Wowzers...that's a whopper of a title, right? Nothing else felt quite right when we were thinking about this post. Let us explain how we got here. 

A couple of days ago, we got a Facebook suggestion for a video the Facebook algorithm we may enjoy. We could tell by the thumbnail made it apparent that it was somehow related to parenting and was posted by a page that we’d never heard of before, but intrigued we decided to give the video a look-see.  It hadn’t played for more than a minute when we realized it wasn’t our cup of tea. It showed a Mom pulling up to school drop off and losing her mind when her child can’t jump out of the car. He has taken his shoes off. The mom has a meltdown. First, we want to be clear; we understand that parents are first and foremost, human beings, they aren’t superheroes or feelingless creatures who are unfazed by everything they encountered. However, we can’t imagine screeching like a wounded owl because our child isn’t flying out of the car at school drop off, under the headlines, “End of School Drop Off Be Like” We completely missed the humor. We took a quick scan through the comments and noticed another mom who seemed to have the same reaction. She wrote, “I don’t get it I was a mom of three, and I don’t remember yelling and screaming like that especially trying to get out of the car nice” Then, we noticed a nasty clapback that the page owner posted in response. She wrote,

(BPT) - Building the confidence to try, experiment and keep going even when things get hard is a critical part of the educational process. Confidence comes more naturally to some students than others, yet new research shows that confidence levels today impact learning outcomes for students.
Three-quarters of teachers say anxiety and lack of confidence hinder learning among their students, according to the Confidence in Learning Poll conducted by Harris Insights and Analytics on behalf of LEGO Education. Two-thirds of parents agree their children are not more confident than their peers or themselves at that age.
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This is impacting students' education in many ways, particularly in the important STEAM subjects (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics). The poll found fewer than one in five students is “very confident” when it comes to learning STEAM, while only one in three teachers says their students are more confident in STEAM subjects compared to five years ago.
As we think about preparing students for the future workforce, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in new jobs that don't yet exist, according to the World Economic Forum. This makes confidence in STEAM especially important as we prepare kids for unknown needs.