trust

The Struggle is Real

/ Dave Eberwein / Leave a comment

A typical moment in my professional life:

I’m at my desk deep in thought — maybe it’s a budget issue, perhaps a community concern, or maybe an organizational dilemma that needs a creative solution. I’m stuck.

It can feel like my brain’s gears are seized or conversely like my wheels are spinning in mud — it’s an immovable tension of struggling to find a solution.

Neuroscientists have learned that the act of struggling is actually an important part of the learning process. Struggling with a problem results in increased neural connections being formed in your brain. The act of struggling forces your brain to develop new networks — bridging the old to the new.

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Every Child Has a Gift

/ Dave Eberwein / Leave a comment

Every child has a gift. But, being able to receive it means FIRST being able to recognize it. Schools are in a unique position to do that.

Mission Possible: To recognize, celebrate and nurture every child’s gift.

When we celebrate the gift that each child provides we enable that child to reach new heights of achievement. In public education, our doors are open to every child — every need, every complexity. Finding a child’s strengths can sometimes be the most difficult and frustrating part of our job. You see, for some children, their outward selves can mask their inner beauty through such things as learning or behavioral challenges, lack of attendance or other life complexities.

Finding the magic inside each child can be difficult — but it’s there — in every last one of them.

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Resilience – A Necessary Part of Personal Success

/ Dave Eberwein / Leave a comment

October 10th is World Mental Health Day (sponsored by the World Health Organization – WHO). What a great day to talk about RESILIENCE and its importance in providing students with a pathway to success.

When I went through teacher training I learned about a number things like lesson construction, effective assessments and curriculum content. We didn’t spend a lot of time learning about student resilience — in fact, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t even mentioned. And that’s probably because it wasn’t a concept being discussed among educators 30 years ago. I doubt that you could find one that incorporated it into the recipe for student success.

Resilience: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; personal toughness or the ability to bounce back.

What I’ve discovered over my career is that a student’s success is intimately linked to their ability to withstand disappointment, failure or setbacks. Their resilience is a critical part of their success story.

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