Shaping a Kinder Future
Last month I treated you to a short post to make a point about spending less time on digital devices. This month it’s a longer post. I thought you might have more time to spend on a summer’s day to learn more about how we make a better world with kids.
Education plays a pivotal role in shaping young minds, particularly during the formative years of Junior Kindergarten (JK) to Grade 8. It is during this critical period that children develop fundamental values, attitudes, and skills that influence their perception of the world. Educating children with a focus on creating a better world holds immense significance in fostering a compassionate, responsible, and sustainable society.
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Tips for moving from the virtual to the real world
This is a short post.
It’s short because it’s about spending less time on digital devices.
It’s written in response to a parent’s request for some insight into how to get kids off digital, into the real world and doing so without immeasurable grief.
Does this sound familiar?
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Build or repair?
Remember the beginning of 2020? Until February or March of that year, the world seemed pretty normal. Then we launched into the pandemic and life changed forever.
No matter how we might try to discard our memories and stake a claim to our resilience, our ability to pivot, our responsiveness to unforeseen circumstances and the simple weirdness of the entire situation, one issue is undeniable. The pandemic created an epidemic of stress in our children.
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Henny-Penny and wondering if catastrophe is looming
World Has Less Than a Decade to Stop Catastrophic Warming, U.N. Panel Says
“One morning, as Henny-Penny was plucking worms in the henyard, an acorn dropped from a tree right onto her head! She had no idea what had hit her, however, and so she started shouting:
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
We often use the story of Chicken Little as a cautionary tale about overreaction and exaggeration. What is sometimes forgotten is that the story ends with Foxy Loxy enjoying a meal of fresh poultry!
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Why?
Here’s an observation I came across recently that resonated powerfully.
“A paradigm shift occurs when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered from outside it.” - Marilee Goldberg, The Art of the Question
It took me a couple of minutes to digest and then it came clear to me: you will not achieve meaningful change if you never bring new perspective to an opportunity; you will not produce a different result if you continue to apply the same method to problem solution; you will never discover new wonders if you never leave the highway you’ve always travelled on!
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How we motivate meaningful change throughout the school year
A friend shared this story with me just after Christmas.
His son got a $10 bill from his grandfather. If you’ve seen the new bill, it’s a striking design featuring a portrait of Viola Desmond. After checking out the note for a bit, his son asked him, “Who’s the lady on my money?”
He told him that Viola Desmond was a Canadian heroine who took a stand against racism in Nova Scotia when, in 1946, she refused to leave a whites-only section of a movie theatre. “Oh, you mean she’s like Rosa Parks?,” his son responded.
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We have the power to shape our future
What do you want your legacy to be?
Even as adults, these are enormously challenging inquiries. They challenge us to explore areas to which we seldom pay attention. They require us to not only face but welcome adversity. They demand a relentless exploration of our motivations and reflections on where we’ve been, where we are and where we hope to go.
When I tell you that these are just a few of the challenges the Walden student confronts, you might think we’re over-reaching their capabilities. And, if we were to do so without providing support and guidance, you might be right.
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A better quality of life and learning through mentoring
Without delving too deeply into science, what we’re talking about here is an important aspect of naturalistic observation. Understanding and influencing behaviour by experiencing what happens to a child’s brain when they interact with elders.
The idea of engaging with your youngsters (or elders) is not just for the sake of grandparents and grandchildren. It can actually bring about for both parties by sharing wisdom, experience, and perspectives.
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Differences make us unique
Our approach to acceptance at Walden - Everyone is welcome here.
The commitment is not just a pretty sign we hang on our doors and in our classrooms. It’s a daily reminder that we must always respect and show support to all students, staff and their families. We teach our students and remind ourselves that we acknowledge each other's differences, and acknowledge the humanity of someone raised to think differently from us.
That we do not agree to disagree but accept that differences exist, which is what makes us all unique.
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How do we mobilize our students to be good people?
Imagine what our society could become if each of us actively took our principles to the street, if we each contributed in some small way to making our neighbourhood a better place to live for every one of us, if we took action that would improve the lives of those around us - near and far.
The world is full of young people who, with the right mix of determination and willpower, can effect change at the local level. They begin with one issue they’re passionate about, then find small, local ways to organize and find solutions to the problem.
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How we help children move from anxiety to hope
Proactive in fostering student achievement, we recognize wellness as an essential pillar of education. Students take part daily in mindfulness activities, which is a mandate of our program. Evidence suggests that introducing mindful meditation into the classroom is an effective means of improving attention and emotional regulation. We recognize the importance of encouraging and modelling a healthy lifestyle that includes mindfulness, which will prepare students for success.
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Why it’s so important to unplug
Watching our students unplug made me realize with even greater clarity that unplugging helps our kids develop social skills. It helps them (and us!) focus on human-to-human relationships that make life meaningful.
Our world is complex, noisy and very confusing, but the nature of life is not.
This summer, make some ‘me time’ and enjoy the view.
The best of your life is happening right in front of you.
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Creating knowledgeable, open-minded thinkers at our wonderful school
I won’t claim to be prescient, however, when we founded Walden we knew we had to offer programmes and an environment that would enable our young students to find their places in this world and build capabilities that would allow them to adapt and excel in a new world order.
It should come as no surprise then that we pursued International Baccalaureate accreditation for our Primary Years Programme (PYP) and that we have also sought qualification to deliver the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP).
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One person can make a difference. You too.
Faced with the overwhelming problems with which modern society is confronted, it’s too easy to think that our voice is irrelevant in the larger scheme and our efforts will be sucked up in a black hole of indifference.
However, when we look into history, we find the opposite is true.
Let’s throw out a few names here, and you consider how they affected real and lasting global change by exerting influence that none of them could have planned when they began their journey.
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What are you doing to nurture nature?
An intimate awareness of the world we share is fundamental to our entire philosophy. It underpins our curriculum, our pedagogy and even our name. We’re often asked why we chose the name Walden. Inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, our school is committed to fostering independent, self-reliant learners in a nature-centric environment.
Our mandate is to model for our students the merits of subscribing to an unadorned approach to living while developing a…
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Perseverance, challenge and community
If we are collectively going to have success in creating a broader community of understanding it will require each of us to take a role in ensuring that the errors of the past serve as points of learning and provide points of light in moving forward.
I recently read an observation by Marie Wilson who was a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner. Here’s what she related, “We have been investing in our collective ignorance, and we have to stop.”
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An answer searching for a question
At Walden we always try to provide a broad outlook on how we look at the issues we all face from a communal perspective. Put as simply as possible we instil in our students the understanding that for one of us to move forward does not suggest that someone else must be held back. It’s confirming the belief that aspects of history are hard to understand within the context of today’s world and that there are issues that require us to heal.
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Everyday Heroes
The central purpose of the entire Walden community was and is to ensure that our students and your children, beyond benefitting from a complete and purposeful IB programme, discover that out of goodness arises greatness.
It means teaching children that the world is about much more than the achievement of high marks and the accomplishment of standardized goals.
It means recognizing each child as an individual with their own needs, interests, talents and abilities.
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Kind people are my kind of people
One of the fundamental principles we embrace at Walden International School is this: to help yourself, start by helping others.
It’s a profoundly simple concept and yet it’s one that we all struggle with from time to time. At this time of year when we pile on extra stress while preparing for holidays and various celebrations it’s easy to get wrapped up in the hurly burly. When that happens, whether we’re a kid or a grown up, some of our best basic instincts (generosity, compassion, patience) can vanish and some of our…
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Why the creative power inside of us should be kept alive
If I ask our youngest students these questions I can safely predict that every one of them will answer - yes!
If I ask a selection of adults I can also safely predict that most of them will respond - not really but I’d like to.
It’s one of the real misfortunes of the traditional education system that most of us have our creative spirit dampened in favour of achieving subjective standards of …
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