4/28/25 Volume 6.35

This Week at South - 6.35: Learning and Fragile Systems

Greetings South Students, Parents, Staff, and Community Members,

Past issues of this newsletter are available at the following link: TWaS Archive. 

TWaS is also sent via Canvas Messenger and linked to my Canvas Module for all students and families to access, and shared on South’s FB page.

Part I: The News

Content Disclaimer: I am not omniscient. Don’t see your event or results in the newsletter below? I rely on parents, coaches, and others to send me information to include in the newsletter. Feel free to share positive news and results anytime via my email. 

This Week’s Activities: Track and Soccer are now outside! Schedule HERE.

Senior Parents: Help is need for Senior Fun Day on Wednesday: https://bit.ly/4lS1wlR

School Store Help Needed: Please sign up here: https://bit.ly/4edAiBZ

This Week’s Modified Bell Schedule for Wednesday Crossover Assembly: 

Summer School Information and Form: South High School will be offering on-site summer school. Please see the following form for information.  PLEASE NOTE: There will be no credit recovery class at South next year. So, summer school is every student’s best option to stay on track to graduate. Summer school will run 9 days at South and allow students to recover necessary graduation credit.

Elite College Night - Service HS, Wednesday: Juniors (and Sophomores)- Are you interested in exploring postsecondary opportunities? Students and their families are invited to attend the Elite College Night at the Service High School Theater on Wednesday, April 30 at 7:30pm to learn about the college admissions process and meet representatives from the following schools:  Cal Tech, Columbia, MIT, Vanderbilt, U Chicago, U Washington St. Louis, Case Western, and U Wisconsin, Madison.  Details on the following Flyer.

Columbia, Vanderbilt, Caltech, WashU & MIT will be at South on Thursday, May 1st at 2:30 in room H204. Sign up with Ms. Miller in H205 for a pass if you are interested in hearing more from school representatives.  Email: miller_sara@asdk12.org with questions.

New Elective Course for Sophomores: Navigating Careers in Care is a year-long exploration into the diverse and impactful world of health sciences, offering students a comprehensive introduction to the many pathways in health care and social services. Through engaging, hands-on activities and interactive lessons, students will delve into topics such as disease prevention, wellness dimensions, patient care, and the roles of professionals in allied health, nursing, medicine, and public health. 

Senior Information: We are maintaining an Information for Seniors page on our website dedicated to the Senior Timeline. That can be found here: https://www.asdk12.org/domain/6354. 

South Soccer - Senior Night Wednesday: Varsity Boys Soccer defeated Bartlett last Thursday, 10-0. Goals were scored by Dawit Hoffman (3), Owen Brown (2), Declan Priddy (1), Randell Albeza (1), Robert Marshall (1), Peter May (1), and Andrew Marshall (1). Their next game is Tuesday, April 29th at West High School, 7:30pm.

South Anchorage High School will be recognizing their senior soccer players from both the Boys' and Girls' programs on Wednesday, April 30th at 7pm. Help us celebrate our seniors on home turf as they take on the Chugiak Mustangs (Girls - 5:30pm/Boys - 7:30pm). Go Wolverines!

South Baseball: South baseball picked up three wins this week, making them 8-0 for the year.  David Feigner was fantastic on the mound against Dimond, striking out 11 in 5 innings, Grayson Stanek picked up his first win of the season against East. 

Peter Cornelius and Jack Zuspan combined for 11 strikeouts against Lathrop.

This week South plays Eagle River on Wednesday at Bartlett 6:30 pm and has a double header Saturday vs West and Chugiak, first game starts at 12:30 pm at Bartlett. All Varsity Games are streamed free of charge live on the GameChanger App. Search South Anchorage Varsity Wolverines to watch the action. 

PTSO Board Election Information: It is hard to believe we have about a month left of this school year!! Where has the time gone? The PTSO Board would like to first thank you all for becoming a member this year and the generous donations we have received, along with some great business partnerships. 

Each board position (President, VP, Treasurer, Secretary, Membership) has a ONE YEAR term limit.  Currently, ALL board seats are up for GRABS. Please submit any names or questions to (Courtney Luff: cluff521@gmail.com) by Thursday May 4th.  We will submit your name for elections at our LAST PTSO meeting for this school year, which is Thursday, May 8th, at 6:00pm at Raven’s Ring Brewery. Board members will be voted on that night.  

Part II: What I’ve Learned

Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes a fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them. You want to be the fire and wish for the wind. 

These are the opening lines of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder. The author uses a three-part structure to explain how systems fail, stay the same, or get stronger on a continuum from fragile to robust to antifragile. He uses wide ranging examples, and his model provides a useful theory for testing the strength of any system. 

To start, here are some example triads (fragile-robust-antifragile) from the book with slight modifications:

This continuum can be applied to just about any area of life, including exercise, investing, philosophy and others. For a full list see pages 23-27 in the book or search “antifragile triads.” This week, I want to apply his model to the current disorder and chaos affecting public education. This will build on the second row of the table above.

Classrooms work best when they are funded well enough to allow teachers to adapt to students’ learning needs. This is why honors seminars at colleges are made up of a single professor and just enough students to fit at a single conference table. The instructional mode is conversational, involves asking and answering lots of substantive questions, and many times students prepare for the discussion by writing about a theme or topic. Students may even be responsible for teaching a subtopic with the professor/teacher serving as a facilitator or guide to fill in knowledge gaps as they arise during interactions in class. 

Small class instruction is a robust model as long as the size of the class accommodates interaction and adaptation as part of the instructional process. It is even better if students take on an active role in their own learning under the close supervision of a teacher who can provide timely feedback. The model might be characterized by the following, cyclical process: practice under expert supervision, fail small, adjust, practice more. 

On the opposite end is the lecture hall containing a professor and perhaps 350 students. The instructional mode is lecture. Students take copious notes, and read and re-read the textbook. Most assignments involve multiple choice, there is very little writing and speaking, and students play a much more passive role during class time. The subtle cues that signal misunderstanding go unnoticed. The classroom interaction is one-way and linear and cannot accommodate quick pauses for clarification or attempts to explain a concept in a different way. 

Lectures or large-class-instruction is a fragile model. The fragility occurs when a student’s ability or current understanding is inadequate to keep up with the information presented. It breaks because students have far less interaction with those who can help close learning gaps when they occur. Additional help is often outside of the instructional process, at a different place and time, and not done by the teacher. Feedback is not in real time, and students play a more passive role. 

You can probably anticipate where I am headed with this argument. Our classrooms are faced with becoming like large lecture halls as our class sizes are forcing us to become more efficient.

Clearly, the seminar is more interactive and contains a higher degree of flexibility. If one or two students struggle, it is easy to notice since the group is smaller. This means the rest of the group can quickly adapt, share their insight and learning strategies, and the whole group can move forward together. 

In the lecture hall this is difficult or impossible. Since students do not have much time to react or interact, the confusion and frustration remains silent and unseen. Since efficiency is the priority, the system does not adapt to anomalies in students’ learning. As a result, the student has to rely on another resource outside of class, get tutoring, or attend office hours, which are limited and may conflict with other obligations. It is fragile because it is inflexible to differences in ability and is not designed to address differences in students’ schema or background knowledge.

In this kind of system, students who possess the most self-advocacy, self-control, and self-motivation will be more successful. Better yet, a student who likes to read, who can find ways to enjoy school work beyond the classroom and who has the quiet time, space, and resources to focus will be at a great advantage. In this sense, learning does not have to be confined to a classroom. This is antifragile. It is highly adaptable, does not depend on others, and can adapt based on a student’s needs or interests. It is also based on a strong sense of self-efficacy, independence, and knowing how to ask good questions and reflect. This is the path of the auto-didact. It is almost unassailable. 

As an illustration, readers of a certain age will remember the scene from Good Will Hunting when Will faces down an arrogant Harvard student in the pub, and tells him, ”You dropped a 150 grand on an education you coulda’ got for a dollar fifty in late fees at the public library.” The implied argument in Will’s observation is that you can learn without external structures. This is antifragile. In fact, Will has learned a lot from real life and from books. He is an exemplar of antifragile learning in the table at the top.

Real life, a group of curious peers, and access to books, paper, and pens is the most antifragile approach to learning when classroom settings favor efficiency and therefore become more fragile. Fragility in this case means the system is rigid and prone to shatter. When classrooms are hyper-efficient and fragile, a student can still thrive if they can find the means to seek knowledge outside of the formal system. The opposite is also true. The unmotivated, incurious, passive student who might otherwise be moved to productivity by a group of peers and a teacher in a classroom will become static or fall behind in a system that is forced to the absolute limit of efficiency. 

So, this begs the question: does the average 14-18 year old, left more or less to their own devices for learning, spend their time doing so? And if so, do they build the kind of critical thinking, reading, writing, speaking, questioning, and collaborative skills necessary for success in most social groups and occupations? 

Right now, our schools are faced with becoming much more like the lecture hall than the seminar. They are becoming more fragile because class sizes will be large, there will be less room to move and collaborate in classrooms, teachers will have less time to interact with individuals and small groups, and more communication will be one-way. The degree to which schools, teachers, and support staff can adapt to students’ learning needs is going to be compromised. How close we come to breaking will depend on how well students adapt to the demands placed on them when teachers are no longer available to respond to their confusion and frustration at the point where it happens.

Our increased fragility will demand each student's need for an antifragile approach to learning. More of the responsibility for learning will naturally fall on the student and the systems outside of the classroom. Instruction will have to become more efficient. There will be less time to discuss topics in-depth, to write at length, and to practice. There will be less access to science labs and other materials that are necessary to support learning. 

Furthermore, the flexibility that used to allow students to schedule classes that adapted to demands outside of school will be gone. Whether the class meets in the morning or afternoon and whether there is more than one section of a given class remains uncertain. 

So, if we must be the fire and wish for the wind amidst this chaos, it is time for students to get a library card, find a quiet space, and seek out others who share an interest in asking good questions, seeking answers, and continually refining their understanding. 

For our part, we will continue to set expectations for learning, provide opportunities to practice, give support to the degree we can, and encourage students to engage with the content.