“The view you adopt for yourself profoundly
affects the way you lead your life.”
Carol S. Dweck
Dear Crossroads College Preparatory School Community:
A few years ago, I read a book called Mindset by Carol S. Dweck. In it she tells several stories about people who have growth mindsets, who believe their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Resilience, effort, and a love of learning are essential for great accomplishments, she concludes; brains and talent are just starting points. This view that our abilities can be refined, that our effort matters, and that we can become better over time is important to leading a life of hope and optimism, I think. With a growth mindset, we can never be satisfied with the status quo.
I have been thinking about all of the ways Crossroads demonstrates its growth mindset and all the ways we are better than we once were. Just today, I shared the following with the board finance committee:
- Parent participation in annual giving is currently at 68%. Last year, we concluded the year with parent participation being at 62%.
- Forty-three more families visited our Open House this year than visited last year. Maggie has scheduled 115 prospective family visits to Crossroads. This is 26 more than last year at this time.
As a new Head, these are exciting numbers and comparisons, and without a growth mindset, without hard work and a belief in our school, we might not experience these successes.
In addition to the above, our Gala was record-breaking in the funds collected for scholarship, our boys’ soccer team made school history, our blood drive collected more units than ever before, and our canned food drive was excellent as well. These are great to list and fun to read, I hope. Our biggest successes, though, are our students, and I see, first hand, their joy and their curiosity and their hard work. I did not know that such possibility could be gathered into one place. Our students’ dedication and hard work certainly deserve ours, and I am proud to see our community stretching beyond what was last year to new levels of excellence this year.
Nothing without joy,
Jason