Welcome!

Thank you for visiting my blog!  As the Head of a school serving a unique population of learners, I am pleased to have a space to offer opinions, feedback and reflections on language-based learning differences and the field of education.  While many of my thoughts may directly relate to what goes on within the walls of Lawrence School, I hope many of my topics can be appreciated by a wider audience.

I welcome you to this space and hope you will join me in fulfilling the Lawrence School mission to teach students who have distinct learning styles, ignite their potential, and inspire academic and social success.

Old Surroundings Reveal New Feelings Of Strength, Lessons Learned

You have brains in your head.                       Who goes to dine must take the feast
You have feet in your shoes.                           Or find the banquet mean;
You can steer yourself                                      The table is not laid without
Any direction you choose.                               Until it is laid within.

~Dr. Suess                                                           ~Emily Dickinson 

The sinking feeling was just under the surface as I sat in class during my second day of a two-week fellowship at Columbia University, Teacher’s College.

I was back in the classroom, sitting at a desk for the first time since 1980. There I was with 18 other heads of independent schools from all over the globe, classmates and Fellows at the Klingenstein Center for Independent School Leadership, class of 2015.

The professor had just handed out a form and asked us to take 15 minutes to write our own philosophy of education ­– in response to readings by Michel de Montaigne and John Dewey, both of whom I had read before and both of whom I had read again in preparation for this class – and hand it in!

Immediately, I felt an eruption in my chest and brain; my skin flushed, and my mouth got dry. I felt my heart rate increase, and my palms started to sweat. I was back in the fifth grade taking a vocabulary and spelling test! Back then, I either knew most of the words but couldn’t remember how to spell them, or my handwriting was so bad my teacher would mark me down because she couldn’t read the letters.

My old nemeses – shame, fear, anxiety – jumped out of my skin and sat in front of me glaring and accusing: “Your handwriting is so bad, he won’t even read it” and “Your spelling will shock the professor; he will think you must be stupid.”

The feelings of shame and vulnerability never completely go away for me even though I can hide them fairly effectively; even from myself most of the time. And I have learned over the years from many other successful adults with learning differences like dyslexia and ADHD, that they, too, experience these moments of shame and embarrassment over feelings and experiences buried deep in the past; notwithstanding the many years and outward examples of achievement and success that may now bury them.

Quickly though, I reminded myself that I was no longer a child. I had indeed earned my place at this table of learning, and in this class among colleagues in independent school leadership. I have people who love me in my life, people who respect me in my profession, and many students and parents who know me as an experienced and successful head of school.

Yes, my handwriting is indeed sloppy, but my thinking is not. And while spelling continues to elude me, I have worked hard over many years to acquire and use a broad and deep vocabulary. Yes, I get help from others; and yes, I use technology that assists me in presenting my ideas legibly and spelled correctly. I access resources that help me use and align strengths so that most of the time my challenges and weaknesses can be rendered largely irrelevant.

Thankfully, the moment passed quickly. I am an adult.

I can exercise control over these situations and I have a context and a history to help me stay in the saddle even when the horse stumbles and I feel like I’m going to hit the dirt.

The vulnerability I felt in that moment was a great reminder of what so many of our children and students feel when they realize that other kids can do easily what they cannot, despite their hard work and best efforts. This not only robs them of confidence in their abilities, but also security in school.

I am therefore thankful to live in an enlightened community and serve at a great school with thoughtful and well-prepared colleagues who accept, understand, embrace and support students with learning differences. Their example to me is nothing less than the struggle of a human spirit to be free of assumptions and conclusions drawn about them in school environments that judge narrowly and marginalize the creativity and collaboration that will ultimately drive our success later in life.

I welcome your comments both publicly or privately. Please feel free to share your thoughts below, or e-mail me directly at lsalza@lawrenceschool.org.

For Our New Parents, It’s a New School, Year and Outlook!

Each year, our new parents enter Lawrence Upper and Lower School for parent orientation sessions with serious expressions on their faces. Eyebrows are furrowed, chins set, shoulders hunched. They have visited schools in the past.

They brace themselves for what they have encountered previously. They prepare for worrisome sessions in which they begin to catalogue the various difficulties and struggles with which their son or daughter will have to contend: requirements, procedures and protocols that shove and poke at their children instead of embracing their approach to learning and encouraging their affiliation.

They grind their teeth anticipating homework battles and daily drama that disrupts family life. And worst of all, they worry that their child will continue to feel like strangers in school, or think of themselves as failures. They fear that their children’s confidence and self esteem will continue to decline as curriculum complexity increases year over year.

What happens next, however, lifts my heart. I watch it every year. By the end of the evening, their shoulders are lower. Their eyes brighten. Eyebrows raise and chins drop, broadening into smiles. They are chuckling and simply enjoying themselves at school!

What sparks this remarkable change?

First, they get fired from their job as homework helper! Then, they get a contact sheet of who’s who at the school with many reminders that we want to hear from them. Instead of carrying the burden of various worries around for days, they are encouraged to call, and we will help. Worry, they are told is a “form of prayer”; send it up (not onto your child) and call someone from the school to sort out what is troubling them.

Next, they meet the teachers and administrators, who not only see and hear their concerns as parents but understand and embrace their child. They begin to experience firsthand that Lawrence School is committed to reversing the trend seen at past schools where their children with language-based learning differences fell further and further behind their peers.  They begin to see that we have designed the school to operate and teach the way their children learn.

It’s a similar transition for our new students, who enter our doors unsure of what to expect. They are worried that they will be made to feel embarrassed or ashamed that they don’t understand or know something that everybody else seems to know.  Like their parents, they too quickly relax and revel in an environment that honors who they are, accepts them, affirms their strengths and challenges, holds them accountable in reasonable ways, and teaches them advocacy skills.

The result? They are heard in comments throughout the year.

“My daughter came home and told me she felt smart,” a parent of a new Lawrence fifth-grade student recently told me. Said others, “My son is running for student council!” and “He just came home and did his homework… on his own!”.

In a particularly moving moment, a graduating senior revealed last spring, “Lawrence allowed me to be a son again to my parents.”

I am extremely proud of the work we have been able to accomplish at Lawrence, and with a record-high enrollment this year my spirit soars knowing that we will be able to reach so many more students. Along with the increased enrollments, we have new Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages. We are reaching out to bring our message of commonsense teaching to anyone who might benefit; to share what we have learned at Lawrence about creating learning environments that serve kids best.

I love the start of a new school year.

Even after all these years, it never gets old, is always invigorating and always inspires me. No matter how many times I hear the comments and observations from parents who begin their journey with us at one of these back-to-school sessions, each one touches me deeply. Each one represents a child and family transformed.

Each one, every year.

Best wishes for the school year ahead!

Finding My Way: A Lawrence Senior Tells Her Story

This week we are thrilled to have a guest blogger who speaks to us with the authoritative, candid voice of recent experience. Adrianna graduates this May from Lawrence Upper School at what will be our 10th Commencement.

I found her essay poignant and powerful. I asked her if she would share it with our greater community of students, parents and professionals; and she graciously and courageously agreed.

Adrianna’s journey started with the heartbreak of feeling invisible in primary school due to her struggles with dyslexia. Her situation created a crisis at home for her and her parents. The feelings and experiences faced by both Adrianna and her parents resonate deeply with those who have dyslexia or know dyslexia ‘up close and personal’ as I do.

She is a delightful and articulate young woman who has turned the stumbling block of dyslexia into a stepping stone for her journey forward. Over the years at Lawrence, her aspirations for learning have been rescued by a program and a faculty trained and dedicated to building the competence and the confidence of children with learning differences.

Adrianna is has been accepted into Chatham College in the fall to study Interior Architecture.

My parents knew I was dyslexic in kindergarten. They had me repeat kindergarten to give me more time. I discovered I was dyslexic in third grade when my parents and I saw I couldn’t keep up in reading and math. In my classes, it was hard to focus and learn because the classes were big and I was in the back, one of many students. I was pulled out of class for a small reading group, but the teacher had to focus more on the kids acting badly than me who wasn’t bad. I just needed more time to have things explained to me. My parents started to look at other schools instead of the public school I was attending. They were even thinking about moving out of state to find a better school for me. I felt stupid. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I was depressed, lonely, and bullied. Having dyslexia didn’t help. It was a hard time for me.

My parents were worried for me. They saw I stopped working as hard. One late night my Mom was crying asking God what to do because she was so worried about me. She started looking through this local family magazine and read the ads in the back thinking I needed a tutor. She found an ad for a school that focuses on dyslexia and it was right in the area! She called them the next day and my parents went to visit. They fell in love with Lawrence School. They loved the small classes and the program. The director of admissions suggested I come in and shadow for a day. I was really nervous that they wouldn’t like me. My shadow student showed me all the amazing things about Lawrence. I fell in love with all the teachers. They were so kind and made sure everyone really understood what they were learning. I loved the small classes. No one was invisible. After I got picked up from Lawrence I told my parents how much I loved Lawrence. My parents said they were thinking about sending me there instead of the local school. We applied and I got accepted. I can’t imagine if I had stayed at my former school. I can’t imagine where I would be now. I don’t think I would have graduated from high school. I would not be going to visit colleges. I would not have been able to imagine going to college. I definitely couldn’t see myself planning to major in interior architecture.

Lawrence helped with my reading and math. I read a lot better than I ever would have a few summers ago. I read all four books in the Twilight series and my mom cried because I used to hate to read anything. It was painful for my parents to see me not like to read because they love reading everything.

Math is still hard but I push myself because I know how important it is. Junior year I took two math courses to catch up. Senior year I am doing it again to make sure I understand different areas of math and because I know it will be required in my personal and professional life. It is helpful that I know that my weaknesses are in math and reading because I know the tools to help me. For example, I sometimes use Google Voice Search to help me spell a word. Also, I know I can solve math problems with a calculator. However, there are times when I am going to ask for help. I know what skills I have to work on and how I can try to get better. By reading more and more, I’m getting better at reading which is a really good thing. My mom practices math with me or help me with a math question that I might not understand. Although math is still hard for me, I don’t give up because I know it’s very important in my life.

Lawrence has done so much for me since the day I came there. I am really happy my parents found Lawrence and that they let me go there. Lawrence has helped more than I can say. There have been some amazing years here and I’m going to miss it when I graduate.

Adrianna W.
Lawrence School Class of 2014

Congratulations to Adrianna and the entire class of 2014 for making this journey and reaching your milestone – and thank you to all the parents, teachers and administrators who have supported them. Your stories have great power to inspire and instruct.

We see you!

We hear you!

We celebrate you and learn from you!

Please keep sharing your journey with us!

Telling Our Stories, Making Our Way

Their story, yours and mine — it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.
—William Carlos Williams

To be a person is to have a story to tell.
—Isak Dinesen

In a few shortening days, the Winter Solstice will be upon us, marking the sun’s greatest declination south of the equator and, in the Northern Hemisphere, the shortest, deepest, darkest day of the year.

My Roman ancestors called this day Dies Invicti Solis – ‘the day of the invincible sun.’ I hope we can all take some measure of comfort in the ancients’ view that, at this darkest moment of the year, an inevitable turning towards the light begins.

At this time of year, when we observe ancient traditions and celebrate the sacred spark within us all with lights and evergreens, I find myself deeply grateful for our work at Lawrence School on behalf of different learners and to all in this profession who support the journey of our young people through school.

In his book Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, Jerome Bruner writes about the importance of constructing the narrative of our lives, where we become both the authors of – and the protagonists in – our own life stories. Narrating these stories, to those we love and to ourselves, is the essential process in making sense of our lives and forging connections to others.

Bruner notes:

We constantly construct and reconstruct our selves to meet the needs of the situations we encounter and we do so with the guidance of our memories of the past and our hopes and fears for the future…

As we prepare to celebrate our 10th commencement this June, I am mindful of the important role Lawrence plays in helping students reconstruct their own understanding of themselves. So many of the students who find their way to Lawrence experienced discouragement and defeat in other learning environments. When they arrive at a school that understands and honors their experiences, embraces their challenges and acknowledges their strengths, they are able to imagine a bright future. As they construct and reconstruct the narrative that describes their journey, they systematically confront fears based on the past and rescue aspirations for the future. And so do their families!

The story of a school like Lawrence – and the stories of the young people it serves – has been reconstructed (in Bruner’s words) from presumptions of failure and loss to the acceptance, affirmation, accountability and advocacy we provide and see practiced daily in the classrooms, fields, offices and hallways of the school. The transformational nature of these stories is fostered by the feelings of engagement, involvement, and success students experience in their academic, social and personal life at Lawrence.

I hope you have had a chance to view our new school video, where students, parents and faculty speak so eloquently and honestly about their journey from discouragement and loss to accomplishment and hope. These are just a sampling of the stories that make up the ‘warp and weft’ of what is woven together to construct the narrative – the story – of the life of our school.

I reflect with deep gratitude on the work of our teachers, counselors and administrators here and in the hundreds of schools across the nation that successfully teach students who learn differently and make these stories possible.

One of the many blessings of this wonderful time of year is that we can take time to reflect upon, support and embrace the stories of the children, families and faculty members who keep our learning communities strong. As we do, we can usually see how their tales have touched and enriched the narratives of our own lives.

So whatever your traditions – whether you light the candles of the Menorah, or follow the light of the Christmas Star, or welcome the Winter Solstice as my Roman ancestors did centuries ago – let us keep our care and concern for our children uppermost in our hearts. Let us come together to help them confront the fears and failures of the past, and construct a narrative of their lives that envisions and embraces a bright future full of accomplishment and promise.

I welcome your comments both publicly or privately. Please feel free to share your thoughts below, or e-mail me directly at lsalza@lawrenceschool.org.

Drive Fast, Dive Deep

I recently came across this interview with Indy Car driver Justin Wilson, who placed fifth in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. Justin is an accomplished driver, a successful adult, and a role model to many. He also has dyslexia.

I love stories like this for two reasons:

First, they are stories of resilience.

Second, they are stories that illustrate the problem with our schools and our attitudes about the one-size-fits-all system we have locked ourselves into.

When Wilson was asked if he sees any benefit to dyslexia he replied,

“I do think dyslexia has helped me. It’s pushed me to work harder in everything I do… You get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something that’s hard.”

Many successful dyslexic adults make the same observation as Wilson when asked if dyslexia accrues any benefits. Apparently having dyslexia forced us to work harder than most, and learning to work hard can be an advantage in the market place.

When I was Headmaster at ASSETS School in Hawaii, serving students with dyslexia, we were lucky to have a golf pro who worked with our golf team. He mentioned to me in passing one day that our students, in comparison to many others he had worked with, were great at learning golf. Confused, I asked him why. He replied “They handle frustration well.  They are better at coping with frustration than others I teach, and golf is all about dealing with your frustrations!”

Let’s face it: we really don’t know what working hard actually means, or even what it looks like. We do know that many people who probably work very hard in school never get off of the starting line. We do, however, know exactly what frustration looks like, and how devastating it can be for our children in school.

Justin Wilson and other successful dyslexics were lucky enough to have found a place of self-respect and honor. So many of our kids will not be so lucky.

So, I would like to pose the following question for consideration: Can we figure out a way that students can summon the will to increase effort, increase their stamina and develop resilience without first being ‘hammered’ by a hostile school environment? Surely there’s a way to protect honest effort and encourage kids to rise to learning challenges without frustrating and wounding them in the process.

Just as we can’t ask a fish what it’s like to be wet, I am not sure asking a dyslexic if there are benefits or strengths associated with being dyslexic can get you an accurate answer.

Consider the Hawaiian sea turtle, Honu, as she lumbers and heaves herself across the sand to lay her eggs. She is awkward, slow, and poorly equipped for crossing the long stretch of beach before her. She struggles for every inch on ground she covers—she is worn and exhausted by the time she gets back to the ocean.

Once she gets to the water we see something very different—she swims with strength, speed, and confidence. She dives deeper, stays down longer, and comes up dryer than any other animal in the water. Her flippers—a liability on land— become a boon to the swimming she does with uncommon grace. Struggling to cross the sand might help her appreciate the freedom of the deep water, but I bet it didn’t really help her with swimming, diving, and holding her breath.

Every successful dyslexic adult can look back to childhood and tell a story of struggle in school. In each of us there was a child who, like a turtle crossing the sand, had to bear the burden of being judged in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Can’t we just help our kids get to the water?

Schools should be places where children are encouraged to find their innate strengths as well as learn new skills.

Schools ought to help children catch a glimpse of the deep open ocean waters of their lives without getting stranded on the beach and judged while they are struggling across the sand.

Let’s agree to forgo drawing any conclusions about sea turtles while they are crossing the beach – or children while they are still in school.  Let’s encourage our children to draw conclusions about themselves only when they get to whatever ‘ocean’ they belong and begin to swim!