Back to Questions Parents Ask.
You seem to emphasize helping children find their own energy and enthusiasm. How important is that for their academic success?
Helen: Academic success truly depends on bringing the whole child into the learning process — their energy, enthusiasm, commitment, and intensity. People might be tempted to categorize us as what Barbara calls a very “precious” school — which might be good through about the fourth grade. But then people wonder what will happen when the students must deal with the “real world.” In fact, there’s an intensity of learning in our school, that’s embedded in everything we do. A visitor might not be aware of it, if they saw all these happy, enthusiastic children going about their business.
Barbara: We talked earlier about how we teach them the skills to take tests. But those skills are linked to broader issues. How can you develop enthusiasm? How do you feel when you have it?
With something as simple as our morning exercises, where we walk in place and say “I am awake and ready! I am positive, energetic, enthusiastic!” I stop them endlessly and say, “Now, are you feeling any of those things? What do those words mean to you? What do they feel like inside your self?” If you don’t feel those things, do you have the will to try anyway? And what happens if you stretch your will and try? In other words, the students get to experiment with developing their awareness.
Early childhood is filled with its own special kinds of hard mornings — sometimes it’s hard to get out the door, remember the backpack, and finally be dropped off at school. Or maybe breakfast didn’t sit well — all these things, and the child comes in, and they are not feeling awake and ready.
These things need to be faced and dealt with, with honesty and authenticity. Because only when we discover where we are right now, can there be space to move to where we aren’t, yet. And enthusiasm, like any other profoundly wonderful quality, can be developed. So, yes, we work with their energy and enthusiasm all the way through. In that sense, we don’t distinguish between work and play.
Enthusiasm and energy translate into academic success. If there’s something meaningful to do, and I feel enthusiasm for it, or I can concentrate on it until I feel joy in doing it, it’s much more likely to be done well.
There are countless examples of how this applies in “real life.” Every athlete who ever did well found that it didn’t come easily. It comes with intense effort. And to value that, to be willing and enthusiastic about it, is how success occurs — inner and outer success.
So it’s wonderful, I think, for children to hear those ideas at a young age, and to live them.
Helen: Parents visit the school and comment about the “hum” in the classroom — a happy hum — and the intensity of focus they see in the children. You’re not always going to walk into a classroom that is totally quiet and subdued, because the children are very engaged and busy. I might walk into Barbara’s class with a prospective parent and find the children on the floor doing math games in quiet voices, and they barely notice us as we walk through, because they’re fully engaged.
If I take the parents to the middle school, it’s a different hum — you might find a small group of children collaborating, or you might see a math tutor working with a student, or the kids might be working on their own. But there’s a positive, productive level of vibration in the classrooms, generated by their concentration and focus.
Barbara: I don’t have to cue them to behave a certain way when I know that Helen will be coming through the classroom with visiting parents, because the students are comfortable with it. And that, too, is a skill born of their concentration and their comfort with adults.
Helen: They aren’t intimidated by adults. I’ll sometimes bring parents on a tour of the school, and the children will take the initiative and come up and greet them. Sometimes, if I ask, “What are you working on?” they’ll give the visitors a mini-lesson, without any thought of being intimidated.
I’ve had admissions directors call and tell me that a graduates of ours “aced” the interview, and that their ability to sit and engage an adult was impressive.
Barbara: It’s a huge life skill.
Helen: A graduate of ours entered Gunn High School this year. He and his brother had been with us since kindergarten, and the parents naturally wondered what it would be like when they left. This boy went from a school of 60 to a high school with 2000 students.
The first day of school, a friend of his mother called her and said, “Zachary met a lot of students today.” And they eventually discovered the story. Thinking about going into a new environment, this boy went out and bought lots of gum. At school the first day, he saw a boy he’d been in orchestra with, and he went over and said, “Introduce me to your friends.” So he did, and Zachary gave them all gum. Whenever he would see one of the boys from that group, he would go over and do the same thing. He piggy-backed from one group to another all day and met literally over a hundred students.
His dad asked him, “Did you just come upon that?” He said, “No, Dad, I gave it some thought. It’s why I had you get the gum for me.” He was extremely shy, when he was little.
