door; leaving shoes in the same spot every night; laying out the next day’s clothes as part of your child’s bedtime routine; and even packing after dinner those lunch and snack items that can be put together early.
Of course we all have mornings when things just go wrong and we get behind schedule. That’s part of being human and even benefits young children by helping them develop resilience, flexibility, and patience. But by arriving on time or even early, our children have a better chance of being as strong as they can be.
Report Cards and Comments
January 27, 2022
Report Cards & Comments
Neil Mufson, Head of School
At the end of this week we will post report cards and comments for the first half of the school year. These reports include a summary of the skills and topics your child’s class has covered to date, a personal narrative, and a curriculum-based “checklist” assessing your child’s progress to date. The teachers have put hours of thoughtful effort into producing these assessments, reflecting their close work with, affection for, and attention to, your child. The reports are meant to further your working relationship with our teachers, to describe Primary Day’s program, and to share how your child is performing on a daily basis. If you would like to ask questions or discuss any of the matters the reports cover, please email your child’s teacher to set a mutually convenient time. I, of course, am also available to discuss any topic about your child’s progress that you would like to raise.
This year’s “checklists” use the following descriptors: NAD (Notably Advanced); AGL (At Grade Level); PGL (Progressing Toward Grade Level); and PAC (Possible Area of Concern). It is important to remember that these categories do not translate into traditional A, B, C, D, F grades of yore. They are simply summary descriptors relative to PDS (not national) grade level expectations. As you know, PDS expectations are considerably above general national, or even local, standards.
We all clearly want our children to succeed at their highest level, yet all our students have areas for growth, just like children and adults everywhere. Because Primary Day students are still very young and are very much in the process of forming the foundation of a lifetime of learning, most of our students will be described by a variety of descriptors. This is especially true since the descriptors will describe everything from social behavior and emerging work habits to academic and skill work.
Primary Day students are at the beginning of their educational journeys. They are already far ahead of just about any peer group. Still, they are very much “students in progress.” The teachers and I stand dedicated to nurturing their growth so that they can create and open any door of future opportunity.
The upcoming reports are just one way we communicate with you. Please remember that you are always welcome to check in with your child’s teacher or me if you have a concern or question. Also, please never let a concern “fester.” We’d always rather hear any concern in a timely way so that we can best address it.
The Igloo and the Walking Stick
January 7, 2022
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A Holiday Remembrance
December 15, 2021
A Holiday Remembrance
Neil Mufson, Head of School
I believe that one of the reasons I became Head of a school that serves elementary school-aged children is the vividness of memories I hold from those years. Brad Bell is one kid I still remember and think about, particularly at this time of year. Small and rail thin, Brad had a permanently raspy voice. He always seemed to squint at the world, and he always seemed to be more disheveled than the rest of us. If a teacher wasn’t looking, he would hit you hard in the arm as he walked past.
Brad’s differences didn’t end there. He lived tucked next to the new interstate that transformed our small town into a suburb of Boston. When the highway’s new cloverleaf entrance was excavated, Brad's house became cut off from any others, and his yard became increasingly overgrown before they moved.
Besides for giving us arm slugs, Brad rarely mixed with the rest of us. He wasn’t a part of our recess games, and I can’t remember even seeing him outside at our school. Yet, I often saw him all over town riding a barebones bike with a scraggly hound beside him. We kids knew that Brad’s dad had died when he was little and that his family struggled, something pretty much unheard of amongst the student body at Henry B. Sanborn School.
During those years one of the ways my parents kept my sense of privilege in check was by keeping our holiday gifts modest. My sister and I usually got one special toy (Mr. Kelly’s Carwash was my favorite). Then it was all practicalities: new boots, socks, and, to our groans, underwear. We also were expected to do regular purges of outgrown clothes and toys, and several times a year my father and I would load up our station wagon with our former treasures and head to the “sharing shed” at the town dump. There you could leave items in decent shape that you no longer wanted, and you could take items you thought you could use. It was there that I had found two pairs of old suede boxing gloves that, besides for missing laces and their dampness, were virtually pristine. The day I triumphantly brought the gloves home, my father started teaching me to box. I imagined boxing might prove useful if Brad Bell ever acted up.
One cold Saturday morning weeks after I had discovered the gloves, my father and I brought some large bags of used clothing to the sharing shed. Mr. Miller, our school’s custodian, had a weekend job overseeing and sorting the items brought in to share. Those he deemed worthy would be set out, almost lovingly, on some shelves inside the shed; others were put into huge burlap sacks through which one was welcome to rummage. Before our dump run that day, I remember weighing if I should surrender a favorite flannel shirt that had a rip in one elbow. “I’ll sew it up and then toss it in,” said my mother. “The sleeves are getting too short for you anyway. Someone else will treasure it, like you have. Just like you’ve loved those boxing gloves.” I reluctantly surrendered my shirt.
Shortly after our winter break, I noticed Brad Bell wearing a shirt just like the one I had given away. I remember at first being flustered but then saw the telltale repair. I wondered if Brad had found it himself in the sharing shed. Even though I felt new emboldened by my boxing moves, I knew not to ask him about it.
. At dinner that night I shared my confusion. As I was running through whether or not the shirt had been mine and how it would have come to Brad, my father stopped me. “Might be your shirt. Might not. You did the right thing in not mentioning it. Let him have his dignity. Imagine if that were your Christmas gift.”
I think of Brad Bell and that shirt most years as the late fall and early winter holidays of light approach. I think of my mother sewing the ripped sleeve and of my father telling me to put myself in Brad’s shoes. I think of Brad’s scrawny dog, his rickety bike, and mostly his family’s plight. I think of his characteristic squint and his preemptive arm punches. And I think how grateful I am for the lessons he unwittingly taught me.
I hope that your winter break is full of hope and light and the making of long-lasting memories.
Modeling Gratitude Beyond the Thanksgiving Table
November 18, 2021
Modeling Gratitude Beyond the Thanksgiving Table
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As a kid, it was in the back seat of our family’s mint green Buick station wagon where I learned my most memorable lessons having to do with gratitude, not at the Thanksgiving table. My grandparents, whom we visited often, lived in a declining neighborhood in the Bronx. As we would wind our way to their home through even worse neighborhoods, my parents would direct comments to the backseat where my sister and I sat. They would contrast what we were seeing with the idyllic, leafy Boston suburb where we lived. Their narrative was not subtle. “Imagine living here, across from burnt out buildings… Think about having no space, no place to play and run around… We’re lucky that our air always smells good… No woods here to run into to find quiet and a place to build a fort… Grandma barely feels safe going outside anymore.”
Nina and I never responded to these observations, yet our eyes often got big as we saw things so far removed from our own experiences. We knew our parents’ intent because it mirrored a constant refrain: be grateful for our good fortune; we might not have everything but we have the love of each other and lead a life of plenty; always be thankful for your situation in life; focus on the good; we’re lucky.
As children of the Depression, my parents saw the world through lenses of gratitude. My father lied about his age to enlist early in World War II and saw service in rural India, China, and Burma. He regularly showed us photos he had taken of conditions in the villages near where he had been stationed. While my imagination was most captured by the pictures of his unit’s pet monkey Moe, it was another way my parents replayed their chorus of recognizing our good fortune.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to hear psychologist and writer Brené Brown before she was on the bestseller list. I most remember her saying this: “The difference between privilege and entitlement is gratitude.” While Brown’s research as a psychologist generally involves the potentially transformative power of opening oneself up to vulnerability, her words transported me to the backseat of the Buick with my sister. My parents wanted to ensure that we did not develop an attitude of entitlement. We knew we were privileged, which also meant we possessed significant responsibilities towards others.
The approach of Thanksgiving reminds me of the importance of instilling an “attitude of gratitude” in our children. The world moves ever more quickly and has significantly changed through the pandemic in ways we don’t yet understand. Whether because of the busy-ness of our lives or the dangers of COVID, it is harder and harder to connect in authentic, fulfilling, and nourishing ways. The constant lure and distraction of consumption can cloud what is most important. Yet by regularly considering and savoring the blessings in our lives, and by turning at least some of that gratitude outward, we can help our children find deeper meaning, happiness, and calm. My best to you and your family for a memorable and joyful Thanksgiving.
Being Little Matters
November 10, 2021
Being Little Matters
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Neil Mufson, Head of School
In my last piece, I wrote about the child perspective Taylor Swift takes on in her song “The Best Day” and how her lyrical memories suggest that what matters most to young children are simple activities, togetherness, and parental presence. Just after publishing that piece, I came across an interview with Erika Christakis, former faculty member at the Yale Child Study Center, and author of the bestselling book, The Importance of Being Little: What Young Children Really Need from Grownups. Christakis believes, “the notion that there is something of value in being a little kid – with little kid desires and, above all, needs – seems to have fallen out of favor… Parents express enormous anxiety about their children’s futures, and seem to be curating their children’s life experiences in a way that would look quite unnatural and even rather joyless to previous generations.”
Christakis maintains that our society currently is also undergoing an “adultification” pandemic , or the failure to see the world from a child’s perspective. “It’s eye-opening to reflect on the many ways that adults inflict adult pacing, adult expectations, and adult schedules on young kids. And for what reason? Young children sleep less and have far more transitions in their days than in previous generations – and most would agree that developing brains aren’t really designed to cope with adult schedules and pacing.”
What Christakis sees as some of the most effective counterpoints to adultification are parents mindfully questioning their unconscious practices and schools recognizing that “quality education is about relationships” and intentionality. “Caring teachers who understand child development and who know and are attuned to the children in their care” are amongst the most important markers of educational quality, as are classrooms in which “rich, open-ended conversation is critical” and where “children experience warm, empathic oral language – to converse playfully, to tell a rambling story -- listen to high-quality literature… ask meaningful questions… and take advantage of children’s natural curiosity.”
The ideal educational environment Christakis describes sounds a lot like Primary Day to me. Here our entire enterprise is focused on meeting the needs of young children. We are developmental experts, our teachers are masters at building meaningful relationships with our students, and children are immersed in a language- and math-rich environment that fosters curiosity, nurtures development, and promotes taking on “just right” challenges.
In my short time here I have quickly grown to admire the discerning nature of our parents. Primary Day does not focus on flash or sizzle or cavernous spaces. We focus on substance. We are intimate, personal, academic, and extremely nurturing. The high expectations we hold for our children make sense for our learners. Our teachers and program listen to what our children tell us. If I had to sum it up, I’d say we understand “the importance of being little.”
The Power of Presence
October 28, 2021
The Power of Presence
Neil Mufson, Head of School
I recently found some parenting wisdom in a place I didn’t expect.
First, a confession: During the pandemic lockdown, I became something of a Swiftie. Of course I had always heard of Taylor Swift and was vaguely familiar with some of her oeuvre due to heading a school that included middle grades. But last winter a review led me to the recently released video/concert of her just dropped album Folklore. In a beautiful isolated lakeside cabin during the lockdown, with two of her key collaborators, there was Taylor with little make up and no extravagant costumes. She purely sang more than a dozen acoustic-sounding folk-like numbers. Between songs, she and her companions talked about the music and its sources. Shortly thereafter she released a companion album, Evermore. I was hooked.
It ended up those two albums formed much of the soundtrack of my short-lived retirement during which time I was driving frequently between Portland, Maine, and Maryland. Taylor’s light-filled lovely voice, her poetic lyrics, and my visions of that bucolic cabin eased the way.
It wasn’t long before I became interested in Swift’s efforts to recapture the rights to her own catalog, and soon Fearless (Taylor’s Version) was released. Recently listening to the song The Best Day, I realized that Swift had something important to say to parents of children the age we serve at Primary Day. Here is how that song begins:
I’m five years old, it’s getting cold, I’ve got my big coat on
I hear your laugh and look up smiling at you, I run and run
Past the pumpkin patch and the tractor rides, look now, the sky is gold
I hug your legs and fall asleep on the way home
I don’t know why all the trees change in the fall
But I know you’re not scared of anything at all
Don’t know if Snow White’s house is near or far away
But I know I had the best day with you today.
What gets embedded in Swift’s memory are simple moments with her mother and how they make her feel. (In a later verse she presciently sings of having “an excellent father / Whose strength is making me stronger.”) It is not fancy things or extraordinary activities that stick. It is simple moments. It is the way her parents make her feel that matters and ground her.
When our children are small, we often wonder if we are providing them with the right experiences, the right training, the right activities, the right mixture of guidance and example, all at the right times. What Swift reminds us is that children benefit the most when we parents show up and simply are present. Those ensuing feelings infuse their beings. It is that foundation that no scheduled activities, lessons, or exotic experiences can replace.
The Critical Nature of Early Learning
October 14, 2021
The Critical Nature of Early Learning
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Over the years ahead, you will frequently find me alluding to some of the brain research most salient to the ages we serve at Primary Day. I closely follow many sources that make these studies accessible for educators. One such publication is Edutopia, a project of film maker George Lucas’ educational foundation, whose mission is to help transform education “so that all students can acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to thrive in their studies, careers, and adult lives.”
For obvious reasons a recent article entitled “Why Ages 2-7 Matter So Much for Brain Development” caught my eye. In it the writer Rishi Sriram reviewed what most of us already know: that there are “critical periods” in children’s brain development, that the first typically occurs between the ages of 2 and 7 or so, and that during this period “the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles.” The astounding thing is that this increase in “synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life” (emphasis mine).
While there have been countless fads that have attempted to harness this explosion of learning potential, it is often difficult to sift out the truly helpful and developmentally appropriate from the fluff and potentially harmful. The Edutopia article cited these critical guidelines:
“Encourage a love of learning” – Rather than focusing on performance and results focus on the process of learning. Help your children become comfortable making mistakes and then regrouping, which are fundamental parts of learning. Cultivating this kind of attitude helps children become resilient in other areas of life as well.
Help children develop what psychologist Carol Dweck calls a “growth mindset” – “the belief that talents and abilities are developed through effort instead of being innately fixed,” that persistence leads to the best results. Sriram notes that adults should “avoid labeling children or making universal statements about their ability, [like] ‘You are so smart!” (As an aside, I will soon be announcing a PDS parent book group that will read and discuss Dweck’s seminal work.)
Focus on the joy that can comes from trying new activities and experiences. These are not the ages to become overly specialized. Breadth rather than depth is best during this developmental period. “Exposing children to a wide variety of activities lays a foundation for developing skills in a range of fields… The people who thrive in our rapidly changing world are those who first learn how to draw from multiple fields and think creatively.”
· Build emotional intelligence by emphasizing kindness, empathy, and cooperation.
· “Don’t treat young children’s education as merely a precursor to ‘real’ learning.”
Everything we do at Primary Day is directed towards these goals. Your child benefits every day from our unique and deep focus on the needs of early childhood learners. While Primary Day has been in existence since 1944, our mission is as relevant today as it was then: The finest education for the most important years.
Back to School Night Remarks - 9.23.21
September 30, 2021
Parent Night Remarks – 9.23.21
Neil Mufson, Head of School
Thanks so much for Zooming in tonight to gain a deeper sense of where and with whom your children spend such a significant piece of their day and to hear about the program, key goals, and procedures you’ll want to know so they will be ensured a great year.
I feel confident that you’ll come away from the evening feeling that your children are in exceptional hands, and that you’ve made the right investment to ensure that they have the benefit of the best possible education and foundation for these most important years.
I also hope, as a result of tonight, that you’ll be more likely to reach out to your child’s teacher when you have a concern or question, because that open communication, that engagement as parents in the educational process has consistently been found in the research to boost a child’s performance in school.
Tonight I wanted to share some thoughts with you on two topics. First, some of what I have noticed in my first weeks at PDS; and second, some small things I have found over the years that can have an outsized impact on the kind of student and person your child becomes.
But before I launch into that, I wanted to express my gratitude to you, most importantly for entrusting your children to us here at Primary Day. I take that trust as a sacred commitment we have to your child and to your family.
I also so appreciate all of your cooperation, understanding, and patience during these
extraordinarily challenging times. We are absolutely devoted to doing our best to ensure your child’s safety and that of our faculty and staff. Even when a vaccine is available for our children, we will remain vigilant, cautious, nimble, and prepared for the next twists and turns that the pandemic will bring. So thank you for all you are doing to comply with our protocols and for realizing that our children’s and our staff’s safety depends on all those little mindful decisions and observations you make along the way.
Thank you, too, for your patience as we work out our drop off and pick up procedures which are also based first on safety. Our fine-tuning of the afternoon pick up line has led to some real improvements, and we will soon be rolling out an app that will help further smooth things out in the morning.
As the faculty, staff, and I have welcomed your children Back to School, I have been struck by several things. First has been the absolute dedication and expertise of our faculty and staff. I see their deep developmental commitment at work every day. They lend amazing warmth and “kid knowledge” to their classrooms and routines, and their way with our students is so masterful that joy and purposefulness radiate from every learning space. Our teachers are real experts at the ages they teach, so be sure to make use of that expertise when you have questions or concerns about something your child is or is not doing. They know what’s normal, what works, what doesn’t work, what’s age appropriate, and they can offer a wealth of information, guidance, and reassurance.
I have also noticed that PDS children are exceptionally engaged, attuned, and eager. Their curiosity and energy seem boundless, and that kind of attitude toward school and learning is both infectious and palpable throughout the school. There’s an ebullient and happy hum that permeates this place, an underlying eagerness and motivation on the part of the children that prompts all to exercise their curiosity and to stretch themselves.
Community and kindness are also evident here. I have been so impressed by the care and respect your children show for one another.
Part of what makes Primary Day unique is that your child is part of a peer group that is uniformly attuned to the value of education, to doing their best, and to giving their all. I see and sense that every day. Of course as children get older, their peer group exerts an even stronger influence on them. But I very clearly see that PDS creates and capture this enormously positive side of peer influence that helps establish the right attitudes towards school.
When your children are surrounded by other children who have active and eager minds, when they’re happily engaged in a classroom where their teacher is a developmental, instructional, and child relationship expert who knows them so well, and when they come from homes which clearly prioritize education, they are bound to soar. That is what I see happening each day, even this early in the year.
I also would like to mention some seemingly small and perhaps obvious practices that you can put in place at home to enhance your child’s growing independence, sense of responsibility, and positive approach to learning and to life. I’d like to focus tonight on 3 simple things that eventually pay very powerful returns.
First, make sure you increasingly allow your children to do things on their own. Whether it’s cleaning up their toys after playing (like they do here), putting toothpaste on their toothbrush, or gathering their things to be ready to hop out of the car at morning drop off, consider giving them regular responsibilities or simple chores around the house. For instance, have them take on straightening their bed in the morning, helping with choosing or packing their lunch, making sure that their backpack is properly loaded and in the right place so it can just be grabbed in the morning, or sharing or reading stories with younger siblings. Take a look at how your household works, and find some authentic tasks they can regularly undertake that are truly helpful and that they can do consistently. Gradually add steps or complexity to these tasks as time goes on.
Of course it often is easier and more efficient to just do these things yourself, but look for what your children might be able to do more independently or how they can help. Model what you expect
and then let them do it consistently. Then build from these smaller pieces to more complete tasks. Young children like having responsibility, they are proud of showing you what they are capable of,
and it builds their independence, feelings of mastery, and sense of agency, which is their sense that they can influence their environment.
Obviously, developmental appropriateness is the key. You wouldn’t ask a PK child to load the dishwasher after dinner every evening. But you might ask him or her to do the basic setting of the table (at least of non-breakable or non-sharp things), or you might ask them to put their dirty clothes in the hamper, or to place their shoes in the right place so they can be found easily the next day.
A book written over a decade ago by Los Angeles psychologist Wendy Mogel called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee has emerged as a classic on making sure we are leading our children to become responsible, resilient, and independent. Mogel points out that if we don’t require our children to do things for themselves, if we don’t hold them accountable, if we don’t ask them to help out with reasonable, age-appropriate chores at home, we inadvertently risk disabling them for the future.
Similarly she points out if we consistently make things too easy for our children, if we regularly pamper, indulge, or overprotect them, if we too quickly jump in to “rescue” them, or assign blame elsewhere, their development into healthy, independent young people will become compromised. As she wrote, too many parents of our demographic, “in their eagerness to do right by their children, overindulge them materially, spoil them emotionally, [and] inadvertently inhibit their development of responsibility.” So we have to find those small steps when they are young, when they are at the ages of Primary Day students.
Another small but a very powerful routine – one that admittedly may be difficult to ensure is in place -- is to have dinner together as a family as many times a week as you possibly can. Not too long ago, I heard a podcast from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that interviewed a family therapist named Anne Fishel, who directs an entity called The Family Dinner Project. We all know that there are tons of reasons families don’t or can’t have dinner together. But the salubrious impacts of regularly having family dinners are nothing less than astounding. Fishel reported, “There have been more than 20 years of dozens of studies that document that family dinners are great for the body, physical health, the brain, academic performance, and mental health.” In addition to the nutritional benefits, “Kids who grow up having family dinners, later, when they're on their own, tend to eat more healthily and to have lower rates of obesity.” And then she goes on to say this: “The mental health benefits are just incredible. Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of [childhood and adolescent] depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, tobacco use, early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience” and feelings of self worth. All this just by making sure your family eats together regularly.
There are other simple, regular practices that also have huge pays off that I recommend and that I’ll talk about in the months and years ahead, things like developing a habit of regularly expressing gratitude; establishing an organized and consistent approach to doing homework; being on time; building intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation whenever possible; having a discipline system at home that is based on natural consequences, much like the one we have in place here at school; modeling and expecting empathy; and being certain to provide your child with predictable, consistent, age-appropriate routines.
One last seemingly small thing that leads to outsized benefits that I want to mention tonight is something you are probably already doing but that you should aim to continue for many years into the future: having a regular reading or story time with your child or whole family. This is relatively easy to put in place as part of a regular bed time routine, but it is something you should hold onto even when your child is an independent and sophisticated reader, maybe in the form of a family reading time.
The national statistics are damning. Studies find that 33% of American high school graduates never read another whole book the rest of their lives; 42% of American college graduates never read another book; and 80% of American families do not read, borrow, or purchase a book in a typical year.
When I was a kid, just about every night my father would tell me a bedtime story. For me, he created a fictional universe around Cubby Bear, a character I think he remembered from childhood bedtime stories and books. For my sister he created another character named Longnose Hufflefinger (which are evidently a type of tropical fish) but in this version was a person. For his granddaughters he created stories about a character named Pocket. Every night my father wasn’t traveling for work, I was told the latest adventure of Cubby Bear and his best friend Montmorency Percival Clarence Gopher, who when introduced was always met with the line, “My word, your name is longer than you are.”
The stories were simple and I believe were improvised. I am sure my father had no idea of the numerous and powerful benefits of these stories.Yes, they bonded us.Yes, they made me and my sister feel special, valued, and loved. And yes, it was a considerable investment of my father’s time. But now research shows that listening to stories or regular reading improves brain connectivity; increases vocabulary, comprehension, and memory; empowers the ability to empathize with other people; aids in sleep readiness; reduces stress; lowers blood pressure and heart rate; fights depression symptoms throughout life; and eventually prevents cognitive decline. All that from the reading habit!
Think about the impact of pairing that with the power of family dinners and giving your children meaningful responsibilities around home. In these times when there is so much uncertainty, it is reassuring as parents to know that inserting some simple practices into our routines can allow us to seize some control over some very important outcomes. Confidence and competence are indeed built through small steps, steps that have been modeled and practiced.
I am very much looking forward to meeting you in person at one of our upcoming parent coffees, but I would also welcome having an outdoor visit or a Zoom chat. Be sure to contact me if there ever is anything with which I can help you. In the meantime, know that I am looking forward to meeting you somewhere other than in the drop off or pick up line.Thank you again for joining us this evening.
The Role of Responsive Classroom at Primary Day
September 23, 2021
The Role of Responsive Classroom at Primary Day
Neil Mufson, Head of School
You probably know that Primary Day uses the research-based Responsive Classroom approach as the backbone of all we do at school. You may wonder, though, what Responsive Classroom is and why we use it as the foundation undergirding all the learning that goes on at PDS.
In a nutshell, Responsive Classroom pulls together from numerous research studies those practices that create the most successful, positive classroom and school culture. These practices build structure and predictability for our young learners, and this leads to positive learning attitudes and habits as well as the strongest student experience and achievement.
Responsive Classroom asks teachers to very mindfully construct a supportive, nurturing, and developmentally appropriate classroom environment in which all routines and activities are carefully modeled, implemented, and reinforced. Everything from morning meeting to recess, from group work to closing circle is intentionally facilitated in order to build a collaborative classroom in which our young learners develop confidence, competence, kindness, and voice. Students become reflective learners who gravitate to “just right” learning -- that which builds on skills and knowledge they have developed and challenges them to reach for the next level.
Responsive Classroom theory guides teachers in the creation of inviting, engaging, but not overly cluttered classrooms. Teachers use language that is also mindful, positive, calm, and warm. They break the day up into developmentally appropriate periods of time and activity that alternate between energizing and calming. A positive social and emotional climate is also modeled, reinforced, and fostered. There is a great emphasis on effort, practice, stretching, and growth. A positive, natural, and consistent discipline environment relies on modeling and age-appropriate natural consequences.
In the past few months, as I have visited the schools to which Primary Day sends its students, I have uniformly heard about how well prepared our children are for their next school experiences. Other schools frequently remark that they can “tell a PDS student” from their attitude towards learning and others, as well as their level of achievement and community-mindedness. This notable success is attributable to many factors, but chief amongst them are the exceptional talent and dedication of our faculty, the consistency with which they implement developmentally attuned practices such as those of Responsive Classroom, and the extraordinary partnership between home and school that is a hallmark of the Primary Day experience.
New Beginnings
September 9, 2021
Primary Thoughts
New Beginnings
Neil Mufson, Head of School
I often wonder if I were destined to be in schools for so much of my life because I carry such strong memories of my own early schooling. I can still picture walking into the classroom on my own first day of Kindergarten. Mrs. Beaulieu was at the door to greet us and seamlessly separate us from our parents. She then directed us to play on the huge locomotive and train cars that occupied half of our very large room and that she had fashioned out of very large boxes and construction paper. Soon we were playing, forming nascent friendships, and taking the first steps towards independence from our parents. It was an exhilarating new beginning, at least for most of us.
In schools we are so fortunate to have abundant new beginnings. There is the start of the new school year, the start of the new calendar year, and the start of Spring with its resplendent signs of new life. Summer also brings its own start of consolidating gains, adjusting to a less structured routine, and making the most of plentiful opportunities for fun, fresh air, and new activities, places, and people.
With young learners especially, actually every day brings the promise of a new journey. This is part of what I love about working with these ages. There are constantly new connections, new learning, new questions, new discoveries, and new skills introduced and mastered. One factor that drew me to PDS for my own new beginning is the way the school embraces all the possibility and joy of this stage of life while remaining grounded by the deepest expertise in what our young learners most need.
Your children’s days at Primary Day this school year, like the 76 prior years at PDS, will nourish their bounding intellects, their expanding sense of what it means to be a community member, and their growing practice of what it means to be a lifelong, fully engaged learner. Their days will be full, their minds engaged, their joyful spirits nurtured. Of course academics will be important, but where we will also excel will be in partnering with you to help develop good people.
I often think of that seemingly larger-than-life cardboard train of my own first day of “real” school and the journey that was ahead. At PDS we are beginning, supporting, and boosting your children’s lifetime voyage of schooling, with all its promise, all its excitement, and all its beginnings. The faculty, staff, and I are here to guide your children and you with all the twists and turns ahead. Please be sure to call on us when you have a question, concern, or idea. We will do the same. In the meantime, know that I am so grateful that you and your family are “all aboard.”