What could be more essential to a strong school environment than fostering curiosity?

 

Yet, this is one of those things that may be easier than done. How do we actually nurture curiosity and what evidence will you see tonight?

 

First of all, we have enthusiastic teachers who develop these traits in their students and who model what it means to be curious. We can all remember impactful teachers we have had whose love of their subject and whose willingness to share that delight sparked us to feel even more engaged in what we were learning. Teachers like these ignite the flame of curiosity and make students want to go further and deeper into the topic. I hope you sense that passion for teaching and for bringing out the best in students in the adults you meet tonight.

 

Secondly, curiosity encouragement also involves making students aware of themselves as learners. This meta-cognition, as it is called, helps a student to internalize how they learn, why they get excited about certain topics, and what drives their own intrinsic motivation. In turn, that allows them to initiate possibilities on their own, developing their curiosity further. Our ultimate goal would be that once they leave CA they know how to be successful learners and stay open to discovery in college, in their professional lives and in their personal interactions. Being a lifelong learner will lead them to greater success and happiness.

 

In this light, nurturing curiosity isn’t just a quaint notion for good schools to consider. The Harvard Business Review published a research-based article recently that extolled the virtues of curiosity in the workplace, noting that higher levels of curiosity lead to fewer decision-making errors, more innovation and positive changes, more open communication, and better team performance. It’s all part of developing a growth mindset, something our students learn here from the earliest days in Lower School.

 

 

The cornerstone of a strong community is treating every member fairly, justly, respectfully, while embracing our similarities and differences. This is a delicate act and sometimes a complicated one, but it is the right thing to do both for the individuals in the community and for the community as a whole.

 

Building empathy matters not just for the sake of our community here, but also serves as an essential tool for our students later in life. The Center for Creative Leadership conducted research in this area in 2016, noting that “empathetic leaders are assets to organizations, in part, because they are able to effectively build and maintain relationships—a critical part of leading organizations anywhere in the world.”

 

In order for us to reach our goals in this area, we have hired a new Director of Inclusivity. You may have already met Sarah Wright at one of the other opening meetings this year. Her office is in the Upper School, and we are seeing her there a lot, even as she is spending significant time in all three divisions. Because her background is primarily in lower school education, she has a particular desire to engage the younger students and to build their skills as empathetic and compassionate people in their most formative years. But she is equally skilled with our high school students and has already been engaging them in meaningful conversations.

 

You might hear references to empathy building in some of your classroom visits tonight, but just as likely you will hear that emanating from different sorts of spaces. Whether from club involvement in activities like Students HOPE, the Horizons Club, or Project KARE, all of which focus on supporting local communities, or through certain advisory-based programs or Community Leadership Team, or through our Town Halls, CA builds empathy and compassion through exposing students to new situations and hearing stories of people both similar to and different from them. Just this week in Town Hall our community heard a powerful senior speech in which one of our students discussed her personal journey through a challenging time for her and her family. Her story builds connections, community and empathy, and her courage to share it serves as a powerful and positive example for her peers.

 

 

Wow, ever-changing is right. It’s exceptionally hard to predict what is coming down the pike three months from now, let alone plan for the next three years. Yet we cannot succumb to defeatism or lament about the good old days when things were simpler. We have to stay nimble, alert and ready to respond to whatever comes next.

 

I just completed a newsletter article on the concept of VUCA, which is an acronym for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. In many ways these four terms define our age. Every organization on the planet needs to have strategies in place to deal with this reality. To some extent, education can serve as a bulwark against the forces of VUCA. At a place like Colorado Academy we can provide calm in the storm, allowing all our stakeholders to feel safe, reassured, and less uncertain, even in the face of complex societal forces. In other ways, however, we actually need to lean into the discomfort that VUCA carries with it. While CA has aspects of a protective bubble, we can and should only do so much to insulate our students from reality. We need to prepare them for the real world. Beyond our walls, things do move quickly, unpredictably and often unfairly. Thankfully, we can train them up and help them persevere through challenges and life’s unexpected twists and turns; intentionally developing skills like critical thinking, collaboration and cultural competency will certainly help them weather the storms they will inevitably encounter.

 

Technology drives a lot of the unpredictability in the world, of course. Few of us could have imagined even fifteen years ago how ubiquitous hand-held computers would be and how they would transform our way of interacting with the world. But technology is just one of the factors that has revolutionized life in the 21st century, and we can’t always use technology as the bogey man for all the ills in society. The sheer busy-ness of our lives also contributes to greater stress and anxiety and often leads us down blind alleys instead of focusing on what is really important. Our immediate reactions to an ever-changing world should not consume us nor consist of spreading ourselves so thin that we lose sight of our central values. Thus, one response we must continue to have is to slow down, take stock, reflect--to work smarter and more efficiently instead of just working more.

 

And we can see we how this guiding principle of taking a dynamic response circles back to the one on curiosity I mentioned earlier. Curious thinkers are more adept at accepting change, adapting to new realities, and sifting out the positive from negative when it comes to unforeseen developments. So these guiding principles certainly reinforce each other and help deliver on our mission statement.

 

Again, I trust you will see these ideas reflected in the short presentations by each of your child’s teachers tonight. They are a talented and dedicated bunch, eager to validate the faith you have put in them and the school, and ready to demonstrate why they love working with adolescents.

 

Enjoy the experience and do let me know if you have thoughts or feedback based on what you see and learn tonight.