The summer passed quickly and in no time we’re back into the swing of another school year. My summer ended as it does once every four years with hours devoted to the Olympics. I don’t know how many of you found yourselves missing important hours of sleep or other tasks because you couldn’t stop watching – I know I was in that camp.

I’m always inspired by the Olympics; yet this summer seemed even more compelling. Perhaps it was because of our faculty and staff summer reading of the books Play and Spark.

Play and Spark seemed particularly appropriate while watching people who were putting the premises of those books into action in such dramatic and inspiring fashion. I was struck again and again by the sheer joy on the faces of the athletes, the spectators, and the coaches.

The Olympics can be a bit daunting. It’s almost impossible to imagine having the kind of discipline, fortitude and – let’s face it – ability that we saw on exhibit. That’s why I was perhaps even more inspired by a commercial spot that played during the Olympics. I’m not plugging a product – and I hesitated to show a commercial – but ultimately I decided to go for it because this spot gets to the heart of what I want to say to you today and to our faculty and staff when they returned from the summer.

Watch the video here. 

"Greatness is wherever somebody is trying to find it.”

Have you ever felt like that little boy at the end? I’ll bet all of us have, and if we’re lucky, we dug down and found the courage to leap; to take a step into the unknown – into something we weren’t sure we could accomplish; an actual leap of faith.

How does one summon the courage to take those leaps of faith? In part, it is what’s inside of us – a core of steel (sometimes a thin line, sometimes a steel beam) that allows us to explore the unknown. It’s what propelled human beings into space (men and women like Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride, whose passing marked the end of two important eras in space exploration); it’s what made a group of women fight for the right to vote; it is what gives us the courage to walk into that first job interview and state, “I can do this. Hire me.”

However, I believe that at some fundamental level those moments were also made possible because somewhere, someone else believed in us. There was someone out there who thought we could do it, even when we weren’t sure ourselves. Someone was saying, “You should go for it. I know you can do it.”

To me that is the essence of our work as teachers and as parents. We play the role of encourager, cheerleader, coach, motivator, and when we do it really, really well: role model and mentor. Today, I’ll speak to each of these roles, and what I hope we will commit to in this year of working together to create the kind of environment where our girls have that core of steel to try something new.

“The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate "apparently ordinary" people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.”
--K. Patricia Cross, educator and social scientist

What is it that makes a great teacher? Is it knowledge? Yes. Is it expertise? Yes. Is it passion and communication? Yes. Is it something more than all of this? Yes.

I believe great teaching is about inspiring students – about nurturing in our students a belief that they can reach a new mark, a new goal, a new achievement. It’s about catching them when they fall short, and helping them stand up and see what it is that they accomplished. It’s about building relationships of trust and integrity that are unquestioned. It’s about mutual respect and being willing to be in the place of a learner. It’s about expecting mistakes and welcoming them as opportunities to start again. It’s about helping each and every student “find her greatness.”

As I watched the Olympics this summer, I jotted down moments that stood out, thinking that I’d use them in my opening remarks to our faculty and to you. There were so many that I realized I’d be talking for hours if I used them all – and don’t worry – I’m not planning on doing that. I’ll just offer a few thoughts that relate to what I hope we’ll think about throughout this year.

It’s fitting that this was the year of the woman at the Olympics, as it was also the 40th anniversary of the Title IX legislation that changed the landscape for girls and athletics?

While few of these female Olympians who won medal after medal (in sports like gymnastics, track and field, soccer, volleyball, swimming, riflery, and boxing) came from girls’ schools, I found myself thinking about our girls and about the opportunities available to them – vast and limitless; which is exciting and daunting, all at the same time. Because girls can do anything and achieve anything, they do. Our girls are scholars and athletes, artists and debaters, mathematicians and historians – and let’s face it, I could be describing one girl.

Our girls inspire me with their relentless pursuit of excellence; however, I considered what we need to teach them about the difference between excellence and perfection –that achieving perfection is a fleeting goal.

Take Gabby Douglas as an example. She left her home to move across the country to work with a coach she admired, and who she thought could help her achieve her goal of going to the Olympics. Most people – even the coach – thought it was too late. She arrived only 18 months before the trials. There simply wasn’t time to get her to the level she needed to be. But Gabby believed she could do it – and she had a family and coach behind her who were willing to invest in that belief. She emerged from the trials as an unexpected leader of the U.S. team and went on to help her team win gold. She became the first American woman to win team gold and the coveted all-around medal, and the first African-American woman to win the all-around.

Then she went into the individual event competition – and fell off the beam. I’ll bet it wasn’t the first time she fell off the beam – nor will it be the last.

If we could help our girls to learn how to get up after they fall off the beam, but even more important, if we could help them to expect and welcome the fall off the beam – because that’s the moment when you learn something even if that something is only about yourself – we’d be helping them earn an incredible skill: resilience. The truly great coach knows how to achieve the balance between comforting the disappointment and inspiring the next attempt. This is our task – and there is no harder or more rewarding one I can imagine.

This, I think, is the hardest lesson of parenting: accepting that in order to do our jobs, we have to let go. Gabby Douglas’s mom had to be convinced to let her leave home to train. She had to have known that the potential for disappointment far outweighed the likelihood of success, and somehow she did it.

Madeline Levine’s newest book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, reminds us that, “The small challenges that start in infancy (the first whimper that doesn’t bring you running) present the opportunity for ‘successful failures,’ that is, failures your child can live with and grow from. To rush in too quickly, to shield them, to deprive them of those challenges is to deprive them of the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging, and sometimes devastating demands of life.”

When we rescue our children from every potential disappointment, we give them the message that we don’t actually believe they have the skill set or the emotional or mental fortitude to work through a problem.

How do we let go and let them try? I think part of the answer is our partnership with the teachers who care about our students. It is vitally important that each girl have adult role models in her life beyond just her parents.

How many of you have had the experience of hearing your daughter parrot back to you something Mrs. So and So said as if it were new and explosive information on living a successful life – only to recognize that you’d said exactly the same thing.

Our girls need parents who let them stumble and they need teachers who care. 

Great teaching is, ultimately about relationships. Joann Deak, who I know many of you have heard before, is one of my personal “gurus.” Each and every time I hear her speak, I feel like I learn something new. She put into two simple statements, “What makes an effective teacher? When students believe the teacher is passionate about his or her subject. What makes great teaching? It’s when students believe the teacher cares about them as people, not just students of math, history, or language.”

"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."
--Carl Jung, psychologist and psychiatrist

When I listened to the medalists interviewed after their historic achievements, I noticed how many of them talked about their coaches and their families. Michael Phelps, perhaps the greatest Olympian ever, talked about his accomplishments in the first person plural – “We set a goal.” “We did it.” The relationship went beyond the discipline and the expertise. While not every coach-athlete relationship is one to emulate, for many athletes that mentor provided the passion, knowledge, discipline, and caring that allowed these Olympians to surpass their hopes and dreams.

The discipline required to win a gold medal at the highest level of competition in the world is unfathomable. Too often we see examples of the single-minded pursuit of greatness at the expense of everything else. Yet, I also saw example after example of athletes who attributed their success to learning how to balance their pursuit of excellence with a joy and zest for life outside their sport. Allyson Felix, gold medalist in the 200m sprint, the 4 x 100 relay and the 4 x 400 relay, knew she wanted to compete professionally in track and field – but she also knew she wanted to think about life beyond running and competing. That’s why she was determined to get her degree – in elementary education – so that when she’s done winning medals and setting records – she can do what she’s always wanted to do: be a teacher. She talked about the importance of balance:

"When I was younger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was a mentor to me and gave me great advice. The best was to 'work 100 percent, but enjoy every moment along the way.' Sometimes you get so in the zone, you forget to enjoy your passions. I love running—but I also love the movies, relaxing on the beach, shopping, and spending time with my friends. Enjoying my life helps me enjoy my running."
—Allyson Felix, Runner

At Convocation, I said this to our girls:

And now I say to us as parents:
As mentors to our students and to our daughters, can we help them not only achieve what they’re capable in the classroom, but also encourage them to play and have fun? Can we model how to do that? Can we live balanced and healthy lives so that we can help them to do so as well?

And finally, can we learn to help our girls see themselves as part of something bigger than their own aspirations and achievements?

While there were a few examples of competition run amuck, these games were filled with examples of sportsmanship and courage that are too numerous to name. However, one stands out for me. Double amputee Oscar Pistorius finished dead last in his semifinal; yet everyone around him knew they’d witnessed something special – so special that eventual gold medalist Kerani James swapped bibs with him; then after the finals this first gold medalist in the history of Grenada went on to shake the hands of every single competitor before celebrating his win. Putting to rest the critics who’d questioned whether the “blade runner” belonged in the Olympics, James’s one simple gesture showed us the true value of competition.

In a high-pressure environment of a school like Hockaday, where almost all of our girls are determined to excel, where they are working to earn accolades, and honors, and the “prize” of college admission at the end, the values of competition and teamwork can sometimes be lost. One of our greatest challenges is to bring the spirit of sportsmanship to our daily work in parenting and teaching: to intentionally teach the values of character and courtesy; to help each girl learn how to do her best while encouraging those around her to do theirs; to understand that our accomplishments are achieved as part of a community rather than as an individual.

So as we think about our institutional priorities for this year – our focus on the whole girl; our commitment to Day and Residence students and their ability to lead balanced, healthy lives; our commitment to effective communication – I’d like to leave us with four words that can serve as a touchstone for all of us this year.

As we help our girls navigate the ups and downs, the workload, the moments when there’s more on the plate than seemingly time to accomplish it – can we remind ourselves of what’s really, after all, important in this work we do with kids?

Resilience
Relationships
Joy
Community

"The future of the world is in my classroom today... Several future presidents are learning from me today; so are the great writers of the next decades, and so are all the so-called ordinary people who will make the decisions in a democracy. ..Only a teacher? Thank God I have a calling to the greatest profession of all! I must be vigilant every day, lest I lose one fragile opportunity to improve tomorrow."
--Ivan Welton Fitzwater, professor of Education

Kim Wargo