In the last several years, Triton Public Schools and our community members have come up with qualities that we want every Triton student to embody in their everyday lives and especially upon graduation. We call this the Triton Profile of a Graduate or the Cobra Compass. There are 8 traits on this compass: self-awareness, integrity, critical thinking, dependability, problem solving, resilience, work ethic and communication. As a school counseling and social work team, we’d like to explain a little more about each of these traits and how they can relate to mental health and/or social emotional learning. Our students are learning about these characteristics each month as well.
October’s Profile of a Graduate focus is integrity. After our monthly lessons, we hope that students will be able to explain that integrity is honesty, trustworthiness, morals and values. Integrity is being a good human. Many of us have heard the familiar quotation from C.S. Lewis, “Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching.” October also happens to be National Bullying Prevention Month. Pacer Center promotes the recognition of this month and one day in particular, Unity Day. This year Unity Day is Wednesday, October 19th and we wear orange “to show unity for kindness, acceptance, and inclusion and to send a visible message that no child should ever experience bullying” (www.pacer.org/bullying/nbpm/unity-day.asp). This will be Triton’s 10th year participating in Unity Day by encouraging our students and staff to wear orange to signify that they will not stand for bullying.
We know that it’s one thing to wear orange one day and it’s another thing to stand up to a bully or stick up for someone who may be getting bullied. Integrity is just that. Our students can demonstrate integrity by letting an adult know if another student is being treated unkindly by others. Or by choosing to only cheer in a positive way at sporting events for our team and not chanting in a negative way about the opposing team. Or by just including a friend who may be alone on the playground. As adults we can also model integrity in our daily lives for our students. We all make mistakes sometimes, but it can make a big impact on our students when we take responsibility for our actions and take steps toward correcting it. “I’m sorry I lost my temper, I should not have yelled like that and I was wrong. I will try to stay calm next time I am angry by taking a deep breath or a break before we talk.” We are always learning from those around us. This month let’s make a conscious effort to go out of our way to make sure we’re showing kindness, acceptance and inclusion to those around us. And please join us in wearing orange on Wednesday, October 19th for Unity Day.
Ashlee Koll, TES Counselor
Tricia Johnson, TMS Social Worker
Christi Runnells, THS Counselor
Diane Meyers, TPS K-12 Counselor
