Happy New Year!  I hope that the winter vacation gave you an opportunity to change pace, enjoy some new activities, and appreciate time with your family and friends. 

As we begin this new year, I am reminded of my recent experience reading the 25th reunion yearbook for my high school class.  Naturally, I noted with interest the diverse range of professions, locales, and hobbies of my classmates, as well as studying the photos to see who changed in what ways.  The striking similarity in the profiles came, surprisingly, in the section labeled “greatest accomplishments”.  There was little mention of the publications, awards, promotions, and other professional progress that the respondents’ resumes certainly list.  Most of them focused, instead, on their personal priorities for relationships: strong marriages, wonderful experiences raising children, close friendships, and/or shared adventures with these important people. 

“There is little of importance in our everyday lives that does not involve interaction with others.  Most of the experiences people count as meaningful and significant – family life, work, and most recreation – include or even depend on relations with others” (p. vii).  This quotation is taken from the preface of the book, “Fostering Children’s Social Competence: The Teacher’s Role” (Katz and McClellan, 1997), which all of our staff read during the winter break and discussed during our professional development day on Monday.  As parents and educators partnering to facilitate the development of young children, we can together support their growing social competence so that they can “initiate and maintain satisfying, reciprocal relationships” (p. 1) throughout their lives.  This competence involves regulating emotions (e.g., managing frustration, controlling impulses, etc.), social knowledge and understanding (e.g., norms and social customs, anticipating others’ perspectives, etc.), social skills (e.g., gaining access to play groups, negotiating turns, resolving conflicts, etc.), and social dispositions (e.g., empathy, respect, generosity, etc.).

During the spring semester, the Children’s School staff will be focusing our professional development time on studying current theory, research, and practice related to fostering children’s social competence.  The book cited above was very encouraging to read because it affirms our educational philosophy, along with many of the ways that we have structured our environment and our program.  At the same time, it prompted us to reflect more systematically on our approaches and to continually find ways to strengthen them to best support the growth of each individual child.  The time is ripe because “social experiences early in life are transformed into ‘generalized cognitive representations of relationships’” (p. 15) that form the basis for later family and peer functioning.  The priority is clear because “the single best childhood predictor of adult adaptation is not IQ, not school grades, and not classroom behavior but rather the adequacy with which the child gets along with other children” (p. vii).  Please join us in reflecting on the meaning of social competence and on the positive roles that we can play in developing this firm foundation for strong relationships.

May you and your family experience a year of health and wholeness in 2004!