Prepared: What Kids Need for a Fulfilled Life

by Diane Tavenner

What they wanted was a voice and the ability to help themselves, just as I had wanted for myself.

A book called The Project Method was published in 1918, and in the 1920s an Illinois superintendent had first graders create a school post office so they could understand how one worked.

Preparing our kids to be adults means preparing them to make good decisions when they’re out in the world,

We chose a dojo for Rett that’s all about real-world application of Tae Kwon Do. To be clear, there are colored belts and lots of kicking and punching, but there are many differences. The classes are mixed age, mixed skill, and mixed gender, so the students are constantly

exposed to people who are more

experienced, and others who are less experienced...

class is geared toward understanding Tae Kwon Do in our everyday life, learning things like de-escalation,

escalation, understanding one’s individual skills and strengths, working as a group to achieve a goal, learning to breathe, requesting feedback, and contributing to the community.

life is messy and complicated, and you have to figure out what’s needed at any given time, and what you can bring—then do that.

Kids don’t want to just recite how a bill becomes a law (if they happen to remember it), they want to know what it feels like and takes to push an issue through that is important to them. They want to be

prepared for life as much as we want them to be.

At Summit we had a “leadership bookshelf,” a set of books we all read, discussed, learned from, and then sought to incorporate.

Daniel Pink’s bestselling Drive was one of the books on our bookshelf, as it shared research pointing to mastery, autonomy, and purpose as the underpinnings of motivation.

We read Pink’s work, and thought,

Summit students often aren’t all sitting at desks facing the teacher, but rather scattered

about doing work they have planned and are controlling.

Cut the Rope

Getting too involved, by taking over, is a mistake I see parents making constantly,

Watching our kids fail—even in small ways, like burning dinner—is challenging, but I think the struggle with self-direction is

even deeper. The fact is, when kids are self-directed, the role of the parent changes.

As Rett began to access the tools and

build the skills to direct his own learning, it completely changed our role. It felt uncomfortable that he knew more than we did. But it was the best way to prepare him, and in time, we would figure out our new place, too.

Stanford University denied admission to several of our students after receiving identical letters of recommendation for all of them. Their rationale was that if a teacher couldn’t take the time to write an original letter, then the students must not have been compelling

enough for admission.

By missing the practice of reflection, the traditional grading model in America falls short.

What do you want from this situation?

What emotions do you have? What behaviors are you exhibiting? What is working or not working? Why? Put yourself in the other person’s shoes—what do you think their perspective is? What role can you play in getting to your desired outcome? Is there anything you need to do to make the relationship right?

It is healthy to learn how to repair relationship ruptures,

so they don’t escalate to a point of no return, but instead relationships become stronger from the process of healing the break.

I never ask, “What do you want to be?” or “What is your favorite subject?” Rather, I ask, “What do you like doing?” “What parts of that do you like

most?”

Summit had to be a school where we expected every single student to succeed, a school where every child would discover who they were and what

they wanted. Every Summit graduate would leave ready for college, ready for a career, and ready to live a good life, on their terms. By definition, Summit couldn’t be a school where there were winners and losers.

Not only do diverse teams

make better decisions, but experience with diverse people prepares kids for work and life in our rapidly changing society.

I love teenagers, but the truth of the matter is their brains are still forming and so biologically speaking they are still developing

the neural connections required to make good decisions. But if we really wanted to teach them to collaborate, we had to give them real and meaningful decisions to make.

making decisions by consensus versus majority rule.

The diversity of thought was amazing.

“We have one week of vacation. Our budget is this amount. Where should we go and what should we do?”

The most

successful collaborators know themselves. They know who they are, what they care about, what they know, and what they don’t know. Knowing themselves comes from being reflective. Successful collaborators know their strengths and what they are working to improve, and they know what

they can cont...

I couldn’t help but remember that I had never wanted anyone to save me, I just wanted people to make it possible for me to save myself. Maybe Zack felt the same way.

So teachers doing more couldn’t be our answer. Instead we had to figure out how to enable kids to do for themselves.

we needed to value developing the habits of success as much as we valued developing acad...

Building Blocks for Learning, which

was developed by Dr. Brooke Stafford-Brizard for Turnaround for Children,

the “base” level of the

pyramid involves healthy development that would begin in early childhood—attachment, stress management, and self-regulation. As those become solid, the child moves toward what one might think of as school readiness habits: being self-aware; having some relationship skills; and strong