The staff and students are checking in this year with hour long assemblies focused on The Power of Language. Through small and large group activities we are exploring the impact of words and our mindfulness of how we use words. Here is some background for our assembly:

We are holding these assemblies in response to a survey from November that we held where we asked students to share what areas of our school culture and climate we should focus on together to improve. Our students agreed overwhelmingly to two areas of need:

1) more chances to interact between grade levels and

2) as a school to address the way people are carelessly using language at school and its harmful 

• To encourage more interaction between grade levels we have encouraged the forming of clubs (we now have 12 clubs), events through the student council, full school field trips, and continued to offer opportunities like Student Leadership for our students to get involved in mixed grade level groups and represent their school. We will continue to seek new opportunities for students to interact together.
• To encourage carefulness in our language and interaction we are holding these assemblies. We know that one assembly, or even three, cannot change the behavior of our kids but we are hopeful that inviting students into the conversation and giving them the tools to know how to respond will help them to feel empowered to stand up for continued growth of our supportive student culture. Our students have been recognized this year as noticeably considerate and our campus as a safe place, especially as compared to other middle school experiences. Even so, we can always improve.

We hope that you will be aware of the school discussion and connect your conversations at home with our current focus at school. Some questions you can ask to connect are:

• What are the main ways that language is used inappropriately at school?
• What makes a comment inappropriate? How are the virtues involved in this thought process?
• Have you been involved in inappropriate language?
• How can you be involved in supporting a caring culture at IVA?