Courage in the Classroom

Good morning, e-friendly staff. Curro Century City, like all schools, is a unique social environment. This year could be the very best year in your life; imagine that. This could be your year. You could be what you dream to be. You could achieve your patronising goals, and people around you could see you at your best. You have that capacity – but it’s going to take a little work on your part and a whole lot of courage. And I’d like to talk about courage a little this morning, because it can be confused with bravado and ego and posturing – and that’s as far away from real courage as wisdom is from foolishness. Courage, we can recognize, is derived from the same Latin root that gives us the French word, “coeur”– which means heart. In its simplest form, then, when we do what our hearts tell us to be right and good and true, we are acting courageously, and I think that that’s the purest definition of true, moral courage – and it’s so incredibly rare. We admire it in others when we see it, we often pray for a little bit of it at difficult moments in our lives, and we are very thankful at those rare instances when we exhibit for ourselves and others true moral courage. We will be all faced, at times in our lives when we need to be courageous, especially when those around us have lost their way. I started this note this morning with the idea that each day is a new start. Let me start the day by asking ask you to add courage in your heart, because without courage we will never dare to act on our core values of Respect, Responsibility, Honesty and Compassion. Without courage, those will be reduced to merely words on a wall and abstract ideas in your brain - and nothing else. You must hold the core values in your heart and have the courage to act on them in those moments in your life when they are called into question. Today, tomorrow and every day following, have the courage to be your best self. We all know what the right thing is to do; We aren’t perfect, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to become better each and every day. In closing I challenge you, as I challenge myself, to dare to be your best self. Listen to your heart, and dare to be courageous. Thank you for the work you do, and have a super weekend. Sean