LADDERS, CHUTES, AND GROWING UP

 

I don’t often reprise a Back-to-School Night talk in writing, but when you are up against the Broncos season opener, and it is a repeat of a Super Bowl matchup, it seems like the right thing to do. I truly appreciate all of the families that joined us on September 8. I hope that you have a better sense of your child’s day-to-day experience at school as well as a better understanding of our curriculum and the ways we intentionally teach creativity, problem solving, and collaboration.

 

I do hope that parents will take up the gauntlet I threw down that evening to try something new. It is easy to talk the game of how wonderful learning new things is and inevitably more challenging to walk doing it every day as we ask our school-age children to do. Putting yourself in the vulnerable position of the novitiate is rewarding, as well as empathy building. My new thing for 2016 was pottery, and I can attest first hand to how easy the teacher (and other experienced students) made throwing pots look and how difficult it was for me. Next year, I will take a number of golf lessons.

 

I imagine this will be equally humbling. My talk used the iconic game for 2-to-4-year olds, Chutes and Ladders, as a metaphor for students’ school experience. In the game, a child rolls the dice or spins the needle and moves her piece — usually a representation of herself — across the board. She either lands on a chute; a slide, which takes her away from the goal; or a ladder that whisks her up toward her destination. As a metaphor for life, this is actually both simple and pretty all-inclusive.

 

All of us need ladders, those people, experiences and circumstances that carry us forward toward destinations we never could have imagined. These ladder situations and people can be found anywhere and everywhere, but for most of us, we found them first in our family and then in school.

 

My first school ladder was Donna Knoll, my fifth-grade teacher. She was electric. And it was her excitement about learning that placed my foot firmly on the first rung of the educational ladder. I couldn’t help myself. I got sucked in. All of a sudden I wanted to write and do math. Yes, I even did extra-credit reports for her. Not particularly well, I might add, but I wanted to do them. I bet if I asked each of you who your ladders have been, you would be able to describe in minute detail the time in your life, the situation, the person and how they have shaped you today. These are the moments of destiny, our personal inflection points.

 

We have a wonderful curriculum, a curriculum that focuses on those 21st-century skills that are most likely to lead to long-term success. Skill development in critical thinking, creativity and collaboration are at the heart of our efforts, and we intentionally give children an immense amount of practice at those things we believe will help them most to be successful in their future. Having a great curriculum obviously matters, but the most important aspect of our school and program is the “human geography,” the teachers. This is because they are the ladders that help students discover passions, talents, skills and abilities they did not know they had. It is also the teachers and coaches who model a variety of ways of being a kind and thoughtful adult.

 

My hope and conviction is that when your child has finished college, worked for a few years and comes back to visit, over dinner, you will get to hear a bit about who the ladders were in her life. My firm belief is that a number will have been during their CA years.

 

Now for the chutes: Life would be a consistent upward trajectory, the movement from one good thing to the next, if it weren’t for the darn chutes. Setbacks come in myriad shapes, sizes and flavors for kids. There are social setbacks, academic setbacks as well as setbacks in the arts and in athletics. At the time they occur, chutes are not fun. I repeat, chutes are not fun. No fun for the child and often equally, if not more painfully, for parents of the disappointed or hurt child. Even so, I truly believe that if your child does not encounter some chutes on this year’s

journey, it will have been a more impoverished year with important learning left on the table.

 

What ultimately matters is our ability to help children see the chutes for what we know them to be, growth opportunities, which are every bit as important as the ladders they will find in coming years. It is the child (and adult) who has the ability to dust herself off, learn from the situation, regroup and climb on that will have the most rewarding life.

 

The Chutes and Ladders metaphor also reminds us that progress to adulthood is far from linear. Just like in the board game, progress in life is an up, down, and sideways journey. A short spin from the ladder is a chute. In a very real sense, two steps forward and one step back is characteristic of developmental achievements at every age and every stage. The privilege (and curse) of being able to look back on our own journey to adulthood is to be able to forget (repress) the absurdly high number of minor and major missteps we made along the way.

 

I am pleased and honored that during these important learning and growing years you have entrusted your children to Colorado Academy, to this faculty and to me. We will do our very best to help your child discover and climb many different ladders this year and to learn how to dust herself off and reach for the next rung when the inevitable chute presents itself. It is going to be an exciting year, and I look forward to sharing all of it with you.