Head's Blog

An email penned to our faculty and staff: 

In the op-ed piece today by Thomas Friedman, "Finding the 'Common Good' in a Pandemic," the author engages Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel in a conversation about what it means to be a society and individual thrust into the very real and troubling ethical dilemma we face today. Sandel believes what we are all doing is assessing the "unarticulated ethical position about how we as individuals, communities and a nation define what is best for the most people." In other words - the common good.

Resilience is defined one way as "able to endure strain without being permanently injured." Another is "tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." With these definitions as a guide, I want to dive into the idea of resilience. I feel this is one of the most essential skills we can teach our students - and ourselves.

What do we mean by an athlete's mind?

I was once told by a recruiter that I didn't get the job because the hiring committee said I came across as "a real athlete". When I asked her what that meant, she seemed as puzzled as I was. She said, "they felt you really thought like an athlete. That's why you didn't get the job." I laughed, and said to her, yes, I do think like one, that's likely not to change. She agreed and we laughed a bit, but I left our conversation still curious. What does that mean, to think and behave like an athlete? Is that a bad thing? Or can that be a good thing?

Once again, the school year is off and running! We started Synapse the same we start each year - we launch, test, and then refine. Our teachers and staff are open to feedback, embrace teamwork, are clear in communication, model risk taking, and think critically about what works and what doesn't. People like us do things like this. But it doesn't mean we haven't thought about where we are going, and what our program priorities should be.

A few months back, I gave the staff some simple homework: watch a TED Talk and answer three questions. We don't really give a lot of homework at Synapse, to staff or to students, so I didn't expect too many responses. It was really more of a prompt to get our staff to think about and reflect on teaching and learning.