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Letter from Head of School
MATTHEW GOULD, HEAD OF SCHOOL
Dear Friends,
As many of you know, I love children’s literature. I rarely miss an opportunity to share a favorite children’s book, whether it be with students or the adults in our community. Back in June, during our Commencement ceremony, I told the Class of 2022 that they would have to endure one more story from me. They graciously smiled—not that they had much choice in the matter! The story I selected for our graduates was What the Road Said by Cleo Wade.
What the Road Said is an uplifting picture book with an aspiring message for all of us, at any age. It reminds us that no matter what path we choose and where life’s journey takes us, it is important to learn from our failures and keep going. One of the many things I love about Norwood is that it provides a safe and supportive space—a truly caring community—for students to make mistakes and fail. Creating opportunities for failure is not something most schools would brag about, but I am proud of our faculty’s ability to incorporate failure and mistakes into the normal part of the learning process.
Making mistakes is good for learning! We gain so much knowledge from our mistakes. We figure out what works and what doesn’t. We discover creative ways of thinking and doing. We develop empathy and compassion—the understanding that no one is perfect, that to fail is human. We also develop patience and the ability to persevere. I believe that the struggle to pull yourself through a challenge, come to terms with your shortcomings, and labor to overcome them is exactly what is missing for so many students—even at academically excellent schools.
Now, don’t get me wrong, when I write about “failure,” I am not talking about monumental failures. I am talking about small setbacks that children can and do work through to overcome. Small doses of failure, I believe, are important for children and are exactly what parents mean when they say, “I want my child to be challenged.” But I worry that our obsession with success and our fear of failure has trickled down to our children at great cost to their psychological well-being. Maybe learning to persevere and deal with setbacks is part of the secret to success and to leading a happy, meaningful, and productive life.
Author John C. Maxwell, in his book Failing Forward, asserts that the difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure. By teaching our children to deal with failure without fear or judgement, we are preparing them to use setbacks to keep pushing forward on the journey of life. In What the Road Said, the main character asks, “What if I go the wrong way?” The Road answers, “Do not worry. Sometimes we go the wrong way on our way to the right way.”
Learning is fun, exhilarating and gratifying, but it is also daunting, exhausting, and sometimes discouraging—just like life! I might argue that this is a central paradox of contemporary parenting: We have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. And yet we all know—on some level, at least—that what children need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can.
Norwood School is a unique and wonderful place for children to grow, learn, and, yes, fail.
I truly believe that there are very few institutions quite like Norwood in the entire country. Because we create a nurturing environment, children feel safe and confident. When children are confident, they will take risks. Because risk-taking is inherent in learning, the possibility of failure exists. However, perhaps our success can be defined when our students are comfortable with failure and have the life skills to overcome obstacles. Maybe the secret to our success is, at least in part, learning how to fail well.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew A. Gould, Ph.D. Head of School
