Toward Relationships That Encourage and Strengthen
by Rabbi Howard Ruben, Head of School
The first day of school, even for high schoolers, is a big deal. New social, academic, and emotional challenges await. Along with exciting chances to explore one’s unfolding self. The role of friends is crucial! So, too, is the role played by parents, teachers, coaches and trusted adults. Research confirms that parental encouragement even in high school is impactful.
Encouragement in high school looks different than in elementary school. For teens parental trust and tolerance – in words and deeds – is crucial. All of us, teens included, fall short at times. When that happens parental encouragement to do one’s best, to make the most of one’s strengths, are key. Parental encouragement strengthens students to remain resilient through moments of challenge and disappointment.
None of this is news in the Jewish community. In this week’s Torah portion, Moses learns to “instruct [his disciple] Joshua by encouraging him and strengthening him.” (Deut. 3:28) My teacher Dr. Norman Cohen explains how commentators read this passage to mean that mentors (that is, teachers and parents) need to imbue students and children with strength and courage to lay the foundation that will support them through future challenges.
The JCHS Professional Community (all of our educators and staff) returned to campus this week to focus on the vital role each of us plays in building relationships with students, and with each other, that honor, encourage, and strengthen.
Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Happiness Hypothesis, which JCHS educators read in recent years addresses the development of wisdom. He writes that parents and teachers cannot teach wisdom directly – because wisdom is the tacit knowledge that comes from “knowing how” instead of “knowing that.” For Haidt, the most important role for parents and teachers is to provide a range of life experiences that help students gain tacit knowledge in a variety of domains. And “encourage children to think about situations, look at other viewpoints, and achieve balance in challenging times.” He warns against the type of excessive parental sheltering of teens that “keeps out wisdom and growth as well as pain.”
Without explicit reference to it, Haidt seems to embody the essential teaching of the biblical Proverbs 22:6, attributed to King Solomon, “educate a child according to the child’s way; then even when the child grows old, they will not depart from that way.” Students develop wisdom when they set the path of their own lives; their learning is enriched when it is relevant and meaningful to them, not necessarily to us. As parents and teachers we transform student learning when we encourage and strengthen students along the paths they have chosen, not along paths we pick for them or regret we did not pick for ourselves.
This idea is so core to the JCHS mission that this Proverbs verse is illuminated above the Torah scrolls in our library. It is also core to another of the recent JCHS Professional Community summer reading books, Brene Brown’s, Daring Greatly. Brown included a student manifesto addressed to parents and teachers, which warned, “when you only see what we produce or how we perform – we disengage and turn away from the very things that the world needs from us.” Rather “engage with us, show up beside us, and learn from us. [Have] honest conversations with us about our strengths and our opportunities for growth.”
In the year ahead, may all of us who parent, teach, and mentor JCHS teens enact the verse from Proverbs and the Brown manifesto. May we develop relationships that honor each student’s unique path and engage in ways that encourage and strengthen them each step (or stumble) along the way.
