Adapting to change

Change is happening now. In you. In your children. In your business.

As adults we spend a good deal of time preparing for it (on the good days) and worrying about it (on all the other days).

Come to the Westholme playground and you will hear our pupils shout the old childhood refrain of “Coming, ready or not!” excitedly to each other.

As adults, that’s an alien approach. What a shame!

Where would we be in our busy business lives if we embraced change in this way?

Of course, sensitive change management is a vital skill. Yet, as so often in working with children, we can see a glimpse of the uncluttered approach.

Do we wait in fear of the change or do we embrace it, harnessing its power?

Ask a ten year old about to sing a solo on the Westholme stage in front of 500 people for the first time if she is frightened to take the step into the unknown.

She would doubtlessly feel the fear, but more likely she would also say she felt exhilarated, which is essentially fear transformed.

What an amazing difference to our working lives we could make, if that power to embrace the new in a wholly enthusiastic way always stayed with us.

Children experience change at a level that is dizzying for the adult.

The pace at which their minds, bodies, intellects and emotions develop is never repeated (except perhaps to go in reverse!)

Most of the things they do on a daily basis are things they are trying for the first time.

The purpose of a truly good education is to fire up the neural pathways and bring as many unique experiences as we can to the child – so that those neural pathways keep on running in a wide variety of directions for a lifetime of learning.

We hope those brave, creative children of today will become your passionate, inspired employees of tomorrow. They are coming, whether you are ready or not!

Lillian Croston, principal, Westholme School.