Convocation 2024: A Celebration of Community and Kindness

FWCD celebrated Convocation 2024 today, September 6. The morning program welcomed Falcons back in the Sid W. Richardson Round Gym to celebrate as a school and kick off the 2024-25 school year! Senior students walking into the gym with their kindergarten buddies signaled the event’s beginning. It was the premier program for the new sound system that FWCD’s Parent Faculty Association purchased for the School, and the sound was crystal clear for all in the room. 

The event began with Senior Cheerleaders Madeline Mehall and Vivian Richey leading a fun F-W-C-D cheer, building from a whisper to an all-out roar. The energy was electric!

Upper School Student Body President Chappell Carter ’25 shared a heartfelt message about the power of kindness. “FWCD students are hard workers. Whether we are on the field, in the classroom, or on the stage, our grit and tenacity are unmatched. We work as a team toward our goals. We handle all of our daily interactions with kindness and respect,” he said. The amount of smiling faces and kind words I heard between students and community members [during the first weeks of school] made me happy. It had me thinking, that out of all the core values, kindness has to be my favorite. Nothing beats someone helping you out in your time of need or holding the door open to you or just being nice. There’s so much gratitude one feels with being kind.”

Head of School Eric Lombardi warmly welcomed Falcons, from kindergarten students and faculty attending their first all-school assembly to seniors experiencing their next to last one. He echoed Carter’s words, sharing a powerful phrase: Celebrate Kindness, Interrupt Unkindness. “Maybe you have seen these words around campus,” he said. I hope you stop and think when you see them. Lombardi encouraged everyone to recognize acts of kindness, saying, “It’s as simple as saying ‘thank you’ when someone is kind to you.” 

He then emphasized the importance of another core value, courage, when interrupting, or standing up against, unkindness. To illustrate kindness and unkindness, Carter and Student Council Vice President Nara Acuna Guba ’25 role-played different interactions asking the audience to deem them kind or unkind. 

The program ended on a high note with an entertaining game, “Send Me a Falcon,” emceed by Fourth Grade Teacher and Varsity Cheer Coach Courtney Corbeille Krauss ’06. Students rushed to match Krauss’s fun Falcon descriptions to earn a point for their team. She was seeking Falcons who were twins, could speak multiple languages, could name the last 10 presidents, could recite the alphabet backward, could spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and a few more. The ultimate victor: Quad W. 

The morning was filled with togetherness, celebration, laughter and a shared commitment to kindness.