A few days ago a friend of mine posted the following quote on social media:
“It’s worse to spend your life on the outside looking in, wondering ‘what if,’ than it is to try and dare greatly and risk the chance of failure. Dare greatly; get in the arena and try.”
--Dr. Brené Brown
With all the noise on social media and in the exhausting 24-hour news cycle, I sometimes miss the gems of wisdom, those words that one person reads and feels compelled to share with their community. However, these particular words struck a chord. I know these words, in a different form, in a different tone, sure. But I know them and I believe in them, and I am part of a community that lives by a similar principle each and every day.
At St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School, our mission is:
“To help our students succeed in a complex and changing world, we seek to inspire a passion for learning, an enthusiasm for athletic and artistic endeavor, a striving for excellence, a celebration of diversity, and a commitment to service. Our mission is to pursue goodness as well as knowledge and to honor the unique value of each of our members as a child of God in a caring community.”
It is a beautiful mission in which our school community believes deeply. And it is a mission that not just allows for, but calls for dreaming big, singing loudly, being kind to one another, and changing the world for the better through goodness and knowledge. At our school, our mission is the framework for who we are as a community, and through our mission we are called to live intentionally. At St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes, students become ready; they become ready for college and life beyond. They become ready to embrace differences and practice respectful discourse in moments of joy and trial. They become ready to lead lives full of goodness and integrity, and they become ready to “dare greatly and risk the chance of failure.”
Through this blog we intend to share the ways in which our students become ready. We will highlight our faculty, experts in their fields; we will dive into topics such as the joyfulness of learning, the balance of school and home, college readiness, and service. We hope to offer sound advice and guidance, while also sharing what it really means to be a member of our Saints community.
