It has become increasingly common to hear that today’s students are more anxious than ever. Schools have responded in many thoughtful ways: wellness initiatives, counseling services, mindfulness activities, social-emotional learning, and greater awareness of mental health.

These are important developments.

But I sometimes wonder if we’ve overlooked something equally important.

Resilience.

Not resilience as a slogan. Not telling students to “toughen up.” Rather, resilience as a skill that must be intentionally developed through experience.

The challenge is that resilience cannot grow in environments where every mistake feels permanent, every assignment is judged, and every learning experience is measured against everyone else.

Students only take healthy risks when they believe it is safe to do so.

That safety isn’t about lowering expectations or removing challenges. It is about knowing that mistakes will not define them.

When students feel psychologically safe, they ask questions they aren’t sure they should know. They attempt difficult problems before they know the answer. They revise their work without shame. They recover from setbacks because setbacks are treated as part of learning rather than evidence of inadequacy.

Ironically, the students who appear the most anxious are often the ones who have learned that mistakes are dangerous.

Not because anyone intended it that way—but because they have spent years in systems where nearly every learning experience carries a grade, a ranking, or a comparison.

Eventually, the safest strategy becomes avoiding challenge altogether.

Traditional schools often operate under the assumption that more assessment produces better learning.

But students don’t experience assessment as neutral.

They experience it as judgment.

When every worksheet, quiz, homework assignment, discussion, project, and exam contributes to an evaluation, students gradually become less interested in learning and more interested in avoiding failure.

The focus quietly shifts.

Instead of asking, “What can I learn?”

Students begin asking, “Can I succeed without looking foolish?”

Those are very different questions.

One produces curiosity.

The other produces anxiety.

At The Leelanau School, we intentionally celebrate students for doing hard things.

Not because they always succeed.

Because they try.

We believe setbacks are not interruptions to learning; they are the very mechanism through which learning happens.

A project that doesn’t work.

A difficult conversation.

An essay that requires multiple revisions.

A math concept that finally makes sense after several attempts.

These aren’t failures.

They’re rungs on the ladder.

Each successful recovery from a small challenge builds confidence for the next, slightly larger challenge.

Over time, something remarkable happens.

Students stop asking whether something is “too hard.”

They begin asking how they might approach it differently.

That is resilience.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts a school can offer isn’t simply knowledge.

It is the confidence that comes from discovering, over and over again, “I can do things I once thought I couldn’t.”

That realization changes students.

Not because life becomes easier.

But because they begin to trust themselves when life becomes difficult.

And that may be one of the most powerful antidotes to school-based anxiety we can provide.

Resilience is rarely built during life’s biggest moments.

It is built in hundreds of ordinary ones—in classrooms where curiosity matters more than perfection, where mistakes are expected rather than feared, and where students are known for who they are becoming, not simply for how they performed today.

When schools create those conditions, they aren’t merely reducing anxiety.

They are preparing young people for a lifetime of learning, adapting, and growing.

If your child has become increasingly anxious about school, it may be worth asking a different question.

Not, “Why can’t my child handle this?”

But, “What kind of learning environment would help my child discover they can?”

Resilience doesn’t emerge because we tell young people to be stronger.

It develops when they are trusted with meaningful challenges, supported through inevitable setbacks, and given the opportunity to experience the quiet confidence that comes from overcoming something they once believed was beyond them.

At The Leelanau School, we believe education should do more than prepare students for the next test or the next transcript. It should prepare students for life. That means creating a community where young people are encouraged to take intellectual risks, where mistakes are treated as an essential part of the learning process, and where doing hard things is celebrated.

If your student has begun to lose confidence—not because they lack ability, but because school has become a place of pressure rather than possibility—we would welcome the opportunity to share a different vision of education.

Sometimes changing a student’s future begins with changing the environment in which they are asked to learn.