October is Acceptance!

This month we celebrate and practice ACCEPTANCE!

  • Acceptance is the willingness to embrace feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own.
  • Acceptance is the ability to experience or survive something unpleasant.
  • Acceptance is the willingness to tolerate a difficult or unpleasant situation.
  • We all have the human need and right to be accepted.

Here is a recording introducing and pronouncing Duncan Tonatiuh.

Sylvia Mendez (left), 73, talks to her sister Sandra Mendez Duran (right), 59, about Mendez v. Westminster, their family’s 1945 lawsuit that won Mexican-American children the right to attend white schools. Listen to them speak here, Story Corps – Mendez.

What surprised you about this story?

September is Courage!

Welcome back to an exciting school year! This year’s character education is bursting with color.

September is scarlet red for COURAGE. Starting a new year with new teachers, new classmates and new expectations takes courage. Being brave, making sacrifices, facing fears, admitting mistakes are all ways to show courage.

At our assembly, we learned how ordinary people found the courage to do extraordinary things. Welles Crowther, The Man in the Red Bandanna, was one of many amazing people who were courageous on September 11, 2001.

We all might not be able to be as courageous as Welles, but we can practice small acts of courage. Remember Mrs. King’s warrior words, “I have the power and the courage to be a positive, proactive upstander.” Will you stand up for yourself, stand up for others, make a new friend, try out for a team, develop a skill, audition for a play, speak in front of an audience, ask for help, treat failures as opportunities to grow, etc.?

Post a comment to our class blog on how you will show courage this year.