October 29, 2015 by Amy
Honor
There was a plenary meeting at work today. Thursday mornings are reserved for meetings, be they plenary, departmental, or otherwise. Sometimes there are no meetings, but usually there are. I try to go to the plenary meetings, unless they are something specific to teaching that I know will not pertain in any way to me or what I do for a living. Things like how to enter grades into the new online system. Today’s plenary meeting was billed as a presentation by the student-run Honor Court. These are the guys who try to make sure that the students, by and large, live up to the Honor Code they all signed when they entered the school in the 7th grade.
I was intrigued.
I got in a few minutes late, thanks to monster traffic (you wouldn’t think there’d be a lot, but when your kid runs late and then the drop-off line crawls and then you hit every light red, and some of them twice because the cars are so backed up…) and slipped into the back of the theatre. I didn’t miss anything, really, just the first part of the faculty moderator’s introduction.
The leader of the Honor Court stood up, and spoke so eloquently that I was almost moved to tears. He talked about the importance of honor and integrity in both the student body and among the faculty, and how the students rely on the faculty to both model honor and help impressionable young men learn to live honorably. He got a chuckle when he enthusiastically talked about the need for an “Honor Spirit Club,” but he also got a lot of heads nodding.
The other boys on the Honor Court presented, too, and then led a vibrant discussion with their teachers about honor and integrity as it relates to the school environment, specifically: when does collaboration cross over into cheating, how can teachers help kids, what kids can do to help each other, do kids feel safe ratting out their friends and is it reasonable to expect them to, how do we recognize honor and if we do, would it be taken seriously, how behaving honorably can be addictive just like cheating can become addictive, and more. I sat there in awe. These students and their teachers blew me away, and give me great hope for the future.
And then later I took a picture of a boy eating a hamburger while dressed as a hot dog in the dining hall.
This child isn’t mine, so I have craftily concealed his identity. I’m crafty like that.
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