The Student Resource Center (SRC), which provides customized academic support for Upper School students, has placed a large poster just outside its door declaring this the “Year of Yet,” a strong message to encourage students to keep at it, even when the solution might not have come “yet!” When SCHers come in with academic struggles—“I am not good at factoring!” “I can’t annotate!” or “I can’t manage my time and my planner!”—teachers “offer the idea that three simple letters can change their perspectives and encourage a growth mindset,” says English teacher and SRC coordinator Liz O’Flanagan. As a practice, students in the SRC are learning how to come up with solutions to their academic questions, from practicing extra problems to asking for feedback to using the Pomodoro Method for time management.
Students may be assigned to the SRC or simply drop in when they want or need to. “Everyone in the building needs and gets help in the SRC,” says O’Flanagan.
The teachers in the SRC are also trying to model the power of the word “yet.” SRC and math teachers Aaron Bergmann and Ian Kreher and English teachers Colleen Didonato and Liz O’Flanagan used to fall into this very trap. “I’m not good at helping with math/English because it isn’t my area of expertise,” they might be heard saying. They quickly realized the importance of adding those three little letters (yet!) to the end of their sentences. Now Mr. Bergmann and Mr. Kreher are hunkering down to support thesis development while Ms. Didonato and Ms. O’Flanagan help students to solve for X. They may not be fully there—yet—but they have made a plan for growth, and they are on their way, just like their students!