Happy New Year and welcome to 2018! I hope all of our scholars and their families enjoyed their Winter Break and are excited about the year ahead.
It’s time for a fresh start and new beginnings. Our staff is ready to help all of our scholars set new goals, create action plans and succeed in their academics and other aspirations. I know that all of our Compass Charter Schools (CCS) staff are truly proud of our scholars’ hard work thus far and look forward to guiding them toward continued success.
Earlier this year we focused on our core values of achievement, respect, and teamwork. Our scholars shared their accomplishments with us and discussed the importance of respect and teamwork. This month, we focus on our core value of integrity. We’re encouraging scholars, learning coaches and staff to share what integrity means to them and why it’s important.
Having integrity is an essential part of a healthy life. It sets the foundation for our decisions, behavior, opportunities and overall success. In general, integrity means to be honest and demonstrate strong moral principles, which we demonstrate through our words, deeds, and actions. It’s important that we all understand the basic meaning of integrity so that we can behave honestly and ethically. Parents and school staff play a very important role in helping our youth learn about integrity. From a young age, many children learn the basics of integrity by telling the truth, giving to others and returning a lost item to its rightful owner. It’s important to remember that we all learn and refine our understanding of these basic aspects of integrity from the role models in our lives.
Integrity is a key part of our Compass community. Our teachers and staff are dedicated to demonstrating integrity toward each other, our scholars and learning coaches. This means that we are kind, honest, respectful and professional toward each other. Personally, I strive to model integrity by being transparent with our staff and families and by listening and acting on constructive feedback. I have created a few ways for stakeholders to receive important, honest, and direct information from me, including our quarterly Parent Town Hall meetings and our monthly Scholar Leadership Council and Staff Advisory Committee meetings, in addition to our bi-monthly Parent Advisory Council meetings. We have also established a number of board committees, which meet either monthly or bi-monthly, and are open to the public. My motto has always been, if I know, you should know. These are just a few of the ways I am trying to live and model integrity for our Compass family.
Our team is also dedicated to setting a good example for our scholars as they help them learn about the importance of integrity. Integrity cannot be accomplished without investment in ourselves and those around us. Our staff is fully invested in CCS and our scholars, and we will all continue to model integrity in all that we do, with every stakeholder we engage and interact with.
Throughout January, scholars are invited to wear the color blue every Friday and on field trips to represent our core value, integrity. To further this celebration, scholars are also encouraged to share stories and pictures about modeling integrity in our brief survey, and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We want to hear from all of our scholars to learn about what integrity means to them and celebrate this all-important core value. Being part of CCS is to be part of our Compass community, and our community prides itself on its integrity!
As R. Buckminster Fuller once said, “integrity is the essence of everything successful.” We are sharing the importance of integrity with our scholars in hopes of serving as their compass to guide them in the right direction. I strongly encourage all of our scholars to share what integrity means to them this month!
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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.