College Admissions and a Satirical Approach to the Issue

Every year at this time around the country, students are either checking online or going out to their mailboxes with a combination of anticipation and dread to find out whether they have been accepted or rejected at college. When I was a senior in high school, the size of the envelope was the not-so-subtle indicator—a thick one signified acceptance, a thin one conveyed disappointment.  These days, many students can go to a portal at a certain designated time and find out where they may be spending the next few years of their lives. The final days of March and the first days of April can be anxiety-ridden or energizing, and as school administrators and parents, all we can do is be there for our children as they receive the news.  

 

We can also stand back and try to have a humorous approach to the college search and admission process. This is where a recent satirical column by The New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, author of the highly recommended book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, comes in handy. In his column, “College Admissions Shocker!,” Bruni shared, the news that, in an effort to be even more selective, “Stanford University announced this week that it had once again received a record-setting number of applications and that its acceptance rate — which had dropped to a previously uncharted low of 5 percent last year — plummeted all the way to its inevitable conclusion of 0 percent.”  

To explain, Bruni quoted a Stanford administrator, “We had exceptional applicants, yes, but not a single student we couldn’t live without. In the stack of applications that I reviewed, I didn’t see any gold medalists from the last Olympics—Summer or Winter Games—and while there was a 17-year-old who’d performed surgery, it wasn’t open-heart or a transplant or anything like that. She’ll thrive at Yale.”’

Bruni continues by describing how Stanford’s decision not to accept students will affect the already frenzied college admissions process nationally.  As is true with all good satire, Bruni takes what may be current reality to its most extreme to show us what may be wrong.  As report after report has shown, the stress around the college admissions process has reached a point where students are breaking down emotionally and physically.  Even the people in the college admissions world have discussed the need for change as more and more high school students are tailoring their lives and their entire beings to fit what they believe admissions officers are looking for in applicants.  In addition, in an ever more competitive international economy and with college costs continuing to rise astronomically, parents are becoming more stressed out and going to extreme measures to have their children accepted into what they see as the perfect college.  

Many, many people including college presidents, admissions officers, and writers like Bruni have called on all of us to take a deep breath, relax, and realize that there are many outstanding colleges and universities across the country.  Whether a student attends an Ivy League college, a large state school, or a small liberal arts university, the important thing is that the school feels right for that person.  

Visiting with alumni last week in Washington, D.C., during our Winterim trip reminded me how important the notion of “fit” is.  Here were former Bosque students ranging in age from having just graduated last May to individuals in their mid-to-late 30s, and they were all doing interesting things professionally and living fulfilling lives.  They attributed their success to Bosque partially, and that was heartening, but they also discussed where they went to college and how well they did there.  Just as the students at Bosque represent a diversity of talents and interests, so will their college and graduate school choices reflect a variety of abilities and passions. Some Bobcats will go to colleges on the East Coast, some will stay in NM, and some will go to universities on the West Coast, including Stanford; the vast majority will flourish in their new college homes, secure in the knowledge that the place they have chosen is the right place for them.  As the adults in their lives, we need to support and encourage them while not allowing ourselves to be caught up in the hysteria.  If we approach the college search process with perspective and wisdom, they will take their cues from us, and their high school lives will be happier, healthier, and more sane.  

 
 

Having An Adventure

There I was—the only Westerner sitting around a communal fire with several other men in a workers’ hostel in downtown Tokyo—when an elderly gentleman leaned over to me and said in a portentous tone, “Young man, you are on the eve of a great adventure.” (I promise I am not making this up!)  I was in my early 20s and had decided to quit a job teaching English, so I could travel as far and as long as the money I had earned would take me.  (My wife still refers to this period in my life as my “walkabout.”)  My journey eventually took me from Japan to Hong Kong, overland to Amsterdam, and eventually to Tel Aviv.   A year later, vastly richer in experiences but also $3,000 poorer, I returned to the United States to get on with my life.   

One of Webster’s Online Dictionary definitions for an adventure is “an exciting or remarkable experience.”   While other definitions also mention danger or hazard, an adventure, thankfully, can be amazing without necessarily being death-defying.  This is what we hope to provide during Winterim.  Whether students are kayaking, hiking, visiting museums, swimming, cooking, walking, riding horses, or interning with a doctor or artist, we want them to be excited and have experiences that are unique and memorable during this weeklong program.  As educators, we know that when we interrupt the routine of our daily lives and introduce new ideas or activities, we provide opportunities for students (and their teachers) to learn at a deeper level than before.

Ideally, we should offer a wide variety of experiences during a child’s school years. Although it is important to have some consistency during a student’s time in school, it is when we break the patterns in how we think and what we do that we move to a different level of perception and understanding.  This break with our previous ways of thinking and being is irreversible, and we see our world anew.  Experiences like these can occur in a classroom discussion or during a lab, while performing a piece of music or drama, working on a mathematical problem, or painting a picture.  Whether it is apocryphal or not, the story of Archimedes exclaiming “Eureka!” in the bathtub provides us with a metaphor for the epiphanous experience of seeing our world in an exciting, new way.  

Over the past decades, I have been fortunate to witness those moments when students “wake up” to a new world. Whether it was a junior in history class who would look up stunned and say, “Ohhh! Now I get it!”; or a 6th grader in the bosque who, by virtue of her research, now understands life in this riparian forest; or a student debating a current “hot” topic in Spanish and  having the realization that he is actually “thinking” in a different language—what good schools do is provide opportunities for students to alter their long-held views and reshape how they see themselves and their lives.  

Winterim does this in a way that is immediately apparent.  At Bosque, we see students having these educational “adventures” all the time;  I consider myself lucky to watch our students become different people right before my eyes.  When it happens, it is priceless.  

Helping Our Children Become Independent

This past Monday, I enjoyed watching our middle school students arrive for their conferences and share with their advisors and parents what has gone well for them so far this year and where they would like to improve. In the days beforehand, it was a pleasure to hear them  preparing for the conferences, and some students came to my office—where their art hangs on the wall—and took down the pictures, so they could show them to their parents.  For years, I have felt it was wrong to repeatedly exhort students to “own” their education but then to have meetings where they weren’t even included.  I do understand that there are times that parents and teachers may need to discuss something without a child present; but when we’re talking about a child’s academic career, we should include them at the table, so they can be invested in their learning and intellectual development.

As parents, one of our goals is to eventually make ourselves superfluous, so our children will survive and flourish without us at their sides.  There are few things more painful than standing by and watching our children struggle and sometimes fail; however, if we are always there to bail them out, they will never develop the resilience and the skill set to bounce back from temporary setbacks. Every defeat will loom large for them, and they will lack a sense of perspective.

Although educators and psychologists have been discussing this concept for years, we can always benefit from a reminder of the importance of allowing our children to develop their independence.  A Chicago Tribune column published this past October, “Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation of children,” discussed a new book,  How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success, by former Stanford Dean Julie Lythcott-Haims. In this book, Lythcott-Haims borrows from her experience working with freshmen at Stanford to explain how “overparenting” is actually damaging children and possibly setting them up for failure down the road.  All too often, when we as parents take on our children’s work as our own, we allow them to opt out of it emotionally and/or not feel responsible for the ultimate outcome. “We want so badly to help them by shepherding them from milestone to milestone and by shielding them from failure and pain. But overhelping causes harm,” she [Lythcott-Haims] writes. “It can leave young adults without the strengths of skill, will and character that are needed to know themselves and to craft a life.”

Lythcott-Haims even gives us this list of pointers to bear in mind when we may be headed toward “overparenting”:

1. “Check your language.” When parents use the pronoun “we” when referring to our children’s activities, they may be veering toward being over-involved.
2. “Examine your interactions with the adults in your child’s life.” Encourage our children to take the lead in talking with their teachers and coaches on their own behalf.
3. “Stop doing their homework.” The temptation to help our children out can be overwhelming. However, when we go too far, we  disserve them by not only preventing them from learning what they need to know but also hurting their own sense of self and agency.

As with so many other aspects of parenting, this may not be easy and it is definitely not fun.  However, as we know intuitively, we need to “play the long game” in parenting and realize that what may be difficult right now will ultimately serve them best down the road.  So, when our children call and say that they left their homework at home, we need to take a deep breath, remain calm, tell them that we hope they won’t do that again, hang up the phone, go back to whatever it is we were doing—reassured that our children will have learned a painful but important lesson on their way toward becoming confident and self-sufficient young women and men.    

Teens, Texting, and Driving

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When I arrived home one night last week, my wife was having what appeared to be an intense phone call with one of her sisters, and I could tell that she was rattled.  When she hung up, she informed me that one of her nephews who’s in his 20s was in a very bad automobile accident; while the car he drove was totaled, he was physically fine albeit pretty shaken up.  We breathed a sigh of relief and said a prayerful thanks.

As a part of morning meeting the next day, I shared this story and informed the upper school students that the cause of his accident was distracted driving. As he was reading a text while driving, he veered off the road into a ditch and the car flipped over.  Thankfully, there was nobody in the passenger seat, and he was wearing a seat belt.  I made a plea to the students to put away their phones while driving and not text when they are behind the wheel.  Later that day, some students told me that the announcement had an impact on them, and they would quit texting while driving.  I can only hope that this is true.  

As we know, teenagers are certainly not the only people to text while driving, and we should not make them think that this issue is unique to them.  Nonetheless, there is a great deal of information on the dangers of texting and driving, and I wanted to share an article with you, so you can share it with your children if you wish.  

Erin Schumaker wrote a piece, “10 Statistics That Capture The Dangers of Texting and Driving,” in The Huffington Post last summer.  In this article, it says that 40% of teens report that they have been in a car where the driver’s use of a cell phone put them in danger.   Just as frightening was the fact that one in four accidents involved the use of a cell phone.  

We know that very often teens hear about bad things and believe that they cannot happen to them. Consequently, as parents we have to walk that fine line between not paralyzing them with fear but still making them aware.  In addition, there are tools available if we want to make sure that our teens are not distracted by their phones while behind the wheel.

For example, in the category of “trust but verify,” there are a number of phone apps available, including one that a Bosque student and a friend developed, that shuts down a phone, except for the music on it, while the car is in motion.  Once the car stops for a period of time, the phone and texting options return.  Some apps also allow parents to check if the phone is actually shut off while their child is driving.   Students might rebel against what they see as intrusion, but as parents, we may need to help them resist the urge to check their phone while driving.  

As we all know, the problems with distracted driving are real and they’re not going away soon. Although my wife’s nephew will be fine, we are only too aware that we were fortunate, and that all too many other parents, aunts, and uncles have not been as lucky.  We cannot always be there for our children, but we can continue to impress upon them the need to drive without distraction and to put their phones down. At the end of the day, no phone call or text is worth the risk.

Are Twitter and Facebook Losing Teens?

Like adults, many teens in today’s world spend a seemingly infinite amount of time on social media. They constantly check their phones to see what is going on or what they may be missing; as is often discussed, this ubiquitous exposure to social media is having a significant impact on the manner in which they socialize with others.  

New research is showing, though, that adolescents may be migrating from the sites where they have typically congregated to others, for a variety of reasons; this may also be affecting them, but in different ways. A recent piece from Quartz.com, “Teens Have a Smart Reason for Abandoning Facebook and Twitter” by Felicity Duncan, outlines why students are moving to apps like Snapchat or why they are continually checking group texts.  As Duncan discusses, teens are opting to communicate via more private and intimate sites rather than on more public or open spaces.  

As the article states, “For example, in a study published in August last year, the Pew Research Center reported that 49% of smartphone owners between 18 and 29 use messaging apps like Kik, Whatsapp, or iMessage, and 41% use apps that automatically delete sent messages, like Snapchat. For context, note that according to another Pew study, only 37% of people in that age range use Pinterest, only 22% use LinkedIn, and only 32% use Twitter. Messaging clearly trumps these more publicly accessible forms of social media.”  

Duncan explains that adolescents are changing their usage for a variety of reasons.  As Facebook has become more popular among older people, it ipso facto loses cache among teens as a place to rebel or share things that their parents or grandparents might see.  Similarly, students are aware, thankfully, that colleges and employers are checking Facebook and Twitter, and that what they post with little thought to repercussions down the road might return to haunt them later.  

Interestingly, the article points out that this change in the method for communicating on social media may bring benefits as well as problems. On the one hand, adolescents are becoming more savvy and more thoughtful about the things they post online. On the other hand, for parents who use these sites to discreetly learn what’s going on in their children’s lives, this may no longer be an option.  In addition, Facebook has provided a venue for certain awareness-raising campaigns and social activism opportunities for high school or college-age people; if young women and men no longer use these sites, their level of activism may decrease.  There are other potential repercussions that the article mentions in terms of a problem for businesses, but my concern here is how the different ways adolescents are choosing to communicate with each other may be affecting their social relationships.

So, as parents and as educators, what are we to do?  We need to be current on the latest technological trends for teens, while remembering that just as when we were younger, our children will always be one step ahead of us. Consequently, we need to teach them how to use technology in a way that supports healthy relationships and enables them to be people of integrity.  Ultimately, we need to help them develop a sense of self and of right and wrong, so they can become ethical citizens in all areas of their lives, including cyberspace.

The Stresses of Parenting a Middle School Student

At Bosque, we don’t ascribe to the notion that middle school has to feel like an endless three years of angst and turmoil.  In fact, this time in a child’s life can be exciting and invigorating if it is approached in a good way.  For educators, this means that we don’t view middle school as merely “pre-high school”; rather, it’s a time to meet children where they are as they question themselves, their world, and the things they previously took for granted.  This is one of the

reasons that at Bosque we have separate divisions for middle and high school students—we value these different phases in the lives of adolescents equally, and we don’t want to rush either the middle or the high school experience.  

Similarly, the job of parenting a child in middle school is very different than it was when our children were in elementary school, or it will be when they enter high school.  For this reason, it can be very stressful as our children seem to change overnight.  A Bosque parent recently sent me a CNN article, “Middle School: The New High School for Moms.”  (I am not sure why Dads were left out of the article, but that’s a discussion for another day.) As this piece states, for some parents, the most intense years of parenting are when a child is in middle school; that is when she navigates an entirely new world of social pressures and also experiences the contradictory feelings of independence from parents while still wanting Mom and Dad in her life.  

At times, our children will push us away as they desire to individuate and develop their own sense of self, and this is developmentally appropriate. However, at other times they will also give us signals that they do want us in their lives; but those signs may be subtle, and if we’re not careful, we may miss them in our confusion. As the article states, we cannot throw our hands up in frustration and surrender; our children do want our guidance, but this is not easy for them to say. We should create the conditions where they can let us know that they still need their parents, but in a manner that doesn’t make them feel weak or subservient.  Striking this balance can be tricky indeed. We also need to reassure them that what feels like a potentially permanent crisis may be a situation that is temporary—but we need to say this in a way that doesn’t feel  condescending or paternalistic.  This means not minimizing what they’re experiencing today by saying that it is nothing compared to what they will encounter down the road.  Early in my teaching career when I used the term “real world” to explain to a student what she would have to face later, she reminded me that “this is our real world.” I have tried to avoid that phrase ever since.  

Perhaps one of the ways to decrease the tension for us as parents is to enter this phase of our lives with a different mindset than the one the popular media continually gives us. If we go into parenting an adolescent as something tantamount to the television show “Survivor,” we will view every situation as a potential conflict and, in our steeling ourselves emotionally, we will send the wrong message to our teen that we are expecting a battle. If we see these years as a time of growth for our children and as a time of change for us, we may be able to breathe deeply and have a sense of inner calm as our children do what they are supposed to do—figure out who they are in relation to their peers and to us. We need to realize that the mixed signals we receive are perfectly normal and, in fact, are a healthy sign of our children’s growth and maturation process.   It’s not necessarily fun all the time, but it can be more enjoyable than we’ve been led to believe if we allow ourselves to travel this road alongside our children.

A New Model for College Admissions?

 

Every once in awhile, you read something, and you just have to smile.  As Bosque prepares to celebrate its 20th birthday, it is refreshing and heartening to see that the world of college admissions may be catching up to some things we at Bosque have been saying for a long time. A recent report by the Harvard Graduate School of Education, “Turning the Tide: Inspiring Concern for Others and the Common Good through College Admissions,” calls for a revision in the way that students have been evaluated by college admission officers and, in the process, advocates a view of assessing students that agrees with our philosophy of education.  

As the report outlines in the executive summary, “A healthy and fair admissions process cannot simply encourage students to devote more time to others: It needs simultaneously to reward those who demonstrate true citizenship, deflate undue academic performance pressure and redefine achievement in ways that create greater equity and access for economically diverse students.”  

In the first set of recommendations for “community engagement and service,” the authors call for the following:

1. “Meaningful, sustained community service;
2. Collective action that takes on community challenges;
3. Authentic, meaningful experiences with diversity; and,
4. Service that develops gratitude and a sense of responsibility for the future.”  

 

As I read the descriptions for these recommendations, I could not help but think of Bosque’s core values of community and integrity. We want our students to work on building a close-knit community for their peers and their families and to serve the greater Albuquerque, New Mexico, national, and international communities.  At Bosque, our program is named “service learning” rather than “community service” for a reason; while service is certainly laudable, we want our students to understand the needs that require the service in the first place, so they can be empowered to make their world a better place.

Whether it’s through our Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP) and studying the threats to the riparian forest along the Rio Grande or the Horizons Albuquerque at Bosque School program that is attempting to redress New Mexico’s drop-out rate, Bosque students are addressing “community challenges” in a “meaningful” and “sustained” way. In addition, Bosque’s Sofia Center for Professional Development is devoted to providing meaningful and purposeful professional development to educators throughout New Mexico so education can improve for all children.

In middle school, service learning is woven into the curriculum so students can learn about environmental sustainability, access to nutritious food, and issues of literacy.  An 8th grader reading to her Head Start buddy is doing something sweet and kind, but perhaps more importantly, she is advancing the cause of literacy in a state where far too many people cannot read.  She is gaining an understanding of the issues involved in order to be well-informed, and she comes to understand the power she has to make a difference in her world.  

When our upper school students participate in one of Bosque’s many student-led service learning groups, they are developing “gratitude and a sense of responsibility for the future,” as witnessed by the many alumni who carry on with their commitment to service learning in college and in their adult lives.  Just the other day, I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of our alumni who wants to work with the international global health organization Partners in Health, which she learned about at Bosque. I also spoke with an alumnus who is working on animal rights issues at his college campus and whose motivation stemmed partially from his experience in high school.

Similarly, when our young women and men participate in one of the school’s many student-led organizations devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusivity, they are grappling with difficult issues, and we hope they are having “authentic, meaningful experiences with diversity.”  When our students discuss a work of literature in an English class that reflects the experience of someone different than themselves or they debate a social justice topic, they develop a deeper understanding of our country’s struggles for equity for everyone. It’s all the better that they are also preparing for the kind of work they will encounter on college campuses, and they are having the kinds of experiences that college admissions officers find attractive.   

At Bosque, we are teaching these concepts (even if the college admissions world was not catching up to what we have valued for two decades) because we have always believed in scholarship, community, and integrity. We can appreciate, though, that our students who “practice what Bosque preaches” will be well served in the college application process if the colleges and universities actually take this study to heart and make changes.  How exciting that our students might be recognized for not only doing well in their classes but for also doing good for their communities!