Thanks for Another Great School year!

As we reach the end of the 2025-26 school year, let’s give ourselves a congratulatory pat on the back! While every school year has inevitable peaks and valleys, the final days of the year with its myriad rites of passage always fill me with pride about what we’ve accomplished and the growth of our students.

The Board of Trustees is responsible for the strategic direction and future of Trinity. To assess school success and progress, they compare Trinity to other schools using quantitative metrics—areas like enrollment, student and faculty/staff retention, standardized test results, outplacement (middle school, high school, college), fundraising, student participation in Extended Programs/extracurricular activities, constituent surveys, etc. 

As I shared in yesterday’s faculty/staff meeting, Trinity excels in every one of these metrics.

But as the familiar quote reminds us, ’Not everything that counts can be counted.'

I’ve worked in four schools—each one for at least ten years. When I first interviewed at these schools, I immediately felt a certain vibe. There was an energetic, positive aura I sensed from students and teachers. I intuitively knew that working in these schools would not only be rewarding but joyful and fun. To me, it’s this qualitative feel that separates the great schools from the good ones.

We all contribute to the qualitative magic of Trinity. Yes, we track numbers. Still, it’s our culture, climate, and esprit de corps that make Trinity the special place it is for all community members.

I hope all of you have the same visceral feel about Trinity — the longer I’m here, the more I cherish it.

The end-of-year article below comes from a recent Education Week article. The author asked veteran teachers to provide in 6 words or less sage advice about sustaining the joy and meaning in teaching. There’s a lot of wise advice about building relationships, practicing self-care, and trusting and empowering your students!

Thanks again for a wonderful and fulfilling school year!

Joe

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Teaching Advice in Six Words

Show compassion to yourself and others

Acknowledge first, respect second, connect always

No child is a blank slate

Prioritize inquiry, minimize grading, maximize inspiration

Hold onto hope for each student

Begin each day with clean slates

Know them before you teach them

Being great at teaching requires authenticity

Leave the work at work — rest

Build relationships and even better boundaries

Don’t speak until they are listening

Growth can’t happen without critical reflection

The best PD is next door

Less of us, more of them

 

 

Developing Perseverance in Your Students

This week’s article summary is Guiding Students to Develop Perseverance.

Every January most of us make New Year’s resolutions: drop a few pounds, exercise more, eat healthier, drink less alcohol.

Then by early February most of us revert to our old habits.

As you’ll see in the article, lack of follow through isn’t a character flaw but more often an under-developed executive function skill.

Change-able is one of our summer reading options. Its theme is that student misbehavior — like struggles with perseverance and follow through — results from a 'lack of skill, not will.’  A key goal for teachers is to help develop student executive function skills, which are housed in the prefrontal cortex of the brain (the last part of the brain to develop, typically in the early 20s).

One effective way to shape these ‘organizational' habits and skills is to break down larger assignments into manageable, achievable steps. The article below lists six ways to break down larger tasks and to help students see the connection between effort and practice with product and performance.

Even with a fully operational prefrontal cortex, adults struggle with long-term goals like New Year resolutions. Is it any wonder our students need ample guidance, reminders, and practice developing the skill and habit of perseverance?

Joe

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I felt OK about the project at first. But then it just felt too big. I didn’t even know where to start anymore. So, I just stopped. —Eighth-grade student

This student was bright and curious. When assigned a long-term history project, he was eager to choose his topic and get started gathering materials. But two weeks later, his momentum stalled. The project hadn’t become harder, but it seemed longer. The finish line felt too far away to energize his brain.

Most teachers recognize this pattern. Students want to succeed. Yet, when the path feels overwhelming or progress isn’t evident, their follow-through fades. It’s tempting to attribute this to laziness, lack of grit, or insufficient motivation. However, neuroscience offers a far more hopeful explanation.

Perseverance is a process; it’s an executive function, like attention, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. As such, it develops gradually throughout childhood and adolescence. This means perseverance is not a fixed skill, but it can be strengthened.

The brain is more willing to invest effort over time when it anticipates small, achievable wins along the route to a larger goal. The teachers’ role is not to remove challenges for students, because challenges are essential for growth.

Here are some classroom strategies that boost perseverance through progress awareness.

Visual Progress Maps: Students don’t need less work, but rather visible checkpoints in the timeline of an assignment. One way to provide them is by breaking down long-term projects, independent reading, or multistep writing tasks into clearly defined segments. Instead of “Write a five-page paper that fits the requirements for grammar, spelling, and research, and include a bibliography,” guide them in how to divide the assignment into manageable chunks. As the brain responds positively to awareness, that incremental progress leads to mastery, and each completed step become a concrete success marker. Starting out with a plan for the first part of an assignment can help students feel like they’re capable of accomplishing the work and prevent them from becoming overwhelmed.

Wall Charts and Growth Thermometers: Visual evidence of progress helps students connect their academic improvement directly to the effort they invested.

Create visual trackers for students to use while they work toward goals such as fluency, vocabulary, math facts, reading comprehension, or foreign language literacy. Bar graphs, thermometers, and cumulative charts provide tangible feedback. When students color in increments of progress, their brains register success. The graphs show effort to progress, not where they stand in the class in terms of what they worked on. Alternatively, with teacher supervision, students can plot out their own effort to progress on an individual graph that isn’t displayed.

Effort-to-Progress Graphs: When students see data linking their effort to growth, they internalize the powerful belief that “my effort changes my brain.” That belief fuels perseverance. Have students track their cumulative practice time so that they can see measurable improvement:

• Minutes practiced versus reading fluency growth
• Study time versus quiz score trends
• Draft revisions versus rubric improvement



Emphasize Process over Product: Grades matter, but perseverance grows when students recognize skill development, not just their final performance. When motivation is only attached to grades, students’ brains connect effort to external judgment.

As a teacher, the language you use matters. Instead of “You got an A!” speak in ways that reinforce the idea that students’ perseverance is an achievement in itself: “I noticed that you successfully adjusted your strategy when your first attempt didn’t work.” “You didn’t stop after the first mistake.” “Your continued efforts are building your strength as a learner.”

When teachers emphasize strategy, persistence, and growth, students’ neural circuits are strengthened for resilience and self-regulation.



Skill Progression Awareness: Progress builds momentum, and once students master a concept, that fuels further efforts. For example, if a long-term assignment is for students to demonstrate their math skills, help them recognize when they reach benchmarks along the way to the final goal.



• Level 1: Master multiplication facts
• 

Level 2: Apply those facts to multidigit multiplication

Level
• 3: Solve multistep word problems that require multiplication



Reflection: Reflection activities strengthen students’ understanding about the connection between effort and progress. That awareness helps to reduce anxiety about large tasks. Students will begin to see perseverance as a strategic tool rather than something that happens by accident, as they build metacognition and self-efficacy.

At the end of a unit or project, invite students to reflect on their experience:

• What was the best use of your time or energy?
• When did you first notice improvement?
• What strategy helped you overcome a challenge?
• What made the task begin to feel easier?
• What would you repeat next time?
• What would you do differently?

Life's Lessons Through Experience

This week’s article is titled Life Gets Easier Once You Realize These Five Simple Things.

If you’re a sports fan, you’ve probably experienced the thrill of a big win—maybe even a championship—but more often, you’ve endured disappointment along the way.

Even as a lifelong fan of an elite franchise like the Yankees, I’ve felt more frustration than celebration over the years. On the flip side, as a long-suffering Jets fan, I cherish their one Super Bowl victory!

As we get older, life’s ups and downs tend to shape a more balanced perspective: you win sometimes, you lose often, and things are rarely fair. While that might sound pessimistic, adopting a more stoic mindset can lead to greater happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

The article below offers a framework for recognizing and managing the reality that we can’t control everything that happens to us. Traditions like Buddhism, ancient Stoicism, and even modern mindfulness all emphasize a powerful idea: while we can’t control what happens, we can control how we respond. To me, this realization is empowering.

Some of you have already started exploring the summer learning options, which focus on helping elementary students develop a broader, long-term perspective on their learning. Two key takeaways—both from those readings and from the article—stand out. First, since stress and discomfort are unavoidable, learning how to handle disappointment is essential for a happy life. Second, learning—both in and out of school—is more about its process than final product.

For our students, one of the most important lessons from elementary school is developing the ability to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively. In other words, building the self-awareness to recognize emotions without being controlled by them.

I’m looking forward to our preplanning conversations around the themes in the summer reading selections.

Joe

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Through life experiences, most people learn that the ups and downs of life get easier once you realize the nature of life and dealing with stress. They have figured out what helps and what doesn’t.

As you mature, you realize life doesn’t always give you what you expect, and what you think is true sometimes isn’t true at all. The secret to happiness isn’t to resist these conundrums but to learn and adapt, so you can live a fulfilling life despite the inevitable stressors and downturns.

Realization 1: Stress Happens

Stress is a natural part of life. Whether it’s day-to-day stresses, like traffic and bills, or major life changes and upheavals, we all get our share of stress. Strive to be stress-proof. What that means is that you learn how to manage stress so it doesn’t derail you or permanently block you from your goals.

Research shows that having a growth mindset towards stress in which you see it as having a potential upside makes you a more active coper and helps you persist when things get difficult. That doesn’t mean you wanted the stressor to happen, but rather that you try to make the best of the situation when it does.

Research showed that people who are higher in a personal quality called hardiness can survive even major stressors.

Hardiness involves commitment, control, and challenge. Commitment means showing up and actively engaging, rather than avoiding. Control means perceiving some sense of control, even if things get difficult — perhaps exerting some control over your own reactions or perceptions. Challenge means viewing the situation as a challenge to master, rather than an overwhelming threat.

Take-Home Message: Try to find ways to view your stressors as manageable challenges, show up and contribute, control what you can, and let go of what you can’t.

Realization 2: There’s No Such Thing as a Happy Ending

We grow up with fairy tales in which the hero slays the dragon, rescues the beautiful princess, and the hero and princess fall in love, gain in wealth, and live happily ever after. In real life, things aren’t so simple.

We cannot attain a state in which we are guaranteed to be completely safe and to never experience any unhappiness, stress, or adversity. Even if we attain most of our life goals, we will inevitably face our aging, our parents' aging, our children leaving home, and health issues.

Mindfulness is an attitude toward living in which you learn to let go of clinging to positive experiences and moods and dreading negative ones. You learn to let go of attachment to things being a certain way, and you become more flexible and willing to adapt to what is.

Take-Home Message: Accept the inevitability of change and uncertainty in life. Stop thinking that the world needs to be a certain way (e.g., fair or kind) for you to be happy. Learn to go with the flow.

Realization 3: The Cover-Up is Worse Than the Crime

When it comes to emotions, the cover-up is worse than the crime. In other words, the things we do to suppress and not feel difficult emotions create greater difficulties for us in the long run than if we learned to tolerate the emotions.

Experiential avoidance--the desire not to feel uncomfortable mental states (e.g., thoughts and feelings)--is the source of many mental health problems. That’s because it doesn’t work to just shove down negative thoughts and emotions — they pop up again.

As a classic study shows, trying not to think of a white bear makes you more likely to think of white bears. You also may act in unhealthy ways in order not to feel difficult emotions — you may smoke, drink too much, eat unhealthy food, or zone out in front of the television for hours. All of these will negatively impact your health, mood, and/or ability to reach your life goals. Instead, you need to develop a “willingness to be uncomfortable” to move forward towards your goals.

When you face what you fear, especially if you do this regularly, your anxiety goes down because you get used to the situation. An example of habituation is if you live near the airport and, after a while, start automatically tuning out the plane sounds. The sounds are just as loud, but your brain and body can adapt.

Take-Home Message: Think about what role avoidance plays in your life and how it holds you back, and then think about how your life might change for the better by taking risks and putting yourself out there.

Realization 4: There’s No Magic Solution

Self-help authors tell us that they have the secret formula that will cure all of our emotional ills, help us overcome all of life’s roadblocks, and live happy, successful lives. While some advice can be helpful, no one answer fits everybody.

There are some universals, like it helps to be healthier, socially connected, and to manage your anxiety, but beyond this, one size doesn’t fit all. What works for your friend may not work for you, because you don’t have the personality to pull it off, it doesn’t feel authentic.

The essence of mental health is flexibility and integration. In other words, you use different coping strategies mindfully, finding the one that best fits the specific situation, and you find answers by integrating information from your head and your heart.

Take-Home Message: Find your own solutions and adapt strategies to suit your lifestyle and personality. Don’t compare yourself to others, and don’t look to others to solve your problems. While it’s good to reach out, you’re the only one who can take it to the finish line.

Realization 5: There’s No Elevator. You Have to Take the Stairs

Carol Dweck’s research on a growth mindset and Angela Duckworth’s research on grit show that you are much more likely to succeed if you put in sustained effort over long periods. Although the adult brain can change, this change is generally the result of sustaining new habits consistently over periods of months or years.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that in musical proficiency, success is the result of tens of thousands of hours of practice. While the amateurs practiced for about 2,000 hours on average over the course of their career, the professional pianists had practiced for 10,000 hours on average — five times as much. So, when it comes to musical proficiency and some other areas, it’s not about being a natural talent — It’s about working much longer and harder than your competitors.

Take-Home Message: To be successful requires a huge amount of hard work and perseverance; talent and potential alone are not enough.