From the SAIS President by Debra Wilson Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to
participate in a professional development event
offered by the Palmetto Association of Independent
Schools in Charleston, SC. Unbeknownst to me until a week before the event, a good friend’s
daughter was scheduled to participate on the PAIS student panel.
This young woman is everything we all strive for in an independent school graduate. She is kind, thoughtful, articulate, capable, discerning,
curious, and loyal. She seeks out and engages in exciting opportunities
and strives to always do her best. And yet, she has also experienced the
hazards of being a teenager today. She experiences anxiety and worry, stress and self-doubt. Her world on paper and the world in her head
do not always align. While this has always been the case for teenagers,
the mental health profiles we have of students today tell us that their
experience is much more intense than what most of us managed. Indeed,
watching my son in his junior year tackling AP physics homework makes me wonder what I was doing with my time in the ‘80s.
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SPRI NG 2020 │ SAIS.O RG
