Convocation 2023-24: Celebrate Kindness and Interrupt Unkindness

In my career, I have known six schools well. None of them has done a better job than we do at FWCD in instilling and invoking the core values. 

Those values often get invoked in our biggest events: from convocation to graduation. With convocation, I appreciate the opportunity to be in full community, with all of our K-12 students and faculty every year officially and formally starting the school year. At 2023-24’s convocation, I enjoyed being joined by Student Council President Walker Gaines ’24. He and I both talked about the core value of kindness. 

Schools benefit from the simple invocation of a clear concept. We benefit further from repetition and doubling down on that concept. The student body will hear and see more in 2023-24 of the goal Walker and I were setting for our community: “Celebrate Kindness and Interrupt Unkindness.” We cannot pretend that mean things will not be said and done by members of our community this year, but we can commit to addressing those mean moments, not by tattling, but by addressing the person who veered from the norm we want to embrace. In our eagerness to partner with you as families, we will all benefit from our students, your children, regularly hearing and being encouraged to “Celebrate Kindness” and “Interrupt Unkindness.” Please join us as adults in our students’ lives invoking the expression and the concept.