Don’t Quiet Your Mind. Quiet Your Thoughts So You Can Hear Your Mind.
From meditation to dreams, the vital health benefits of quieting our thoughts and exploring our mind have been well documented. Research supports the growing trend of including meditation in education. Schools worldwide have even gone as far as replacing detention and other traditionally punitive measures with breathing and meditation.
Though the conversation about how these practices are beneficial, there is little discussion around why these practices are so beneficial. And really, though the prompt is common, there’s very little discussion about what actually happens when we “turn off the mind.”Read more
If We Want Our Children to be More Innovative, Courageous, and Resilient, We Must Encourage Them to be More Vulnerable
What does it mean to be vulnerable?
In a world where it’s become popular to deride anyone who doesn’t have “thick skin”, anyone who believes in standing up for something – including themselves – it may be difficult as a parent to embrace teaching your child to be vulnerable. We want them to be safe, after all. We want them to be protected.
But what is lost in the space between our hearts, and our armor? And what happens when that armor comes off?Read more
The Life-long Success Equation for High School Students
Innovations in technology means changes in the paths our children may take in the world. Work requiring a human touch is becoming more select. Yesterday’s jobs – and the security that came with them – are rapidly being replaced by either algorithms or creative thinkers who cannot only predict innovation, but drive it.
Innovation is the currency of modern success, and innovation is driven from within.Read more
Intrinsic Motivation Drives Lifelong Learning
We’ve developed a culture motivated by external rewards, unrelated compensation for work done. On a basic level, this drive is a natural extension of the give-take relationship between working members of a community. In a functioning society, all members participate in bringing goods to bear for trade, so that the entire community may live a more fruitful life.
But education is personal. Inquiry is the mechanism by which we each advance our own understanding of the observable world and our place within it.
Waldorf Education Prepares Teens for Fulfilling Lives. Here's How.
Being a teenager is challenging.
On one hand they’re expected to be adults, to discover who they are in the myriad possibilities and support themselves physically and emotionally. Far too many teens are challenged to practically pick out a personality from a two-dimensional storefront of limited acceptance, and then cash that in for a place in the workforce.Read more
Problem Solving or Problem Finding? How To Prepare Teens For The Future
Problem solving gets a lot of attention, and for good reason. As an employee, those who can identify a problem and quickly find a solution can spare their team a lot of stress. And in today’s relatively egalitarian workspace, everyone is responsible for contributing ideas and solutions. It’s no wonder, therefore, that the best universities and employers keep problem solving high on the list of admirable attributes.
Less discussed is problem-solving’s more creative cousin, problem finding.
What do I mean by more creative? Recent research into creativity shows that problem finding - the ability to discover, create, or preempt problems in order to better understand a mechanism – serves a prime role in “intrinsically motivated creative performance.” Of course that’s great if your child plans to enter a creative career.
It’s also important in nearly any career.
The days of getting good at your job and staying there for thirty years are long gone. Your child is entering a world that changes at the speed of ideas. It will always be important to be able to solve problems. However, in this new, fluid economy, problem solving is just too slow.
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What is problem solving? In ages past, when change took decades or even lifetimes, problem solving was one of the most valuable skills an individual could carry with them into a career. Reserved primarily for leaders, problem solving skills were an elite quality generally only acknowledged in upper management even in more creative organizations.
Over time, however, the hierarchical model of paid ideation disintegrated beneath the weight of consumer demand. It became everyone’s job to drop a comment in the box, if you will, though the cultural shift toward breaking down that hierarchy didn’t take so easily. Many of those comments were ignored.
Up to that point, problem solvers were those who could take the numbers weeks, months, even years after the problem began, and quickly piece together a “solution.” With a band-aid on the issue, it would be weeks, months, even years before anyone discovered that the solution didn’t work or worse, it caused a new problem.
It turns out, problem solving doesn’t affect long-term success. Problem solving cuts the discovery process short, focuses on the symptom, and most inefficient, is reactionary.
What is problem finding? Today, change happens rapidly. The modern world – employment economy included – can comfortably be described as fluid. By the time a solution rolls out in a large organization, a new problem has arisen. The time an organization spends trying to stop leaks is time a competing organization spends attracting the first company’s business.
Individuals working under this type of stress cannot thrive. They get swept up in the current and moved along too fast until everything falls to pieces – at work and at home.
A defining attribute of problem finders is their ability to be comfortable with discomfort in order to take the time they need to examine and identify the root of a problem.
Problem finding, then, allows individuals to delve more deeply into issues affecting their work, and that’s great. What makes problem finders more successful, however, is their ability to dig deeply and find the cause of problems affecting their life, feelings, and relationships.
Because the eagerness of problem solving tempts solvers to accept the easiest answer, they tend to attribute difficult interpersonal situations to the ill will of others. Conversely, problem finders are more willing to spend time in their discomfort to discover the true reason behind their negative interactions, even if it implicates themselves.
So, which is it?
Helping youth develop their problem finding skills certainly prepares them for success in their future career, relationships, and personal wellness. Promoting problem solving skills prepares youth to think on their feet, overcome problems quickly, and lead effectively from anywhere in an organization.
Which is it, then? Well, both.
Ideally, as parents and educators we teach our children how to find problems, how to solve problems, and when to do each. Better yet, we prepare youth for independence by teaching them how to discover the answers for themselves.
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What Makes Some People Innovative?
And How to Make Sure Your Child Is One of Them.
Innovation.
Have you heard that word lately? Unless you’ve been away from the world for a while, chances are you hear it every day. You don’t just hear it, you live it. And your children live it too.Read more
5 Biggest Reasons Waldorf High School Students Excel at Top Universities
The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education recently conducted research to better understand the benefits of Waldorf Education with the purpose of examining how the unique, child-led education model prepares young people for the future.
The results were staggering— read them here.
The study takes a systematic approach to labeling why Waldorf high school students do so well in intense university programs and carry that success on to meaningful careers.
It’s important to gather empirical evidence to support why we believe in Waldorf Education. Now, we’d like to share what our experience and observations have uncovered about the attributes of Waldorf high school students and why our students are so successful in college and beyond.
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Intrinsic Motivation. How do we determine which actions have value and which do not? How do we prepare our children to do the right thing, to follow the difficult path even when there is no measurable reward on the other end?
We empower them to motivate themselves.
Where behaviors motivated extrinsically depend on a clear and measurable reward, intrinsic motivation comes from within. Those who are intrinsically motivated, who develop the ability to motivate their own behavior, are more consistent in their pursuits, and therefore more successful long term.
Academic Confidence. It’s long been understood that confidence, one’s belief in themselves, is the spice of success. However, overreaching confidence can become detrimental when not focused. Academic confidence is specific. Waldorf high school students are challenged to learn that they can learn. They leave high school confident in their ability to identify problems and investigate solutions.
Experience. What is experience, and how can teenagers get it? Experience is failure. For many parents, it’s difficult to let our children fail. We want to spare them the pain. We fear failure will hurt their confidence. We believe the road to success is paved with achievement. It’s not until college, or even later, when our children fail for the first time in their lives, that we discover we failed to prepare them to recover and learn from their mistakes.
During high school, youth are driven to make sense of the world. They build assumptions and beliefs they’ll take with them into the rest of their lives. Experience, particularly the experience of overcoming failure, helps young people develop into resilient adults.
Self-direction. In a world where change is the only thing we can count on, it’s not enough to wait for instructions. To be successful, one must be able to assess circumstances and direct their own actions. This is so not only for employment, but for life.
A self-directed individual can look beyond the norm to piece together a fulfilling life for themselves based on their own needs and joys. These are the individuals who are least susceptible to mental illness and spiritual fatigue.
Courage. Talk about character is constant, but breaking it down and naming the components is rare. Problems manifest from this oversight in the form of focus on developing confidence, when what our children really need is courage.
Confidence is important, of course. Confidence in one’s belief in themselves or their ability. We’re particularly partial to academic confidence. It’s internal, and reflects the self.
Courage is a little different. It refers to one’s ability to overcome doubt derived from the perception of danger from outside one’s self. That danger can be physical, but is typically social.
Waldorf students are nurtured to test and grow their courage as a matter of course. We know that without courage, thoughts and ideas are kept inside, never getting a chance to change the world.
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The Role of Empathy in Today’s Framework for Success
What does your child want to be?
When I ask my oldest, who is six years old, what he wants to be, his list goes on for minutes. He wants to be a husband and a funny dad, just like his father. He wants to be a doctor and a video game designer. He wants to be a volunteer at the forest service. He even wants to be a grocery bagger at the local grocery store so he can, “tell jokes to the elders when they buy groceries early in the morning.”
The list goes on. At first glance, it looks like these choices have little in common. It did to me, anyway. But there is something each of his choices has in common both in inspiration and practice.
Empathy.
Empathy is a basic human skill that helps us build and maintain healthy relationships with ourselves and others. A life without empathy is cold and empty.
You know that.
I know that.
And now, the business world knows that.
All aspects of our lives—work, marriage, friendships, etc.—have become egalitarian. It’s no longer possible to get through life without being able to participate in mutually beneficial conversations. Even leadership has evolved from a role of dictatorship into one of service through active listening.
Nurturing empathy during teenage development is pivotal to ensuring life-long success.
Empathy is a leadership skill. Studies on successful leadership have long rested on evangelizing the traits of the stereotypical extrovert: boisterousness, authoritarianism, quick decision making and the ability to present well to a crowd. They talk long and often, and are able to get the job done.
Of course, this thinking worked back when it took weeks, months, even years to get a true analytical view of how well a team functioned toward a goal.
Though long considered a soft, and in the past, undesirable skill, recent studies have proven that empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is critical to driving performance of individuals in a working group. It’s especially critical now that no one is safe just sitting on the sidelines, going through the motions.
What’s next for kids? Sadly, empathy is in decline, an issue with far reaching social and ethical ramifications. But we can bring it back.
Modeling is the most effective way to teach empathy. As mentors, we have the power to nurture our young ones’ understanding of others’ feelings by validating theirs. Teens also need help labeling their feelings, and being encouraged to stay in their feelings even when they are uncomfortable.
When teaching empathy, it’s important to stress that one doesn’t need to understand the cause to understand the emotion. Furthermore, feelings do not need to be fixed; they change on their own when an underlying need is met. Therefore, the most effective way to empathize is simply by sharing.
Empathy also grows from examination of fiction. Literature and theater give youth an opportunity to examine and experiment with emotion. Further, literature and theater encourage teenagers to examine emotions, thus they learn how to label feelings to better understand themselves and others.
Empathy is vulnerability. A primary reason for empathy decline is the negative stigma associated with feelings as weakness. Overcoming the social stigma of displaying emotion relieves those who brave the emotional space of the burden of shame levied by onlookers, and empowers everyone not only to display, but to expect empathy with their feelings.
Empathy is an important part of the Waldorf Curriculum.
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Academic Confidence for College Success
It’s Not What You Know, It’s How Confidently You Know It
What do teens really need in high school to prepare for success in college and beyond?
It’s the question weighing most heavily on your mind. As your child prepares for the final stage of directed development before adulthood, you’re wondering how you can reinforce all the work you’ve done so far and prepare your teen for lifelong success.
So, what’s the answer?
Confidence. Not just general confidence, but academic confidence.
Confidence is one’s general belief in themselves. It’s an important attribute, one your child needs to succeed. But confidence without direction can become detrimental. An overabundance of undirected confidence can drive an individual to ignoring their flaws and overlook opportunities for growth. This leads to breakdowns in communication, trust, and relationships.
Academic confidence is quite a bit different. It denotes an individual’s belief in their ability to learn; their aptitude for academic inquiry and pursuit. Individuals who are nurtured in their academic confidence enter universities sure of their ability and ready to excel. Students with high academic confidence have been proven to be high achievers.
Click here to discover how to choose the right high school for your teen.
We know that academic confidence helps young adults gain momentum quickly and set a foundation for lifelong success. But how do we help them acquire it to begin with?
Challenge them to expand their academic comfort zones. Did your child ever say to you, maybe in first or second grade, “I’m really good at this. I must be ready for college!”
That’s intellectual confidence, the belief in one’s natural intellectual talent. The problem with intellectual confidence is the unspoken attribution of aptitude to a natural gift. And when that natural gift doesn’t measure up to challenges as the child grows, the child will internalize the failure as evidence of deep-seated fault, depreciate themselves, and become depressed.
Challenging the child to test the mettle of their academic aptitude early helps them discover that their true skill is grit, and that’s an attribute they can choose to exhibit. Children learn that they can achieve their academic goals with hard work and rise to any challenge.
Expose them to competing ideas. Do you insulate your children from competing ideas? Keeping your kids in the dark not only hurts their trust in you later, it damages their sense of self and placement in the world.
The more your child comes into contact with competing ideas and different cultures, lifestyles, and beliefs, the more secure they become in who they are and what they believe. The result? Resilience.
Intellectual resilience sounds rigid, but it isn’t. As a matter of fact, it’s a natural defense against mentality rigidness that causes the cognitive dissonance in teens and young adults which leads to depression and eroded relationships.
Rather than cutting your children and teens off from the world in their developmental years, try exposing them to as many new ideas and concepts as possible. Give them to opportunity to test their beliefs against others to form the ability to take in and test new information for the rest of their life.
Let them fail. For many parents, letting our children fail is too difficult to even imagine. We want to spare them the pain. We fear failure will hurt their confidence. We believe the road to success is paved with achievement.
In reality, though, a tower of success is like a tower of marshmallows: as soon as it rains they get sticky and dissolve.
When our children are not challenged to overcome failure until college or even later, we fail to help them develop resilience. We fail to let them develop the skillset and the mindset every individual needs to overcome setbacks and learn from their mistakes.
A new world is emerging and changing all the time. Those who will succeed in this fluid new world will be those who flow with it; those who are driven to accept and adapt to change quickly and easily. That means learning all the time.
Academic confidence is a key component of your child’s success in college and career.
High school is an important time in your teen’s development and preparation for a successful future.
Click here to discover how to choose the right high school for your teen.
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