From the Head of School

Reaching Your Potential

I sometimes ask elementary school students their favourite subject.  It might be PE, because they get to play their favourite sport, Art because they enjoy crafts or drawing, French because they like the teacher, or maths because they are good at it.  

Avigail took an entirely different approach: “Well I didn’t like literacy”.  Mmm, I wondered did she mishear my question, but after a short pause she followed up, “But then I saw Cassida Cowell at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  She wrote these books about dragons, which are really good, and she told us all about how she wrote them.  I thought that was so interesting. And now we are writing the script for a play, and it is so fun.”

Inspired by Cassida Cowell at the Edinburgh Book Festival

We can think we do well in subjects in which we have a natural ability.  This ability caps our potential, and thus determines how worthwhile it is to work at it. Concentrate on your strengths, we may tell ourselves.  But the reality is that we can’t know our potential, and anticipating our limits can discourage us from exploring our capacities.  

In fact when we are inspired, as Avigail was by Cassida Cowell, and engaged in a task that has meaning to us, as Avigail is by the class play, a subject that she didn’t like becomes a favourite, a task becomes a joy, and her potential is transformed.

When we reviewed our guiding statements last year, we took out the phrase, “Our students are challenged to meet their maximum potential …” On the face of it, this seems odd - why take out something which should be inspiring.  

We changed it to this, “We aim for every student to develop their personal wellbeing and academic abilities so that they thrive in, and positively contribute to, each of their communities.”  It sounds a bit flatter than the talk of ‘maximums’ being ‘fulfilled.’  But fulfillment is an end, and a maximum is a limit.  No-one can know your potential, and should we accept that a certain point is when our abilities are fulfilled and we can do more.  Certainly not while we are still at school.  Surely it is far better to continuously develop without thought of where it ends.  

Clearly, Avigail’s favourite subject surprised her: it was not what she expected it to be.  Learning should always contain that ability to take us unawares, to open up possibilities, to never know when we have ‘fulfilled our maximum potential’ - to always develop and thrive.