Four Jobs, Three Promises, and One Challenge
四个任务、三个承诺、一个挑战
Recently, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) published the results of a survey that investigated the jobs that parents “hire” schools to do when they choose to pay tuition. In short, the survey showed that parents want schools to help them do four things:
近日，美国国家独立学校协会（NAIS）公布了一项调查结果，关于家长在交学费时期望学校做的事。简而言之，调查显示家长希望学校能够帮助他们做一下四件事：
1. Help them help their children overcome obstacles;
帮助孩子克服困难；
2. Help them help fulfill their children’s potential in a values-aligned community;
帮助孩子充分发挥潜能；
3. Help them develop well-rounded people who will impact the world; and
帮助孩子成长为影响世界的全面发展的人；
4. Help them realize their plans for their talented children.
帮助他们完成对孩子的培养计划。
Parents want schools to make sure their children thrive—sometimes escaping unhealthy or unsafe educational environments and sometimes overcoming long-standing learning challenges, but mostly just addressing the unique learning needs of their children. Additionally, they want their children to have a meaningful and challenging school experience that helps them mature, and they want schools to foster emotional intelligence and social development as well as academic growth. Finally, they want schools to help them and their children find the post-secondary options to fit their children’s unique set of talents.
家长希望学校能够确保孩子们茁壮成长—远离不健康或不安全的教育环境、克服长期存在的学习挑战，但大多只是强调学生独特的学习需求。此外，他们希望孩子在学校的体验是有意义且具挑战性的，从而帮助学生变得更加成熟，希望学校培养学生的情感智力、社交发展和学术成长。最后，家长希望学校能够帮助他们和孩子找到匹配孩子独特才能的中学。
These parental desires echo the three promises that we make to our parents in our academic program: your child will be known, your child will grow, and your child will be inspired—or at least we will do all that we can to make sure that those things happen. We spend a lot of energy and time figuring out how each of our students learn, what they know, and what they are interested in. We regularly assess their progress and adjust our approaches if they don’t seem to be improving. And we actively seek to engage students in learning, sustain their interest, and inspire them to learning beyond a particular lesson or course. Our motto “Known. Grown. Inspired.” captures these promises, and we hope we have delivered on them.
这些家长的愿望和我们在学术项目中对家长做出的三个承诺相呼应：你的孩子会被人们了解、会健康成长、也会受到鼓舞—或至少我们会尽我们所能实现这些承诺。我们花了很多精力和时间去弄清楚每个每个学生是如何学习、学到了什么，以及他们感兴趣的是什么。如果他们没有明显的改善提高，我们会定期评估他们的进展，并调整相应的学习方案。我们会积极让学生参与学习，维持他们的兴趣，并鼓励他们多尝试新的事物，而不是特定的课程。我们的宗旨“了解、成长、鼓舞”与这些承诺密切相关，希望我们能够一直坚守承诺。
The four things that the survey showed that parents want schools to do also resonate with our mission. On a broader scale than just our academic promises, I make three other promises based on our schoolwide statement of purpose. As we started the year, I made these promises to the Class of 2022 and new students as well as to their parents. The promises embedded in our mission are these:
调查显示，家长希望学校做的四件事也与我们的使命产生了共鸣。除了学术承诺外，在整个学校范围内，我向2022级新生以及他们的父母做出了一下承诺。
1. We promise to do everything we can to help each student become the best person he or she can be. In our view, that means increasing or reinforcing the values of integrity, respect, responsibility, and compassion. It means encouraging perseverance and self-discipline.
我们承诺尽我们所能帮助每个学生成为他或她能成为的最好的人。我们要培养学生正直、尊重、责任和同情的价值观，鼓励他们养成坚持不懈和自律的品格。
2. We promise to do everything we can to help each student become the best learner he or she can be. In our view that means helping them come to value the pursuit of knowledge and truth, helping them become intellectually self-reliant as they come to know themselves as learners and communicators, and helping them create new knowledge or products as a result of what they know and can do.
我们承诺尽我们所能帮助每个学生成为他或她所能成为的最好的学生。我们会帮助他们追求知识和真理，帮助他们学会独立思考，在他们获得知识和能力时帮助他们创造新的知识或产品。
3. We promise to do everything in our power to help each student become part of something bigger than himself or herself. That starts within an advisory of 7-12 diverse classmates, then extends to the graduating class as a whole, and then the school community. We also strive to make each student realize his or her rights, roles, and responsibilities outside of the school—within the town, the region, and the world. These include active and constructive citizenship as well as thoughtful and responsible stewardship.
我们承诺尽一切力量帮助每个学生尽可能大地发挥他们的潜能。我们会从7-12位不同同学的咨询开始，然后延伸到整个班级，再到学校社区。我们也努力让每个学生在校外--在城镇、地区乃至整个世界都能够发挥自己的权利、角色和责任。这些不仅需要积极向上和有建设性的公民参与，也需要有完善健全的管理模式。
These are big promises, and combined with the promises made in our academic program, it is a lot to live up to, but if we are going to continue to deliver the kind of education parents want from schools, especially independent schools like ours, we need to do all we can to deliver on these promises.
这些是重要的承诺，再加上我们在学术项目中做出的承诺，要兑现这些承诺，我们要做的还有很多，但是如果我们要想继续成为家长希望学校提供的那种教育，尤其是像我们这样的独立学校，我们需要尽我们所能来兑现这些承诺。
We have a saying here that we repeat often: “Love those the most who need it the most”. I first heard this saying in a story about my mother-in-law when she was asked which of her eight children she loved the most, and it was echoed by teacher Melissa Jenkins as she described her secret for successfully teaching science to a host of students with a variety of needs. To deliver on our promises, we need to do as these two women did and help those facing the biggest obstacles fulfill their potential. By doing so, we will educate a community of well-rounded people who will share their unique talents. If we rise to this challenge, as a school and as a community, we will do the jobs that parents hire us to do, fulfill our promises, and change the world in the process.
我们经常有说到一句话：“将爱心献给那些最需要它的人。”我第一次听到这句话是关于我岳母的故事中，当她被问到八个孩子中最爱哪一个时，Melissa Jenkins老师也讲述了她成功地向一群有各种需要的学生教授科学的秘诀。为了兑现我们的承诺，我们需要像这两位女性一样，帮助那些最困难的人发挥他们的潜力。这样做使得我们成为一个具有丰富个性的社区，学生会发挥他们独特的才能。如果我们勇敢地面对这个挑战，作为一个学校和一个社区，我们将做好家长期望我们做的事情，履行我们的诺言，进而改变世界。
