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!