Spring Break--Make Good Choices

With Spring Break beginning today I'd like to share an important message in the hope that each and every Vianney Griffin returns safely from break.

The majority of our students make wise decisions throughout the school year and will continue to make positive decisions during Spring Break.

However, many teenagers place themselves in harm's way by not realizing the dangers associated with poor decisions they make on unsupervised Spring Break trips or while staying home unsupervised.

While spring break is often portrayed as a rite of passage for thousands of students– often a week of non-stop fun, socializing, and going to different events–things can quickly turn for the worse.

According to travel industry experts, an estimated one in seven young people (15%) on Spring Break party destinations are high school students. During a 17-day stretch in March 2013, Panama City, FL police arrested 1,000 teens for underage drinking. Furthermore, the U.S. State Department estimates that 100,000 teens go to Mexico for Spring Break each year. Alcohol consumption, binge drinking, drug experimentation, and other risky behavior that often accompany these behaviors truly put our teens at risk.
It's also important to understand that, whether or not young people are traveling, teens often start using marijuana and alcohol for the first time between the spring and summer months.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) urges parents of high school students to know the risks associated with this time of year. ONDCP Director Michael Botticelli and his staff, as well as Drug Free Community coalitions, warn, "We don't want parents to be naive about what happens when teenagers are away for Spring Break or home and unsupervised. Pressure can be immense to share exciting and funny stories when kids return to school."

Please have important conversations with your young men about making good choices. Let them know exactly where you stand on underage drinking, drug use, and their safety and well-being. We care about each and every Vianney Griffin and thank you for entrusting them to our care.
We look forward to seeing each student return safely on Tuesday, March 29th.

My prayer is that you each have a rejuvenating and relaxing spring break and Blessed Easter!

Springbreak and the Science of Sleep

SHHH!!!! Quiet!! Do you hear that?
It's coming....the time we've all been waiting for! Springbreak!

And with it the opportunity for so many wonderful things! 

Spring training, walks and runs in the park, time with family & friends, springtime temperatures, and most importantly, the opportunity to rest and sleep!

Placed at roughly the mid-point of spring semester, Springbreak is a wonderful opportunity to disconnect from the day-to-day grind of the school year and get a much needed break.

I found myself thinking about the importance of this downtime as
I listened to an interesting TED talk on the importance of sleep
by Oxford professor of circadian neuroscience Russell Foster.

Foster argues that scientists still don’t have a full picture of why
we sleep, but that they suspect it involves the intersection of three areas:

• restoration and repair of metabolic processes,
• energy conservation,
• and brain processing and memory consolidation.

Foster is most interested in the impact of brain processing
and memory. He cites several interesting strands of research
that highlight just how important sleep is to learning and productivity. This, of course, flies in the face of our more recent societal trends to see sleep as an enemy of efficiency and a crutch of the unmotivated or lazy. Foster goes on to share some research that links healthy sleep patterns with positive mental health.

Foster’s talk reminded me of an important chapter on sleep in the book Brain Rules by John Medina. Targeted more for teachers and parents, Medina links sleep to better academic performance, while also highlighting how sleep deprivation hurts attention, executive function, working memory, logical reasoning, and quantitative skills.

Admittedly I'm not too deep into Dan Goleman’s book Focus: The Hidden Ingredient in Excellence, but it is already clear that sleep plays a major factor in our ability not only to focus on the task at hand but also the ability to let our minds wander — linked increasingly to our ability to find creative solutions to interdisciplinary problems.

At a time during the school year when everybody is faced with a cascade of deadlines and assignments, Springbreak is a nice opportunity to put away those check-lists, reflect a bit on the work we’ve accomplished so far, and perhaps get a restorative afternoon nap! 

March Madness-College Acceptance Season

This is the time of year in St. Louis when the morning gives us sleet and snow and 24 hours later we have sunshine and 70 degree temperatures!  A time when students (and teachers) look forward to spring break, spring training, and March Madness! Everything in March definitely starts to change!

But this is also the season for something much more important and often stressful for a population of our students and their parents--college admission season.

By now, anybody with a high school junior or senior has probably read Frank Bruni’s March 2015 New York Times column “How to Survive the College Admissions Madness.” In this piece Bruni shares stories of a few talented young men and women who first survive and then later thrive after getting turned down at elite colleges. One underlying problem, he says, is that many of our students have come to equate their self-worth with admission into these highly selective universities. Whereas, many of us working in education like to think we are a part of a much longer end game: to help foster healthy and happy adults. The paths to that outcome are MANY..

What our students are up against is often referred to as a madness or a mania. I think this is fair, because it also implies that even the most healthy and well adjusted can get caught up. By now, the story is fairly well known. A small and well-publicized number of elite schools are now competing globally for students, making the marketplace more competitive than ever. In addition, helpful tools like the Common Application are making it easier for students to apply to many more schools than ever before.  According to the National Association of College Admissions Counseling, only 9 percent of students applied to seven or more colleges in 1990. By 2011, that number was 29 percent. Students who apply to more than 20 colleges are not uncommon. This leads to ever shrinking acceptance ratios that are under 10% and approaching 5% at the most elite schools. 

This can’t help but create a potentially unhealthy environment for our students, feeling they have to do more and more to beat the odds. Sites like College Confidential at first seemed to open up the admissions process, but now seems only to add to the sense of competitive frenzy.

More and more students are feeling pressure to craft resumes in high school that don’t really reflect true passions or interests, and as a result are matriculating to college with significant health issues. 

So what to do?

Bruni highlights the healthy way in which the parents of one particular young man kept perspective throughout the process. Their letter of support to their son on the eve of admission notification reassured him that he is not the product of the decisions of an overwhelmed admissions committee.

I’d also add the importance of being a part of a healthy school and community environment. Schools have many subtle and not-so-subtle ways of increasing the stress and competitive environment, from starting college counseling in middle school, to encouraging underclassmen to take multiple AP exams, to ranking students by their GPA(practices Vianney does NOT do). The answer to the college admissions madness is not to double down and go even more mad. 

In the end, college counselors can demystify this process and help our students see that there are absolutely fabulous options beyond the top 10 lists that dominate the popular press and social media. When we help our students understand themselves as learners and as people, then they can see themselves as happy and successful in many different places.

Despite the craziness of the application process, this is exactly what colleges are also saying they want from our students. I recently read a post from the National Association of Independent Schools Conference featuring the leaders of four universities. They said they were looking for graduates who:

• can interact in a community,
• have perseverance,
• have good writing and quantitative skills,
• have a healthy and balanced lifestyle,
• have the ability to self-reflect and self-assess,
• and can navigate new situations and act independently.

Thankfully, I do believe that we’ve got the right balance here at Vianney. I’ve found myself on more than one occasion describing our school as “healthy.” Our approach to developing young men spiritually, academically, and personally in the Catholic, Marianist tradition is an important perspective on this topic.  To educate the whole person values their uniqueness and maximizes their potential! 

Thank you for entrusting your son to our care and for partnering us on this holistic journey to becoming Men of Character & Accomplishment!