Assuming you and your school place student welfare/wellbeing high on your list of priorities, here are three questions to consider for 2012…
1. Who is the significant adult in the life of a 21st Century student?
How and where do they spend most of their time? With whom do they converse most with? Is it their parents? Is it fair to assume this or otherwise? Is this important?*
2. How connected do your students feel to your school?
Two questions you need to ask of your students are:
i. Do you feel able to be yourself at school?
ii. Is there at least one adult in the school community you feel you can go to with an issue?
If students can’t say, “Yes” to both these questions, then they may not be as connected to your school as you may think. Is this important?*
3. What is more important; how well a student succeeds, or how well she fails?
Do you reward students for taking a chance and coming up short? Do you encourage students to “learn from their mistakes” or to “learn by avoiding mistakes?” Is this important?*
*Whilst everyone will have different answers to each question. I can tell you that the answer to each of the “Is it important?” questions is, “Yes.”