In the midst of our faculty professional development the week before school started, my sixth-grade son called on my cell phone to tell me he was in the midst of trying to repair a flat tire on his bike and had a question.

 

Inside, I was so proud of my son.  This was his first attempt at a tire change, and he did so with no prodding from me.  He just took it on.  I came home to our garage to find my tools scattered all over the place and to see his smiling face.  I took a look at his work and talked him through the last complicated steps of mounting his rear tire and aligning his caliper brakes.  Then, he was off riding around campus.

 

At the New Parent Dinner this week, I shared a quote from T.H. White's The Once and Future King: "Education is experience and the essence of experience is self-reliance."  Our job as educators and parents is to help students become independent. We do this in so many ways: through direct instruction, hands-on learning, modeling, and more. In age-appropriate ways, we try to design learning experiences that help students discover knowledge and learn essential skills.  

 

Like my son's effort to fix his bike tire on his own, we need to guide them and provide support. But, what we really want to see is that students take initiative and be unafraid to risk tackling a challenging problem. 

 

Every year, we see students do amazing things at Colorado Academy.  The best thing we can do sometimes is to prepare the learning environment and get out of the way to let them experience success and learn from their failures.