When asked, “Why should I send my child to Bixby School?” my answer is some version of the following.“Because Bixby is a place that sees the inherent brilliance of each child and adult, and our work is organized around helping them to discover that brilliance for themselves.” This can be a hard thing for a parent to trust. My parenting journey has been marked at times by vulnerability and fear for each of my children. As a parent, we all want some external validation or promise that our kids will be “okay” and that they will be seen, known, and loved for who they are. Things like grades or standardized tests can satisfy this natural desire for a lighthouse in the uncertain fog of parenting. To be clear, I believe there is a place for those external measures, but as Einstein famously said “not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured matters” and standardized measures are effective ways of comparing to a benchmark. We are working on each child realizing their own success and, more importantly, their journey. The true measure of our work is realized years, sometimes decades, after Bixby in the stories of alumni who chose a courageous path because they built self-awareness at Bixby or the alumni who report waiting until college to experience the cognitive demands they experienced in elementary school.
The last couple of years have brought unprecedented challenges, and I am proud of the courageous response of our community. Now, our eyes are squarely focused on the future and being the best version of our school. We will refocus our efforts and “outcomes” on the behaviors and mindsets that our founders, Pat and Bart, articulated years ago.