September 13, 2026

The Space Between Us

WHAT

Some of the most important relationships in our lives depend on people seeing the same person from different angles.

A parent knows the child who wakes up worried in the middle of the night.

A teacher knows the child who lights up in discussion but goes quiet during independent work.

A coach knows the child who becomes a leader when the score is close.

A friend knows the version who is funny, daring, loyal, or unsure.

None of these views is complete.

But together, they begin to reveal something fuller.

This is one reason partnership matters so much in education. Not because parents and schools should always agree. Not because one side has the “real” picture and the other is missing it.

Partnership matters because children are too complex to be fully understood from a single vantage point.

SO WHAT

We often use the language of partnership when things are going well.

It is much harder—and much more meaningful—when perspectives differ.

A parent may see exhaustion where a teacher sees avoidance. A teacher may see growing independence where a parent sees a child who still needs more support. One adult may be focused on challenge; another may be focused on confidence. Both may be responding to something real.

The temptation in those moments is to decide who is right.

But perhaps the better question is:

What can each of us see that the other cannot?

That question changes the conversation.

It moves us from defending positions to building understanding.

It asks us to become curious before becoming certain.

And it reminds us that the goal is not for the adults to win an argument. The goal is to know the child more fully.

At Mack Boulder, one of our core beliefs is that gifted and twice-exceptional learners are known deeply. That kind of knowing cannot happen only at school.

Families carry years of history, pattern recognition, intuition, and love. Educators bring professional expertise, classroom context, developmental perspective, and the benefit of seeing children among peers.

The magic is not in choosing one over the other.

It is in the space between them.

NOW WHAT

Real partnership asks something of us.

It asks us to bring what we know without assuming we know everything.

It asks us to name concerns clearly without making them conclusions.

It asks us to listen for the possibility that another person is seeing something we have missed.

And sometimes it asks us to hold two truths at once.

A child can need more challenge and more support.

A child can be thriving in one environment and struggling in another.

A child can be independent and still need help.

A child can be extraordinary and unfinished.

Perhaps this is true far beyond schools.

The strongest communities may not be the ones where everyone sees things the same way.

They may be the ones where people trust one another enough to bring different perspectives into the same room—and remain curious long enough to discover something none of them could see alone.

The view from here:
Partnership is not seeing things the same way. It is believing that the space between our perspectives might help us see more.

The Alpine View

September 6, 2026

Before We Know Ourselves

WHAT

There are people in our lives who seem to see something in us before we can see it ourselves.

A teacher notices the way we think. A coach recognizes leadership we have not yet claimed. A friend sees courage beneath our uncertainty. A parent notices the fascination we keep returning to.

Sometimes they give language to something that, until then, has existed only as a feeling:

You have a gift for this.

Have you noticed how alive you become when…?

That question you just asked matters.

These moments can seem small. But I wonder if they are among the most consequential things human beings do for one another.

Perhaps we do not develop our identities entirely from the inside out.

Perhaps some part of becoming ourselves happens because somebody else was paying attention.

SO WHAT

We talk a great deal in education about knowing students. Usually, we mean knowing their readiness, interests, learning profiles, strengths, and challenges. All of that matters.

But being deeply known is something more.

It is the difference between collecting information about a person and becoming genuinely curious about them. What captures their attention? What gives them energy? What do they notice that others miss? Where do they become wonderfully complicated? What might be emerging in them that neither of you fully understands yet?

This matters especially during childhood, when young people are constantly gathering evidence about who they are.

Am I capable? Do my ideas matter? Am I strange? Do I belong here?

The people around them become mirrors.

A child repeatedly reflected back as difficult may eventually understand themselves as difficult. A child reflected back as curious may begin to protect and cultivate curiosity. A child whose intensity is treated only as a problem may learn to suppress it. A child whose intensity is also recognized as passion, depth, or possibility may learn something very different about themselves.

This is one reason one of the ideas we have been exploring at Mack Boulder is deceptively simple:

Gifted and twice-exceptional learners are known deeply.

That means understanding learners well enough to challenge and support them appropriately. But I think it also means refusing to reduce a human being to the most immediately visible version of themselves—a score, diagnosis, behavior, talent, struggle, or even a strength.

To know someone deeply is to remain interested in the person who is still becoming.

NOW WHAT

There is a reciprocity here.

We need people who know us. And we have the opportunity to be people who know others.

Teachers can do this for students. Parents can do it for children. Leaders can do it for colleagues. Friends can do it for friends.

Mostly, it requires attention.

Notice what someone returns to. Notice what gives them energy. Notice the questions they ask. Notice the contribution they make that nobody acknowledges. Notice the contradiction that makes them more interesting, not less.

And occasionally, say what you see.

Not as a verdict. As an invitation.

I noticed something about you…

Those six words might help another human being discover something about themselves.

Maybe that is one of the quiet ways we become who we are:

Someone sees us.

Someone names a possibility.

And eventually, we learn to see it too.

The view from here:
Before we can fully know ourselves, sometimes we need someone else to notice us first.

The Alpine View

What Are We Training Ourselves to Notice?

Dear Mack Community,

For 1,001 consecutive days, I kept a gratitude journal.

Every day, without exception, I stopped and recorded things for which I was grateful. Some were significant. Many were wonderfully ordinary: a conversation, a meal, a person, an opportunity, a moment I might otherwise have passed without noticing.

By the end of those 1,001 days, something felt different.

I cannot prove that I had literally rewired my brain. But it certainly felt as though I had retrained my attention. I had become better at noticing what was good.

And I increasingly wonder whether attention is one of the most important things we practice.

What

Human beings appear to have something psychologists call a negativity bias. Across many kinds of experiences, bad news tends to command our attention more readily than good news. Problems demand action. Threats are hard to ignore. One influential review of the research summarized the phenomenon rather memorably: “bad is stronger than good.”

From an evolutionary standpoint, that makes some sense. Missing the beautiful sunset probably did not endanger our ancestors. Missing the predator in the bushes might have.

But there is a cost.

If we are not intentional, our attention can become remarkably skilled at detecting what is wrong while becoming surprisingly poor at registering what is right.

Years ago, I decided to experiment with that idea in a slightly unusual way.

I began calling companies that probably received far more complaints than compliments simply to thank them.

One day, I called Georgia Power.

When the customer service representative asked how she could help me, I explained that nothing was wrong. My refrigerator was running. My air conditioning was working. The lights came on when I flipped the switches.

I just wanted to say thank you.

There was a pause.

She was so surprised by the call that she eventually asked whether I would repeat what I had said to her manager. Before long, I was sharing my gratitude with more of the customer service team.

The electricity had been working all along.

What changed was that I noticed it.

So What

Chip and Dan Heath describe a related idea in Switch. When we encounter a problem, our instinct is often to study what is broken. The Heath brothers suggest that we should also find the bright spots: look for places where things are already working and ask, What is happening there, and how can we do more of it?

That is not ignoring problems.

It is widening the field of vision.

Gratitude does something similar.

It does not ask us to pretend that everything is wonderful. Schools are messy human communities. Families experience hard things. People make mistakes. There are problems that deserve our attention and injustices that demand action.

Gratitude is not denial.

It is the discipline of refusing to let what is wrong become the only thing we can see.

And perhaps that is why gratitude can be practiced. Research on gratitude journaling suggests that deliberately naming what we appreciate can shift attention and improve aspects of emotional well-being over time.

The practice begins to train a different question:

Not only, What went wrong today?

But also, What went right that I might otherwise have missed?

Now What

This matters in schools because there are bright spots everywhere.

A student who included someone at recess.

A teacher who noticed the child who needed a little more time.

A parent who extended grace.

A colleague who quietly solved a problem before anyone else knew there was one.

A child who tried again.

A classroom filled with laughter.

Hundreds of small things happen every day that make a community work. Most will never generate an email, a phone call, or a meeting.

Maybe that is precisely why we should train ourselves to notice them.

What if, this week, we deliberately searched for a bright spot?

What is working?

Who made something better?

What ordinary thing deserves to become visible because we chose to say thank you?

The problems will still be there. We will attend to them.

But perhaps gratitude helps us see the whole landscape.

For 1,001 days, my journal asked me to practice noticing.

Years later, I still believe the repetitions mattered.

Because what we repeatedly pay attention to has a way of shaping what we see.

And sometimes the bright side was there all along.

We simply needed to turn toward it.

With appreciation,

Bo

P.S. About The Alpine View: Each Sunday evening, I use this space to explore an idea connected to learning, leadership, childhood, or community through a What, So What, Now What lens. My hope is to offer something worth thinking about, talking about, and perhaps passing along.

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The Alpine View

August 23, 2026

Stay Curious

Dear Mack Community,

A close friend of mine, Grant Lichtman, wrote a line years ago in The Falconer that has stayed with me:

“Questions are the waypoints on the path to wisdom.”

I love that image. A waypoint does not tell us we have arrived. It helps us locate ourselves, choose a direction, and continue the journey.

Perhaps wisdom requires us to become more curious and a little less certain.

What

Curiosity is deeply human. Watch a young child for five minutes and you will see evidence everywhere: Why? How? What if? What’s that?

But I do not think curiosity is simply something we either possess or lack. Curiosity can be developed. Like a muscle, it grows stronger when exercised and weaker when neglected. We can nurture habits of wondering, questioning, investigating, and reconsidering.

At Mack Morning Meeting this past Wednesday, I spoke with our students about one of the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile attributes: Inquirer. The IB describes inquirers as people who nurture their curiosity and develop the skills needed for inquiry and research.

I am especially drawn to that word: nurture.

We are not merely hoping our students remain curious. We are intentionally helping them become more curious.

So What

Every time we encounter something we do not understand, we face a small but consequential choice:

We can fill the gap with an assumption, or we can fill the gap with a question.

Someone sends an email that lands strangely. A child tells us part of a story. A colleague makes a decision we do not understand. Our brains are remarkably efficient at constructing explanations, and we can move quickly from incomplete information to certainty.

Sometimes we are right.

But certainty can arrive remarkably quickly for something we have not yet investigated.

There is a memorable scene in Ted Lasso built around the idea “Be curious, not judgmental.” Ted’s opponent believes he understands him. What he fails to do is ask the question that might have changed his entire assessment: Have you played much darts, Ted?

Judgment closes a loop. Curiosity opens one.

Brené Brown has written about the courage required for genuine curiosity because curiosity asks us to tolerate uncertainty. It requires admitting that there may be something we do not yet understand.

That matters enormously in schools, and probably everywhere else human beings gather. Communication is incomplete. Perspectives differ. Context matters. If we are not careful, we can become remarkably efficient storytellers about one another, filling in missing details and assigning motives before we have enough information to know whether our stories are true.

Curiosity interrupts that process.

It allows us to say:

There may be something here I do not yet understand.

Now What

If curiosity can be strengthened, we need repetitions.

Before responding: What question could I ask first?

When we feel certain about someone else’s motives: What else might be true?

When we hear one version of an event: Whose perspective have I not yet heard?

And perhaps the hardest one:

What would I ask if my goal were understanding rather than being right?

For Mack Kids, these habits sit at the heart of inquiry-based learning. We want students to develop knowledge, certainly. But we also want them to notice what they do not know, formulate worthwhile questions, revise their thinking, and remain intellectually alive.

The challenge may be even greater for adults. Experience gives us expertise, but expertise can tempt us toward certainty. The discipline is to know a great deal and remain genuinely curious anyway.

One of our Mack Admin Team norms is Stay Curious.

I increasingly think that is more than a professional norm. It is a way of learning, leading, parenting, disagreeing, and living alongside people whose stories we can never completely know.

Questions may indeed be the waypoints on the path to wisdom.

Perhaps our work is to keep exercising the muscle, asking the next question, and staying curious.

With curiosity,

Bo

P.S. About The Alpine View: Each Sunday evening, I use this space to explore an idea connected to learning, leadership, childhood, or community through a What, So What, Now What lens. My hope is to offer something worth thinking about, talking about, and perhaps passing along.