All's Well that ends Well
True wellness is not a state we reach. Rather, it is a balance we try to maintain. Exercising, stopping smoking, or losing weight will make you healthier, but it does not mean that you are well in the ‘wellness’ sense. You can be healthy (free of disease) but also have other areas of your life that are out of balance, meaning that you are not truly well.
https://www.skilledatlife.com/the-difference-between-health-and-wellness/
Think of school as a camp of sorts.
Camp has always been to me, a place that centers around activities, games, skill competitions, and at the end of the day, growing relationships.
Most of what we do at school centers around activities – chiefly, academics – dual credit, associate degrees, high school graduation requirements, GPA’s, FAFSA, application essays, grades, etc. We go through the day, weeks, and months working to achieve and progress, and our skills competitions look and sound a lot like “school.”
The majority of our focus is really on academic health.
Success is marked by the number of graduates, the GPA’s, the amount of scholarship money, and acceptances to colleges and universities.
While the measures of success are important in their own right, do they fully encompass the root desire of the organization? Is the measure really measuring what is important to our core belief as educators, students, and parents?
This is where wellness really began to enter my frame of reference.
As we began to identify how we measured success in terms of academics, having worked with teenagers for over 20 years, it became evident that we were not measuring what we felt was most important at our core. To expound on this, we were only measuring a small fraction of what was important, but that took up a significant portion of our time and effort – both the staff’s and the students’.
The next question was, can we, or do we even want to measure all that is important?
To begin the process of measuring, you begin the process of setting standards, goals, objectives, or some other indicator by which to assess success.
What if we weren’t concerned with success?
What if we were focused on student wellness?
As defined above, what if what we were concerned with in education was not something that we reach or achieve? What if we were in search of educational “balance”?
The academic health of our students is important, but how does the GPA factor in with what they have learned, how they feel about their progress, their personal reflection of their learning processes, and their overall assessment of growth?
Dan Millman once said, “Every positive change — every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness — involves a rite of passage. Each time, to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation.” What if finding wellness involved a reassessment of how we define success? What happens to our students when they go through a period of discomfort, and in the process, achieve a higher level of energy and awareness? Do they become self-aware of their own learning? Do they begin to associate learning, not with GPA and “successful” grades as defined on a scale, but by how much they learn --- by how much they grow?
I’ve said for quite some time now, that there IS such a thing as a good failing grade. I know, it sounds counter intuitive, but if I work at my fullest potential, using every resource at my disposal, isn’t it a good thing, even if I fail? At the VERY LEAST, have I not defined my own personal limit? Can I really progress without first doing so? Noted author and theologian, C.S. Lewis, stated, “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” I really believe that if we look at success as a movement, rather than a measure, a FORWARD movement, we are essentially re-defining success in terms of growth. As we grow, we must find balance.
Wellness is balance.
It isn’t something to measure.
It’s something to be.