Who wants their child to be healthy, safe, and engaged?

Last night I was reading from Schools: A Journal for Inquiry into the Subjective Experience of School Life, looking to probe a bit into the idea of teaching to the whole child. Lately, more and more schools say they teach to the whole child, or claim their approach is different than other schools because of their focus on the child.  With the term whole child being thrown around so much of late, especially in the middle years, I began to think - what does it really mean?

According to ACSD, here are the basic attributes of what it means to be focused on the whole child:

- Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.

- Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.

- Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.

- Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.

- Each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.

That sounds about right, but don’t most schools approach education this way? What school is actively saying they don’t challenge kids academically or that they don’t promote a healthy lifestyle?

I came across an article in Schools that mentions Alfie Kohn’s view. Kohn – who is never short on opinions in print, or in person – made an interesting point about the whole child approach, and how it often devolves as the student grows older. He also feels that if schools are to focus on the whole child, then they need to provide a safe place for growth and change. This can’t happen when bureaucratic control takes precedent – around school tools like schedules and policy. Kohn asked the question, “does the schedule rule learning or does learning rule the school?”

I think there are many examples in American education today, where teaching is about the system, not the student. Not just in public schools, where scores are shared in the media and politicians fire shots at faculty on a weekly basis, but in schools of choice too. Many parents in our schools look to us to provide preparation – they choose us as a select school so we can prepare their kids for a select university. We can measure that, can’t we? Heads can talk about the numbers of kids they place into Ivy’s and parents can see the numbers too. Done. That quest for quantifiables is genuine in the competitive world of modern day schooling. So the measurements better be visible, viable, and valiant.

This is a real issue if you are a teacher. It is an even bigger issue if you are a teacher teaching to the whole child. They know there is more to teaching than reading rates, test scores, and college outcomes. Great teachers know that young people need to think both critically and creatively, now, more than ever. Students need to know how to evaluate huge amounts of information in order to work with a diversity of people to solve complex problems, locally and globally. These are the facts our children face. Therefore, common sense validates that teaching to the whole child is a right approach. The big question that remains is whether schools, faced with very real economic, political and social pressures, will be able to have the guts to stand by their faculty when they know what works.

Cities: a solution for our planet and our students

I was reading some blog posts from a few educators I follow on Twitter this evening. They had attended the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest Biannual Conference in Houston, Texas and were reporting back on a few of the keynote speakers, one of which was Pat Bassett, President of NAIS. Much of his talk focused on the need for more intentional instruction by educators on the well known 21st Century C’s: character, creativity and cooperation. Pat also focused on a lesser know C that I found more intriguing. Let me tell you why.

Basset mentioned a need to focus on cosmopolitanism. What he is referring to is bringing children into a world that is smaller due to our interconnectedness. Cosmopolitan reminds me of another C word: city. I have always felt schools should be preparing students to live in cities. Why? Because many if not most of the great universities and colleges are in cities, and so are the great industries and talent centers, from tech to finance, law to government. Perhaps most importantly, more and more research is showing if we are going to survive as a planet, prevent sprawl,and conserve resources, one solution is to embrace global urbanization.

I dug a little deeper into this idea and found a great piece on Huffington Post by Katherine Krauss, a senior at Greenhills School - an independent school in Ann Arbor, Mich. She penned a compelling argument that global migration toward cities means good things for the environment. She pointed out, “less people sprawled out in suburbs means less burning of fossil fuels from personal cars and more land given back to the natural ecosystems of the region.” She didn’t stop there. Krauss took it a step further and stated “cities are the centers of idea exchange. Because the world's nations are so highly interconnected in today's society, collaboration is becoming more and more critical to the maintaining of a global order and peace; and because the world has never seen anything like this level of interconnectedness before, it is critical that experts gather to exchange ideas about how to best advance in their field.”

Katherine is right. Cities have always been at the center of thinking and creativity. They have been focal points of commerce and trade, artistry and social movements, and because cities often have strong economies, they attract millions looking for work or intellectual inspiration.

So why is this important? Because most students graduating in this era, will be living and working in a city. They will need to understand how to live, thrive and give back in an urban environment in the evolving 21st century. And the city very well may be in another country. The city could be New York, Denver, or San Francisco. Maybe Lima, San Paulo or Buenos Aires. Could be Singapore, Hong Kong or Chengdu. Possibly even Lagos, Dakar or Narobi. How exciting is that?

Very exciting, because cities are exciting. They are full of hope, can-do-attitudes and people who are looking to make things happen. Who hasn’t been excited by a visit to NYC? Is there a more exciting place in the world? As someone who lived in New York, San Francisco and Prague too, I experienced this fist hand. The move back to urban living might be the solution for so many of the global ills we face today and if our students study hard and have a little luck, they too will find themselves in a city, living, connecting and thriving well into the 21^st Century.

For more from Katherine Krauss, look here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katherine-krauss/the-benefits-of-global-ur_b_1214364.html