Making Durable Skills Durable: When Adults Shift the System
Part Six in A Six-Part Series in The Thriving School Brief
Creating systems that support students to develop Durable Skills.
When I first walked into New Britain High School, mornings were chaotic. More than 2,400 students entered through 510 exterior doors. Some arrived early and wandered the halls; others came rushing in just as the bell rang. Teachers started their days already tense, trying to corral energy that felt scattered before the first class even began.
A colleague and I were invited to help the leadership team address the problem of “morning entry.” At first, it sounded like a logistics issue: doors, supervision, safety. But what we uncovered together was something deeper: a design problem rooted in human need.
The real question became: How could we build mornings that reflected what we know about adolescent development — the need for autonomy, belonging, and purpose — while also meeting adults’ needs for calm, connection, and clarity?
So, over four summer days, a cross-section of staff came together — teachers, deans, campus-safety officers, and administrators. Our role was to facilitate, to help them listen to each other, surface shared goals, and design around the student experience. What they created was simple and profound:
Two points of entry to the school where students scanned their ID badges to enter.
Adults greeted students by name
Every young person had a place to belong before the bell, the gym, cafeteria, and media center, each offering a choice for students in how to best start their day.
The change was immediate.
“Almost immediate happiness—almost elation,” one teacher reflected. “The tone of your day was guaranteed.”
Morning entry became more than a logistics fix. It became a system for human development.
The Durable Skills Hidden in the System
When the system changed, the skills students practiced changed too. Without adding a single lesson or assembly, adolescents began building the same durable skills we’d been hoping to teach all along:
Self-Awareness: Choosing the space that fit their mood and energy — a quiet table, a basketball game, or a breakfast with friends.
Self-Management: Arriving on time, following routines, and using freedom responsibly.
Social Efficacy: Greeting peers, handling small conflicts, and taking shared responsibility for the tone of the shared space.
Academic Efficacy: Finishing homework in the media center, reviewing notes, or organizing materials before class.
These skills didn’t emerge because someone lectured about them. They emerged because the system made them possible.
When adults align routines and environments with developmental needs, they make self-regulation, belonging, and purpose the natural outcome of the day’s design.
What the Adults Learned
The work at New Britain was never just about students — it was about adults learning together, too.
In those design sessions, staff shared what mornings felt like from their perspective — the stress, the unpredictability, the longing for connection before correction. They found empathy for one another, then designed a structure everyone could own.
That process built more than a morning-entry plan; it built collective efficacy — the belief that, together, they could solve any problem. As one administrator put it, “We learned to never think all hope is lost. If we can build the system together, we can fix anything.”
That belief — that we can create change collectively — is the most durable skill of all.
Making Durable Skills Durable
Morning Entry at New Britain High School is a reminder that durable skills don’t live only in students. They live in systems — in the ways adults collaborate, design, and model the very skills they hope to see in young people.
When we shift systems to meet developmental needs, we don’t just improve routines. We create the conditions where adolescents and adults can thrive.
Because when we design for human development, durable skills stop being something we talk about and start being something we live.
