Parents Contemplate Positive Pushing

Graeme Plant, father of Riley ('13), reads the
String of Hopes during Parents' Weekend

SBA Parents' Weekend 2011 featured an address by noted psychologist and author Dr. Jim Taylor.


In his address, entitled "Positive Pushing," Dr. Taylor focused on the following question:


"Should I push my child?"


The emphatic answer, according to Dr. Taylor:


"You must push your children. It's your right, it's your responsibility, it's your absolute moral imperative.


"What's important is how you push, when you push, and, most importantly, when to push back."


Taylor's address drew a distinction between negative "old-style" pushing and what he has dubbed "positive pushing."


Old-style pushing is "negative, it's controlling, it's angry," and sends the message "if you don't live up to our expectations, we won't love you."


Positive pushing, said Taylor, is "supportive, loving, encouraging, and sends a very different message: no matter how you perform, we will love you."


Taylor emphasized that he used the term "perform" rather than "behave" - actions, he said, do have consequences - and described the three pillars of happy and successful achievers: 

• Self esteem
• Ownership
• Emotional mastery

One of the failings of modern society, said Taylor, is in not allowing children to fail.


"The most successful people in the world failed frequently and monumentally on the way to success.


"If you don't let your kids fail, they are not going to have self esteem."


Kids develop confidence, Taylor argues, by failing - falling down, getting back up, and trying again.


"Ski racing is a wonderful sport for that, because there is a lot of failure."


Taylor educated parents about what he calls the "red flags of self esteem," and cautioned that parents should keep an eye out for these red flags. Their appearance in their children is, he said, a call to parental action.


What follows is a short movie of the parents' weekend festivities, along with - for the benefit of those who were unable to attend - the slide show that parents in attendance saw at Friday night's social gathering.


Enjoy!

I Scream, You Scream...

Pilar Alvarez, Colter Fellows, and Luke Rodarte
enjoy their ice cream

This is the kind of experiential learning that motivates: make your own ice cream, then eat it!  

On our first snow day of the 2011-2012 school year, Physical Science students did just that. 

The following report comes from Physical Science teacher Izaak Eberst: 

In physical science, we've been talking about states of matter and phase changes. To see it in action, our class created a liquid cream mixture, then cooled it off into ice cream. To achieve this phase change without a freezer [even the snow outside was not quite cold enough], we surrounded the cream with ice and salt. Ice is cold, and the salt keeps the ice colder, even though it turns it into a liquid. This is also the reason we put salt on the roads, as it keeps the water from freezing, even as temperatures drop below 0C. Eventually, the liquid cream solidified into the tasty treat we all know and love, and it tasted almost as good in the snow as it does on a summer afternoon!

Luke Rodarte, loving his home-made ice cream

Mind, Body,... Steak!

Have you tried "The Man Special" at the Tamarack Grill? 


Student/athletes in Devin Gill's Nutrition elective were recently given the following marching orders (thanks to Riley Plant for the copy that follows...): 

Gill assigned two groups in the class, one consisting of 3 boys and the other of 4 girls. Chris (Fitzpatrick), Chuck (Klein), and I were assigned to make an entertaining commercial explaining the nutritional value and taste of a meal. We talk about a 20 ounce steak, one baked potato, a glass of milk, garden salad, and apple crisp. We had a lot of fun making the meal, especially the steak. None of us is an expert chef, so we ended up tasting and re-cooking the steak three times. It slowly turned from a raw piece of meat to a slightly-more-cooked piece of raw meat. In addition to talking about the nutritional value of the foods, we showed how a healthy meal, like ours, can lead to enhanced performance in the Performance Training Center. Despite taking about four hours, the project was very fun and we have a lot to remember and laugh about from it.