"Our vision is to create inquisitive and passionate problem solvers by teaching the whole child to become positive contributors to our community."
This month, I have a pretty short post to share about how the vision came to life in Stout Nation:
Each February, we do a Singing Valentine's fundraiser with our choir where they group up into teams of 9-12 students, dress in their choir uniforms and add anything that makes it look like a Valentine's Day explosion, and sing in classrooms throughout the school. When I inherited this fundraiser, I had no idea how to make it happen, but through some serious learning reflections it's a pretty smooth operation by now.
On Delivery Day (Valentine's Day, this year), the students showed up, got with their teams, and went to WORK. It was incredibly breathtaking to look at the teams that came together to figure out a group uniform and outfits, but what I was truly grateful to observe was what my students did for a student who didn't have a single piece of Valentine's Flair: they took their extra flair and shared it with him. By the time he was finished delivering valentines to the school, the young man who started with a simple pair of shorts and a shirt (he forgot to wear his choir uniform, even!) was decked out in ginormous pink glasses, had a construction paper bow tie, was wearing a crazy pink hat, had beaded necklaces wrapped around him, and had paper hearts taped to his shorts.
If that's not creating positive contributors to the community, I don't know what is.