When Someone Is Watching

When someone is watching. 

I kept thinking about how I wanted to title this blog post.  I was trying to get the essence of my thoughts into a title that encapsulated it all. 

When someone is watching… 

It is easy to do my homework.  It is easy to practice my trumpet.  It is easy to clean up my room.  It is easy to take out the trash.  It is easy to be nice to my sister.  It is easy to STAND UP for someone.

At lunch today, I had quick conversation with our 5^th and 6^th grade students about this.  Hopefully you (and our students) feel the deep belief we have about our Stand Up culture.  It truly permeates everything we do!  When I meet with students, the message will always come back to this philosophy…this culture of caring.  Our teachers use this language to reinforce our feeling that “We are family” at CW.  We take care of each other.  Our PTO uses this language to reinforce their efforts to support our culture of thinking.

Many of them even are beginning to use the language when interacting with each other.  Most importantly, our students use this language through their actions.  I have seen students Stand Up for each other through even the simplest ways like helping a student pick up her books that she dropped.

The conversation at lunch today centered on the idea of Standing Up when NO ONE is watching.  It is easy to do the right thing and help a peer pick up their dropped books when a teacher or counselor is standing by.  The challenge today was about Standing Up when no one is near by…when no one is watching.  We are truly coming together as a school community that Stands Up for one another because it is in the fabric of our being…it is who we are.  We are CW.  We are Family.

Standing Up at CW doesn’t mean we have to be super heroes and rescue the world. 

It means we Stand Up at the smallest moments…times when students and staff may not even recognize the power of those moments.  Put together over and over, these actions create a united culture of caring that allows students to thrive.

I am proud to be the principal of a school that has students creating moment after moment of validation of a culture of caring.