Chandler School

The constant barrage of doing--for both teachers and students--is intense, and it’s exacerbated by our digital connectivity.

We all need to allow for some quiet for teaching and learning to sink in in preparation for the next task.

83% of teens reported school as a source of “somewhat or significant stress” and most of our students are unsure about coping strategies.

Fifty-one percent of 16 year olds share their age/birth date with others Seventeen percent of teens keep their social network sites public and 19 percent only have some privacy settings enabled Twenty-nine percent of kids between five and 11 years old believe they are anonymous online Only a little over 50 percent of children age nine to 12 know how to block unwanted messages Nine percent of nine year olds share their email passwords and 24 percent of 18 year olds do the same Seventeen percent of male and 23 percent of female users would share inappropriate pictures online

The Innovations class is deliberately open-ended, which means students have to propose their own project ideas and the standards they plan to meet.

"The mentor can't be their dad or their dad's buddy," Wettrick says. "It has to be an expert in an arena, and it has to be somebody who makes a commitment to help them."

Students benefit from honest critique along with positive attention for their projects, Wettrick says. "They don't need to hear, 'Good job!' They're better off when an expert tells them, 'That's not bad, but have you considered this, or you might want to look at that.'

Labelling ourselves as failures at particular aspect in our life can be self-disparaging, stopping us from reaching more successful goals in life.

Scientists view failures within experiments as just another data point, learning from one experiment; changing an element; then try again until a conclusion has been established.

“failure feels like an indication of who we are as a person.