The ideal amount of busyness

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The ideal amount of busyness

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Parents often ask, how much is extracurricular, and how much is too much, and how do I balance that with my child's life in school in the academic program they're in. And my first piece of advice to parents would be look at your child. Look at how much you can't lay on but look rather at what your child can handle in a specific situation. If they're having a tough year academically, that's not the time to involve them in lots of extra curricular activities but to involve them in something that they will really enjoy after school, because that's important too. The other thing I would say is no child needs to be an expert at anything in elementary school. They need to explore lots of interests and lots of things, but they don't need to find their passion at 8-10-12. They need to find things they like. And sometimes they need to be encouraged not to give up if they find they don't like them. Often parents will put children in music lessons, and the child after 4-5 lessons wants to drop the instrument. Perseverance is an important quality that children need to have. So sometimes you need to encourage them to do the things that they don't like also, so they know they can put time into something that's hard for them, or something they don't like, and still feel more accomplished than they were when they started. All kinds of learning experiences can become positive if you go into with them the right aptitude and the right attitude. Parents always want balance. One of the things I think parents need to understand, and I say it to teachers and administrators as well, we have to learn to manage the imbalance in our lives, not always learn to strive for balance. Because there are going to be times when it tilts the scale in one direction or another. And knowing how to right that and get more balance is important. But I don't think many of our lives are completely in balance today.

Watch Reveta Bowers's video on The ideal amount of busyness...

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Reveta Bowers

Head of School

Now starting her forty-second year, Reveta Bowers is the Head of School at The Center for Early Education, an urban pre-school through 6th grade Los Angeles independent school with 538 students. Devoted to children and education, Ms. Bowers served and has served on a number of boards. She is currently on Board of Overseers of the UCLA Healthcare System, on the founding board of the African American Board Leadership Institute and the board of the FEDCO Charitable Foundation. She just completed serving as Chair Emeritus of the Board of Directors of the California Community Foundation. A past president and former secretary of The Educational Records Bureau Board, Reveta Bowers was also a member of the Advisory Board to the Klingenstein Center at Teacher’s College for ten years. She served as an outside director on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company for ten years and is a former member of the Harvard-Westlake, Brentwood and Windward School boards. Reveta was on the Council for Spiritual and Ethical Education board, and the boards of the National Association of Principals of Schools for Girls and the Country Day Headmaster’s Association. She served as a trustee and treasurer of the NAIS Board, and as past president of the California Association of Independent Schools. For the past thirteen years she has also been on the faculty of the NAIS Institute for New Heads where she serves as the Lead Faculty member. One of her proudest career moments was receiving the NAIS Diversity Leadership Award in 2009. She has had a long and rewarding career in independent schools and finds her work with organizations supporting education, students, parents, community and Board work to be continually inspiring.

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