Lower School Kicks Off Monday Meetings
With a new building comes new traditions. Since January, Lower School students have gathered on the first Monday of the month for a new get-together called Monday Meeting. A bit more serious in tone and shorter than Friday assemblies, the meeting serves to build community by bringing everyone together and setting a goal for the month.
In January, on the very first day in the new building, Head of Lower School Trey Blair talked about resolutions and how we typically start the new year making new resolutions. He tasked the students with different resolutions for the month. Kindergarten students were asked to make a new friend, whether it was at FWCD or not, first and second graders were encouraged to learn something new, and third and fourth graders had to show an act of leadership. Once they completed their tasks, they were asked to write it on a piece of paper and put it on Blair’s desk. On Monday, February 3, at the second Monday Meeting, most of the students raised their hands, saying they fulfilled their resolutions.
What is February’s task? To serve others in our FWCD community. Meredith Hudgens Cunningham ’04, Assistant Head of Lower School, gave this month’s task and asked students to find ways to serve others, whether it’s a classmate, teacher or someone else on campus. She then asked for examples of ways to serve others before sharing a couple of quotes on service and dismissing everyone to start their day.
The idea for Monday Meeting comes from Blair. The idea gathered steam a few years ago when there were discussions about the new building and the potential of the students gathering around the storybook tree.
“I have long wanted to create some kind of separate, singularly focused gathering,” Blair said. “With the new building, I wanted to create new habits, new traditions, to really put our hands on the culture and shape it. So I wanted to create something that would help build on that. Part of our job is to really educate students on the core values. Sometimes I look at myself as the lead teacher on the core values piece since I am not in the classroom in front of the students each day.”
Each Monday Meeting focuses on one lesson and just one person is leading. Blair is happy the first two meetings have gone as planned and already has an idea of what Monday Meetings could be in the future. So far, the students have given positive feedback about the meetings. His hope is that these monthly meetings form a new tradition that will stay around for a while, just like Friday assemblies.
