Dear Thomas Jefferson School Community,

A learner is a risk-taker

Are you happy with the world?

            “You can’t do that.”

            “It will never work.”

            “This is the way it’s always been.”

A colleague once gave me a poster with fifty of these “reasons not to change.” I’ve posted it on my office door to remind me that affecting positive change frequently involves taking risks with which people don’t agree.

Gandhi asked us to “be the change [we] want to see in the world.”

These are powerful words, and words our students can understand. This is an invitation which requires us to make risks to stand up for the things in which we believe.

I wonder how we can build capacity for healthy risk-taking in our kids.

I wonder if it means modeling the behavior in our work with children.

Yours Sincerely,

Vincent Baxter