by BRIGHT LIGHT Melissa Brown
The education system has long been seen as the antidote to society’s ills and a mechanism for change. Fast-forward to 2024, and the pace of change is leaving schools as we know them in the dust. Consequently, individual teachers can feel uncertain about how to navigate the day-to-day.
Despite the rapidly changing world and students’ evolving needs, today’s schools still have the power to graduate young people with a strong sense of identity and purpose, capable of effecting positive change locally, nationally, and globally. But is there a layperson’s guide to creating monumental change, particularly when most are overwhelmed and feel threadbare at the end of each week? As educators, we can dwell on everything we don’t know or leverage the things we do know.
Although students’ needs are evolving with the times, we know that deep and lasting learning is fundamentally rooted in connection to self, others, and the world around us. Therefore, we must support our students’ positive identity development and social-emotional well-being as well as their academic learning.
Today’s students resemble glass bottles whose openings have narrowed due to the rise in social-emotional stressors, anxiety, and depression. As educators, we hope to pour into our students daily, offering stimulating learning opportunities to advance their knowledge, skills, and understanding. However, we can pour all we want. Nothing will go in if we don’t open them up by first knowing who they are and how they are.
Preparing young people to navigate uncertainty, challenges, and adversity is paramount to equipping them to engage with and thrive in diverse and complex environments. Therefore, teachers must rethink how we approach learning. In addition to creating deep and meaningful academic experiences, we must encourage students to discover and embrace their authentic selves on the learning journey. Teachers today must create the conditions in our classrooms for students to access their “captains and poets” to remain open, available, and engaged with each other and the world around them in meaningful and authentic ways. We must cultivate a positive sense of self and foster curiosity for knowing and understanding others so that our students graduate as leaders who truly make the world better.
Post-pandemic, our students need culturally competent teachers who understand themselves deeply and desire to know their students fully. Traditionally, primary and middle school teachers have embraced this responsibility. Secondary teachers typically come to their classrooms with subject matter expertise and classroom management acumen. Educators must realize that what they teach and how they teach impacts their students in myriad ways. Building capacity in teachers to meet their students and the ever-evolving moment more fully should not be left to chance. Schools must commit to becoming learning institutions and implementing intentional plans for curricular expansion and ongoing professional development. Similarly to our students, we must cultivate the skills and dispositions essential to teaching in a complex and dynamic world.
The uncertainty of a rapidly changing world calls educators to mine, affirm, and nourish each student’s full authentic self. We can create an environment where students can flourish by embracing diversity, fostering inclusivity, prioritizing well-being, and connecting students to local, national, and global communities. For the last fifteen years, I have collaboratively led the integration of Holton-Arms School’s institutional priorities of diversity, well-being, and global education into the fabric of our institution. These pillars are core to “Learn Well, Live Well, Lead Well (LW3),” our philosophy of holistic education, which informs our curriculum, programs, and community engagement initiatives. By embedding LW3 into the very essence of our school culture, we are creating a community that nurtures, values, and celebrates all of our students.
Catalyzed by our 2015 accreditation, faculty and staff examined our mission statements and portrait of a graduate, identifying the transferable skills and enduring understandings we wanted for Holton graduates. We collectively affirmed that for students to thrive, they need to understand themselves and others, form relationships across differences, care for the health of their communities, and work collaboratively to mitigate local, national, and global challenges. To backward design learning for that, we employed our institutional priorities as guiding principles. We critically examined our practices, policies, and procedures and revised and expanded our curriculum and programming. We formed working groups to create goals and competencies and anchored our professional learning in DEIB and SEL. We created eight schoolwide goals informed by the work of organizations that specialized in our core values including the Institute for Social Emotional Learning, the Asia Society, World Savvy, and Learning for Justice. These schoolwide goals and competencies guide professional learning and curricular and programmatic changes designed to empower students to think critically and engage in meaningful learning inside and outside the classroom.
Being an impactful educator today means infusing learning with purpose. Our students must believe they can solve big things in collaboration. In concert with all other disciplines, each of our disciplines empowers students with the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. As educators, we must ask, “What is the higher purpose of the learning in my classroom? How am I facilitating the acquisition of transferable knowledge and enduring understandings? Empowering students to develop self-knowledge and open-mindedness, to communicate and collaborate across differences, to think creatively and critically, and to engage in authentic ways through our disciplines infuses our classrooms with meaning and purpose. When we nurture our students’ inner “captains and poets” and illuminate the transferrable skills and enduring understandings our students are honing in our classrooms, we invite them to connect and engage with each other and the world with passion and purpose.
At Holton-Arms, we have embarked on a journey of reconnecting with our purpose: graduating young people who will become passionate and responsive leaders in a complex world. Here, DEIB, Well-being, and Global Education are not merely optional add-ons or educational fads but rather fundamental components of an education designed to respond to the rapidly evolving world around them. By embracing these principles and integrating them into every facet of school life, we are paving the way for a brighter, more inclusive future where young people are inspired and empowered to shape a more equitable, peaceful, and sustainable world.
Melissa Brown is the Director of Diversity, Wellbeing, and Global Education at Holton-Arms School. Melissa also serves as the Governing Director of the International Coalition of Girls’ Schools and the Global Education Benchmark Group. Melissa’s Captain is action-oriented and her Poet is a connecting dream which allows her to go out into the world to create change and have impact.