A Note From the Head of School:
At Radcliffe Creek School, children do not just "survive" their elementary and middle school years in our school, they thrive.
Tonight was Thrive Night. This is a tradition in which students prepare posters that demonstrate how they have blossomed this year by picking out some of their favorite work samples. Kids also try to solidify one or two areas that really helped them to flourish. The gem in our RCS Thrive Night lies not in the finished posters on our walls, but in the time our students take to reflect on their growth.
Portfolio work is very popular in schools all over the country ranging from early childhood through doctoral programs. For Radcliffe, I find them an extremely powerful mechanism for our students to physically see and then reflect on their progress. When children look at their work samples from the beginning of the year until now, they are often astonished at how primitive their math problems appear, how messy their handwriting looks, or the brevity of their journal entries.
During this time of reflection, kids can often be heard saying to their teacher or classmates, "Remember when I couldn't.." or "I used to hate doing..." Classmates will often also remind their peers about what skills or content they might have gotten frustrated with or what seemed so insurmountable at the time such as a long chapter book that turned out to be incredibly enjoyable. I found it heart-warming that many of the students' posters and signs tonight contained thrive statements that said that the class that helped a child to bloom was the one that they used to complain about the most! What a wonderful lesson for our children to learn the sense of accomplishment through their own discovery rather than being told by their parents or teachers.
I find that having elementary school and middle school students articulate the concrete differences they can observe bolsters a sense of accomplishment that is far more authentic than having them review their numerical grades. It is important for a student to see how far they have come in a school year. For students who have experienced chronic failure, this act of reflecting helps them to begin to shed a shell of shame. They begin to have a sense of pride that will generate the internal motivation to continue to take risks and try, even when schoolwork can be challenging.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend, where all can blossom.
Head of School
