The Cardinal Way

Last week, I talked about truly listening so we can improve communication. We were trying to be the best listeners for our students, each other, and our families. Hopefully, this is work that we continue to focus on and work to improve. This week, my heart was full after an amazing week of Homecoming events - watching our students, staff, and community members come together to celebrate Southport High School.

With my heart full, I really enjoyed the Daily Discipline message from Brian Kight this week so I wanted to share it with all of you.

I don't think we choose to care enough about each other.

It's not that we don't have feelings of love or affection, or that we don't actually care. It's that we often don't make the conscious choice to care in a way that makes people feel seen, understood, and appreciated.

We move so quickly through our daily routines, priorities, and tasks that we tend to move through conversations the same way. Even with people close to us. Sometimes, especially with those people. We fail to slow down, put our full attention on them, and choose to care for them.

Instead, we ask surface-level questions, more out of habit than purposeful curiosity, and get surface-level answers, more out of courtesy than honest emotional expression. It happens the other way around, too. People ask us shallow questions, we give superficial answers, and we all move on.

It's that little dance we do. You know the one. Ask the polite question. Give a polite answer. Don't reveal much. Don't feel much. Don't learn anything.

It doesn't take much to deliver a different experience — just a little more discipline to choose to care in the moment. The people in your life want to feel cared for. They need to feel cared for. So do you. So do I.

Everyone is excited about something, dealing with something, struggling with an external obstacle, and wrestling with an internal conflict. But you've got to be interested enough to seek to uncover it. Not prying, but not hustling by with surface exchanges either. Just asking, listening, and caring.

It's easy to get so consumed by our agenda that we miss the chances to care about people enough to discover what's happening with them and within them: Unmet needs. Unappreciated wins. Unspoken feelings. Unnoticed frustrations. Unsolved concerns.

It's all in there. In everyone we know. In everyone we meet.

Waiting on us to choose to care.

I want you to know that at SHS, you are appreciated, noticed, and loved. Let's spend this week making sure each of us and our students truly FEEL it.

Ignite-Connect-Empower

• Sam Hanley, Joe Leonard, and Stacey Matlock for all of your time and effort this week coordinating all of the Homecoming activities: the pep session, float judging, powderpuff football, parade, and dance.
• Our staff members who volunteered their time to work the Homecoming dance on Saturday evening: Ngun Sung, Ashley Quinlin, Joe Leonard, Austin Lundsford, Cari Tracy, Lauren Davis, Mark Duncan, Mariette Fleck, Samantha Wells, and Raye Jordan.
• The teachers who volunteered to coach the Powderpuff football teams so our students could participate in this Homecoming tradition. Congratulations to the Juniors who won.

Website: https://www.perryschools.org/sh/
Location: 971 East Banta Road, Indianapolis, IN, USA
Phone: 317-789-4800
Twitter: @SHS_Cardinals