At Canopy Scholars, we are building a relational culture for students and parents and tutors.
To do this well, we’re creating a living document of values and practices to be the framework for this relational culture. A living document is one we can update and keep current, (it’s also known an evergreen document or a living tree document).
We’ll share our values and practices as our staff adds them to this living/evergreen/living tree document. First is this: at Canopy Scholars, we value mistakes.
Mistakes are wonderful opportunities to learn. We are training our tutors to live this out with students by encouraging progress, affirming efforts, celebrating wins, separating mistakes from the person, increasing the mindset of trying our best, and taking action in finding solutions.
Coincidently, in the Positive Discipline class being taught by Tsion Kidane in Amharic and Tigrinya to 20 Canopy parents, they’ve been talking about mistakes. How do we help kids learn from their mistakes? By modeling this after we’ve made a mistake: 1) Recognize our mistake. 2) Reconcile: be willing to say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t like the way I handled that.” 3) Resolve: focus on solutions rather than blame, (this is effective only if we do 1 and 2 first).
– Lynn, director of Canopy