I\u2019m not exactly a courageous person.<\/p>\n
I distinctly remember the fear that crawled up my spine when my mom asked me to get something from the basement as a kid. Our below-ground \u201cdungeon\u201d was unfinished, sported a low ceiling, limited lighting, only two half windows, and a number of resident spiders who felt right at home in their corners. As a creative person, I can see now that my imagination often got the best of me in those moments \u2014 I was confident there was someone hiding behind one of the posts<\/strong><\/span> that interrupted my view of the whole room.<\/p>\n I can imagine the exasperation of my mom as I begged not to have to run down to grab her something needed for that night\u2019s meal.<\/p>\n Me: \u201cCan Chrissie do it?\u201d<\/em> (My younger sister was much braver than I)<\/p>\n Mom: \u201cIt\u2019s not a big deal. Suck it up and be a man.\u201d<\/em>(My mother was a strong believer in no-nonsense, tough parenting \u2014 and apparently didn\u2019t buy into gender stereotypes either).<\/p>\n So, I would \u201csuck it up,\u201d take a deep breath, race down the stairs, grab what was needed, and race back up the stairs \u2014 checking behind me the whole time in case someone was following close behind.<\/p>\n Fast forward way too many years, and I\u2019m now the marketing coordinator at ACS. My main task is to implement and manage the brand of our school (which, I\u2019ll throw in, is far more than just colours and fonts). A main component of our brand is what we call \u201cpersonality words.\u201d These six words focus the \u201chow\u201d of what we do. How do we education children? How do we communicate with parents? How do we present our school to the outside world? The answer is that in every activity and task we are:<\/p>\n Innovative<\/strong><\/span> A few of these personality words come naturally to me. Others not so much. For example, (you saw it coming didn\u2019t you?)\u2026courageous.<\/p>\n I might appear to be all muscle (thanks to my mom\u2019s sincere effort to toughen me up), but it\u2019s not entirely genuine.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s why courageous<\/em> has stood out to me as the ACS \u201cpersonality word of the year.\u201d Let me explain.<\/p>\n When Maury Thiessen moved from the grade 5 classroom at the elementary that he inhabited for 32 years to start fresh at a new campus, in a new room, with new staff mates, to help start the new grade 5 program <\/strong><\/span>at the middle \u2014 he was courageous!<\/p>\n When Amy Morrow and the other grade 6 teachers realized they would have to completely rethink Market Day and took on creating an online store with their students, they were courageous!<\/p>\n When Corinna Richmond started her first year as a teacher in September, during a pandemic, knowing she would need to support her grade 5 students and their parents with the added stress this year would bring \u2014 she was courageous!<\/p>\n When Kristin Schut (shameless plug for my son\u2019s teacher this year) had to live in the uncertainty of not knowing when she (and the other grade 7-8 teachers) would move into the new middle school classrooms \u2014 she was courageous!<\/p>\n When (insert the names of every educational assistant) dons their cloth mask to work one-on-one, sometimes in close proximity, with the students they support, they are courageous!<\/p>\n When Denny An disinfects the middle school, over and over, all day every day, with a smile<\/span>,<\/strong> he is courageous!<\/p>\n When every ACS parent sends their kids off to school, trusting others to keep them safe, never mind provide a great education, they are courageous!<\/p>\n When a student who lives with anxiety, makes the decision every morning to walk through the school doors, they are courageous!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n So that leaves me and my lack of courage, inspired to \u201csuck it up,\u201d be a strong woman<\/em> (take that mom), and face the fears that come my way \u2014 the biggest of which is heading down to the dark, \u201cdungeon\u201d basement below the secondary library, where my large-format printer is stored, and facing off with the spider living in the corner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not exactly a courageous person. I distinctly remember the fear that crawled up my spine when my mom asked me to get something from the basement as a kid. Our below-ground \u201cdungeon\u201d was unfinished, sported a low ceiling, limited lighting, only two half windows, and a number of resident spiders who felt right at […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5135,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,16],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-5132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-school","category-school-vision"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5132"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abbotsfordchristian.com\/insideout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=5132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}These Six Words<\/h2>\n
\nPassionate<\/strong><\/span>
\nCourageous<\/strong><\/span>
\nHumble<\/strong><\/span>
\nIntentional<\/strong><\/span>
\nKind<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nFrom a Fresh Start to Taking Risks<\/h2>\n