First Day Message from Andy: Let's Create a Community that Instills Belonging for All

 

There are many aspects of Marin Horizon School that make this place so special. Today I want to talk about the power of a community that instills a sense of belonging for all.

Our faculty and staff can set the tone for our community, yet it is the students who create and tend to it each year. Each of you, from kindergarten to 8th grade, plays an active role in creating our school community.

So, I challenge you: consider how you want to show up each day to set a tone of kindness, respect, collaboration, integrity, and perseverance.

 

 

There's an old idea — one the writer Robert Fulghum made famous in his essay “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” — that most of what we really need to know, we learned by the time we were five:

• Share what you have.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt someone — and mean it.
• Flush. 
• Wash your hands.
• Hold hands crossing the street.
• Look at the ordinary things around you like they're astonishing — because they are.

I don't think we outgrow those lessons in first grade, or fifth, or eighth. I think we just get better chances to practice them.

Sharing in eighth grade might not look like sharing your crayons anymore — it might look like allowing a classmate to speak up first; it might look like helping Joel carry equipment for an outing; it might look like electing someone else to be team captain.

Holding hands crossing the street might become looking out for a peer who's struggling with something you find easy, or asking someone to join you for lunch.

Looking at ordinary things like they're astonishing — that's just what a scientist does. What an artist does. What a genuinely curious person does for their whole life.

So, to our kindergarteners: you are not the “little kids” of this school. You are the ones who already know the most important things. The rest of us are just trying to remember them.

To our eighth graders: you are the leaders of the student body.

To all of our students: begin each day with an idea about how you will strengthen our student culture, and then take a moment each evening to reflect on whether you did so successfully.

If each of you does this, you will be amazed at what we can accomplish together.