Photo courtesy of Thomas Hoerr
Since retiring from New City School a year and a half ago, former head of school Thomas Hoerr has been busy penning his newest book, The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs. In it, he offers specific strategies that educators, parents, or anyone who interacts with young people can use to help them set goals to develop success skills and overcome obstacles. Hoerr chatted with SLM about what inspired the book and his key take-aways.
What drove you to write the book?
For many years, I was struck by the fact that—while kids need to read, write, and calculate, absolutely—that there’s more to life than that, and we were doing children a disservice by not really preparing them to succeed in life. The thrust of my argument is we need to prepare kids to do well in school, but that should be the floor, not the ceiling. If we really want to prepare kids to be successful in life—I’m not just talking about making money; I’m talking about being a good person, being a good spouse, being a good parent—we need to develop what I call the five success skills. The success skills I identified are empathy, self-control, integrity, embracing diversity, and grit.
How can adults help kids foster these skills?
Like most things in life, if we’re going to work on this and develop it, we need to do it consciously and intently. That doesn’t mean we have to have a lesson on empathy or integrity every week. It means that, as you think about these traits, you need to talk about them with kids. Vocabulary is powerful. Also, as adults, we need to be role models. That doesn’t mean we’re perfect. But teachers and principals, for example, need to be talking about and demonstrating traits that are important in life, not just in school.
Can you elaborate on what you mean about vocabulary?
Kids need to know the terms. There’s a difference, for example, between integrity and honesty. Honesty is when you keep your word. You make the right decisions. You are someone who has good morals and values. Integrity is taking your honesty and acting on it in a very public manner—when you interrupt someone who is being prejudiced, for instance.
Also, teach the difference between sympathy and empathy. If we really want children to feel compassion toward other people, they need to get beyond sympathy to really understand the values or perspectives of other people. That doesn’t mean they always have to agree, but it means they make a conscious effort to view how others are viewing the world. I think the words we use, the vocabulary we teach, can help kids frame their thinking and actually have a powerful impact on their actions.
What would you most like people to glean from the book?
The real takeaway is that I worry about the world. I worry about where our country is headed. I think a solution is that each one of us, in our own way, who has a stake in the lives of children—whether our own kids, our neighbor’s kids, or kids we teach—[should] look at them as young human beings, not just as young academicians, and that we should consciously work to help them develop skills to be successful in the world and make it better for everybody.
Hoerr invites readers who would like more information on these topics to email him or order The Formative Five: Fostering Grit, Empathy, and Other Success Skills Every Student Needs.
