Welcome, June! Summer break and the last day of school are right around the corner. This school year was a great success for our scholars and we are continuing to plan for both Summer School and the upcoming 2018-19 school year, for both current and prospective scholars.
Time has really flown by as this is my last post of the school year. Wow! Next week is our last week of classes for scholars before summer break begins. Our scholars have truly worked so hard this year and have made some incredible accomplishments that you can read about here. Next week we will be hosting our eighth-grade promotion and 12th-grade graduation ceremonies in San Diego, Long Beach, and Fresno. I will be attending all of the ceremonies and look forward to celebrating our scholars’ achievements!
Last month, CCS recognized the fourth and fifth principles of the Energy Bus for Schools Leadership Journey (EBSLJ). Throughout May, our scholars, learning coaches, staff, and community shared ways to create positive energy by transforming the negative energy around them. This month, we are focusing on both the sixth principle: Love Your Passengers, and the seventh principle: Enjoy the Ride.
Throughout June we invite our Compass community to think about how they can show compassion, understanding, and love for everyone around them while having a lot of fun! Compass encourages all of its scholars to see the true gift in every person they meet. This outlook can help everyone better serve our school and our community. To help with this mission, CCS arranges several field trips and engagement activities each month to give scholars the opportunity to engage with others, show love and support for their community, and have fun both inside and outside the “classroom!”
Our staff is also dedicated to setting a good example for our scholars as they help them see the good in others and express compassion and understanding for everyone around them. We believe that modeling a positive outlook, by being good listeners, kind, open-minded, dedicated and caring are some of the best ways to help scholars, and each other, learn how to love others and have fun together. Our Counseling Services team provides a variety of resources and workshops to help middle school and high school scholars develop the social and emotional skills that they need to accept others differences and have a positive impact on our community. Our Special Education team helps scholars of all ages with learning or developmental disabilities gain the skills they need to express love, understanding, and trust for others. Teachers at Compass encourage scholars to love the passengers in their classes by using kind words when speaking to others, by celebrating their peers’ accomplishments and by politely asking questions to gain a better understanding of others. Our staff is fully invested in CCS and our scholars, and we will all continue to inspire our scholars to see the gift in others and demonstrate understanding while having fun and enjoying the ride!
I would like to invite everyone to think about what it means to show love for the passengers in their lives. Do you show compassion for others? Do you the celebrate and understand the unique gift in others? I believe that having compassion and patience are necessary skills to show love for others while having fun. Compassion is the ability to show kindness and understanding for others and their differences. It is about being open-minded … it is about being open and trying new things … it is about choosing to celebrate each other’s differences and uniting our differences to have a positive impact on the world!
To further this conversation, I encourage everyone to share stories and pictures about showing love for other passengers in their lives on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We want to hear from all of our community to learn why they believe showing compassion, patience and understanding are important and celebrate both of these key principles. Being part of CCS is to be part of our Compass community, and our community prides itself on meaningful choices and thoughtful decisions!
As the Dalai Lama once said, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” We are sharing the importance of showing love and compassion for others with our Compass Community in hopes of helping everyone make our world a better place! Thank you for a great year! Enjoy your summer, and I look forward to welcoming scholars, families and staff back to Compass this fall!
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Compass Charter Schools (CCS) is a WASC-accredited virtual charter school that serves families throughout California. Have a question about Compass Charter Schools? Explore our website, or feel free to contact me directly at jlewis@compasscharters.org or (818) 824-6233.