Dear Parents and Guardians,
I hope this message finds you well. I would like to thank Mrs. Mai Harrison, MPA
President, all the parent volunteers, and Amanda Harrison, 8th
grader, for volunteering their time Friday evening to help organize and
chaperone the 6th Grade Halloween Dance. I am very impressed with how well all the 6th
graders behaved during the event. It was
a pleasure to see all the creative costumes and watch all the students interact
with each other in a positive manner and have a great time.
I would also like to remind everyone that the midpoint for
Trimester 1 of the school year was last Wednesday. All parents and guardians should expect grade updates from teachers who teach full courses by this coming
Wednesday. I would like to encourage all
parents and guardians to put these progress reports in context. The information you will be receiving
describes the progress that your student is making. It, by no means, indicates what grade your
students will be getting by the end of the trimester. Please also remember most teachers are
spending class time during the first few weeks of the school year engaging students
in activities that build foundations for the year. Those activities may pertain to relationship
building, setting class expectations, and reviewing materials covered in
previous year. Therefore, some of the
work your student has done may not be reflected on his or her progress
report. Your student’s progress report
grade may be based on the results of only a few assessments and thus may be an inflated or deflated description of his of her overall performance.
As usual, if you have concerns about your student’s
performance after reviewing the progress reports, please reach out to the
teachers. They would be happy to have
those discussions with you.
In my opinion, one of the most exciting aspects of working
with adolescents is seeing their creativity, willingness to explore, and desire
for novelty. These traits come hand in
hand with making mistakes and experiencing failures. Jessica Lahey wrote an excellent book a few
years ago called “The Gift of Failure”.
In it, she discussed why it is so important for parents and
educators to teach students how to cope with life’s inevitable disappointments,
stresses, and frustrations instead of striving to remove them or prevent those elements
from occurring in the students’ daily lives. Attached here is a video of Ms.
Lahey discussing how teaching young people to cope with failure is an essential part of developing confident, resilient, and competent young adults.
I am bringing up Ms. Lahey’s work to encourage everyone to
remember that learning is a long-term process that will inevitably involve
struggles, frustrations, and disappointments.
The bumps on the road that your students will experience are
essential to attaining the long term success that we want all of them to achieve. It is not easy for any of us to watch well meaning students struggle. However. it is important for us to take a step
back and examine those situations in perspective instead of rushing in to fix the problems for them.
Thank you and enjoy the upcoming week!
James Lin
Principal
McCall Middle School
