With the opening of the school year upon us it is time to embrace…. or dig deep and find our growth mindset. If we didn’t know already, the last several months have taught us that we can handle difficult times with resiliency, creativity, empathy and compassion. If nothing else, embracing these dispositions will help us and our children approach the coming challenges of uncertainty with the confidence that we can be productive and contribute positively to society on a large scale. College and secondary school students, and their families, have been rethinking the “norm” and looking for other methods of engagement with what a new school year normally presents us. As we look at what school districts, colleges and universities are doing, it is clear that there is no one recipe for successfully re-creating the “norm.” To that end, I encourage us all to view this disruptive time as an opportunity to think differently. New fields of study and therefore, careers, are being developed in the physical, biological, and social sciences, among others, so that we can learn and grow from these unprecedented times. Perhaps equally as important, the “traditional” models of learning are not set up for students to master these new fields so we must think differently and openly about how we can best set our children up for an uncertain future. I am confident that we will continue to learn from experience and apply the resulting knowledge to ensuring that the world our children and our children’s children grow up in keeps getting better.
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos
Suggested read- How to Let Go and Embrace an Uncertain Future
