McKay School of Education > News > McKay Today Magazine > Message from the Dean

Message from the Dean

Greetings to all of you, our wonderful alumni,
students, faculty, staff, and friends.

Each person is born with divine potential to develop noble character. Each person’s lifelong journey is distinctive in length, settings, and challenges. Each person also has different resources to assist and guide his or her individual progress.
Teaching and learning begin as life begins. We learn from our environment, our parents, and from all whom we encounter. Blessed is the child who has nurturing, loving parents who carefully provide a foundation for life’s journey. Fortunate is the child who has kind relatives, friends, and neighbors who likewise offer support. Along with these natural networks, many children are blessed with professional educators who assist their learning with competent, nurturing teaching.
When a child is denied any of these resources, life’s journey becomes more difficult.
The ideal path toward fulfillment of a person’s potential would be a straight upward trajectory, constantly moving in the right direction. But life’s path has many ups and downs. This is to be expected, even through we strive for constancy; to be human is to be variable in our progress.
In recent years educators have focused on what is called the “achievement gap”—the difference between desired academic progress and actual performance. Even more critical is the potential for a gap in development of character. Kindness, gratitude, and gentleness must all be nurtured, along with a desire to serve. Unfortunately, far too many of us experience a widening gap between the preferred path to reaching our divine potential and our actual path. I believe professional educators can help individuals close some of the gap between potential and current performance.
The faculty and staff of the David O. McKay School of Education strive to prepare noble educators who will nurture the development of noble character and divine potential within the children they teach. We also seek to assist parents and families in strengthening children and youth in this challenging world in which they live and learn.
This issue of McKay Today shares specific concerns for children who have the obstacle of learning English as a second language. Articles present student needs, effective practices, and success stories. Please join the McKay School of Education in our desire to help all of God’s children reduce the gap between what they now are and what they may become.

Sincerely,

K. Richard Young