A few days ago my 10-year-old daughter confessed to me that she hasn’t been doing very well in her language arts assignments at school. My eyebrows immediately went up (according to my kids this is my instant “tell” of displeasure). …
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Archives: Recommended Reading
Can I Get a List of Those Books?
One of our number one goals when a family visits Thacher is for them to come away with a very clear understanding of what makes Thacher Thacher. To that end, we have crafted a visit day that includes the usual …
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What Makes Thacher Thacher
Including Some Extra-Credit Reading About What Teenagers Need When I came to interview at Thacher over a decade ago it was immediately clear to me that this was a school unlike any that I had encountered. To start with, there was …
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On Teenage Defiance
A recent article in the New York Times offers this catchy headline: Can Teenage Defiance Be Manipulated for Good? The author is accurate in that teens slide quickly to polarization and respond well, therefore, to hero-villain scripts. They …
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Grit vs. Quit
In her forthcoming book, Angela Duckworth, one of our favorite experts on grit, has some interesting advice about quitting. For example, she suggests that high schoolers should be encouraged to stick with a new endeavor for at least a year before …
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