Re-Set School helps educational communities position well-being at the center of all they do. Centering well-being and making school more human is both a discerning strategic plan and an unequivocal values statement. This is the re-set schools need today.
Wellbeing is often thought of as primarily emotion-based – a “feel good” experience versus being anxious or stressed. Steelcase research, however, suggests that a person’s wellbeing is better understood as a conflux of physical, cognitive and emotional factors, each important and all interdependent.
Centering Wellbeing in Education
Steelcase Education Research Project
We learned hard lessons about health and well-being during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now schools are contending with several major challenges: child and adolescent delays in social, emotional and cognitive development; burnout for teachers and staff; erosion of community cohesion; backlash against DEI advances and climate crises that directly threaten some schools’ ability to operate safely.
Centering well-being as a holistic, critical approach to schooling requires new pedagogies, paradigms and structures.
We have worked with hundreds of private, independent, charter and public schools across the country. Check out our full list of clients.
Independent schools can use the disruptions in Education to re-examine the fundamentals of PreK-12 teaching and learning. As the world evolves and the social, emotional and academic needs of children and adolescents continue to shift rapidly, educators must repeatedly ask,
What does it mean to prepare students for “modern life” in the early 21st Century?
Regardless of what may be ahead, prioritizing the well-being of students and school personnel will prepare communities to meet challenges, adapt to ongoing changes, and create opportunities to flourish.
Oliver Burkman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) makes plain that the challenge of this moment is not to squeeze more out of the hours in each day by achieving greater efficiency or increasing our productivity. Independent schools are notorious for adding more to the calendar each year, without taking anything away. To make time for things that matter (i.e. big rocks), we have to give up other things that matter (i.e. big rocks).
Independent schools have way too many big rocks.
