Well-being is best understood as the separate, yet interdependent state of one’s body, mind and spirit.

Read More About Well-Being

How Re-Set Can Help You

Centering well-being as a holistic, critical approach to schooling requires new pedagogies, paradigms and structures.

  • Re-set School helps leaders bring their most adaptive, creative and transformational skills to this imposing, compelling moment.
  • We work holistically, systemically and relationally to better identify, understand and frame the challenges you face.
  • As trusted thought partners with leaders, teams, and individuals, we invite plenty of questions, prioritize curiosity, welcome divergent thinking and cultivate compassion.
  • With years of experience facilitating groups of all kinds, we provide structured, inclusive, and dynamic environments for teaching, learning, coaching and building community.
  • Re-Set School consistently consults relevant, reliable research in Education, Psychology, Technology, Public Health and Organizational Change in order to inform our perspectives and provide clients with timely resources.
  • We promote lively, open, creative and mutually respectful relationships with our clients.

Opportunity

All schools can use the disruptions in Education to re-examine the fundamentals of PreK-12 teaching and learning. As the world evolves and the social, emotional and academic needs of children and adolescents continue to shift rapidly, educators must repeatedly ask,

What does it mean to prepare students for “modern life” in the early 21st Century?

Regardless of what may be ahead, prioritizing the well-being of students and school personnel will prepare communities to meet challenges, adapt to ongoing changes, and create opportunities to flourish.

Where to Begin

Oliver Burkman (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) makes plain that the challenge of this moment is not to squeeze more out of the hours in each day by achieving greater efficiency or increasing our productivity. Independent schools are notorious for adding more to the calendar each year, without taking anything away. To make time for things that matter (i.e. big rocks), we have to give up other things that matter (i.e. big rocks).

Most schools have way too many big rocks.

To enact concrete, achievable steps to re-set values, goals, and priorities, schools must:

  • Commit to negotiating a realistic relationship with Time.
  • Make difficult, critical choices about what big rocks to eliminate.
  • Understand the changed/changing learning and emotional needs of all students.
  • Develop a flexible, adaptive curriculum that builds students’ capacities to live and learn during uncertain times.
  • Support teachers as they experiment with new approaches to teaching and learning.
  • Create a teaching/learning environment that recognizes human capabilities and human limitations in equal measure.
  • Invite the creation, ownership, and maintenance of school culture by all stakeholders.
  • Honor the losses that come with having a more honest relationship with the limits of Time.

“The Northwest Association of Independent Schools has been honored to work with Jennifer Bryan as a featured speaker at our largest conferences and as a workshop facilitator in more intimate learning spaces. She has helped NWAIS schools wrestle with the complexity of gender and sexuality diversity and how we can best serve all of our students.

In her more recent work centering well-being, Jennifer has issued a call to action that is simple and complex. Putting student wellbeing at the center of all we do for students, is a simple concept that requires rethinking every aspect of our practice, systems and organizational framework. Jennifer has issued the imperative, that this is our work in the coming years, and has offered strategies to move communities forward.

Jennifer Bryan is masterful in recognizing that each school’s approach will be rooted in their own unique mission, and she provides frameworks to support growth, regardless of their starting place. Through her straight talk and humor, Jennifer can deliver tough messages with candor. Her approach is honest, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I recommend her without reservation, and hope that you have the opportunity to work with her. We look forward to engaging her services and expertise again in the future. Her work will continue to impact the work of the Association for many years to come.”