Celebrating disappointment and turning perceived ‘failure’ into meaningful success

I often think of the summer term as a term of celebration in all its forms. We celebrate the girls' sporting achievements at Sports Day, their academic achievements in the end of year reports and all-round achievement in our fantastic annual Prize Giving ceremony.

However, in this spirit of celebration we must not forget that there can be disappointments. The girls may be disappointed that they didn’t receive a ribbon or sticker at sports day or their House didn’t win the House trophy at Prize Giving. Feeling disheartened as a result of these set-backs is, in fact, good preparation for our children into adulthood.

“Don't let today's disappointment cast a shadow on tomorrow's dream".

Disappointment is part of life no matter who we are, or how successful we become. In every pupil’s life beyond school they will, inevitably, find things don’t always go to plan – whether it is failing their driving test, not getting a job interview for a ‘dream’ job or not getting a place at their first-choice university, when challenges are thrown at us they can feel like life-changing events and can make us question our abilities and strengths. So how do we, as their support network, prepare them for challenges and hurdles and use them to become more determined and positive, rather than feed on these negative emotions? Certainly, we cannot protect our children from bumps in the road, so how best do they deal with them as they come along?

At St Mary's Junior School we empower the girls by ensuring our community is not only safe and nurturing, but also encouraging them to see disappointments not as failures but as an essential part of life. They will learn from them to become stronger and to shape their character.  Making sure there is someone to listen to them when they experience their disappointment, means that we can help them contextualise them and help them consider the wider, often insignificant, implications. We can reassure them and empathise with them that we are all very proud of their achievements, so they feel that sense of self-worth. By using our experience as adults to help guide them when they may be feeling slightly lost we can encourage them to look at each disappointment as an opportunity. There is definitely something to be said in the old adage of ‘looking on the bright side’…

Last week our word of the week was resilience, this seems to be a buzz word at the moment in education and many schools purport to have the key to teaching resilience. I don’t believe you can 'teach' resilience in a formal way, through lessons and schemes of work. I believe it is about the individual experience and staff, alongside their families, supporting each, and every girl when they are disappointed to encourage, advise, be firm when needed and support so that we develop their resilience in an organic and natural way.

One of our Mary Ward characteristics is 'dealing with disappointment' therefore it is important we recognise our role in enabling our children to do this day to day.  

Summer Lemonade with the Head

Every Friday, one girl is chosen from each class to come and have summer lemonade with me in the Head's Study. I really enjoy the opportunity to talk about the week the girls have had and why they think they have been chosen. The criterion is that the girls have displayed in some way the word/value of the week, this week it was the characteristic 'team work'. I thought it would nice to share, each week, the names of the girls who have been chosen so we can celebrate this achievement more publicly.