Dear Editor,The following is a response to the excellent articles in a recent issue of ASCD'sEducational Leadership magazine. I am a Montessori school principal living and working in Sydney, Australia, over the past 17 years. I am a long-term ASCD member and have worked as a teacher in schools with primarily non-English speaking migrant families, as a counsellor and principal in an international school where kidnapping and terrorism directly affected a number of families, and headed a highly academic school where the majority of students continued studies outside of school every day of the week. My current position has brought me to a place of understanding of education I had never been able to reach before, despite the diverse environments in which I served earlier. While no school is free of difficulties, I write this response after finding the "secret ingredient" in building resilience in children.
I applaud the recent Educational Leadership focus on resilience and learning in your September issue. When we consider the importance of conditions for learning, few would argue against the fact that a child's readiness to learn depends largely on her beliefs and self-confidence. Many of the articles in this issue portrayed examples of efforts and programs that have been put into place to tackle the problems students face in their negative beliefs about themselves—or as many contributors cited: a student's "fixed mindset," as defined by Carol Dweck.
Have we considered, however, what creates these problems in the first place? External forces such as family hardships aside, are we unnecessarily creating learning environments that put insurmountable challenges
12-11-13 THE WHOLE CHILD BLOG Throughout December and January: Personalized Learning — Whole Child Education
Throughout December and January: Personalized Learning — Whole Child Education: THE WHOLE CHILD BLOGThroughout December and January: Personalized LearningDecember 11, 2013 by Klea ScharbergHow do we help each student succeed? One promising way is to personalize learning and put each student at the center of her learning experience. Broader than individualized or differentiated instruction, persona