Principal's Corner

Hello All,

I made this announcement today in school, but for those who did not hear it or were not enjoying the day with us in school, here you go!

I feel grateful to work at a school like Hanover High School. We are a school that gives people the benefit of the doubt that each member will do what is right for our community. As a result, our students and teachers have more freedom than many other schools. We all have more control over our free time and our ability to move about during the school day. This makes Hanover High School feel more like a community than an institution.

With this freedom comes responsibility. We have to work together to keep what many of us find special about our community. Being part of a community means we help each other take responsibility and if someone is having a bad day or makes a mistake, someone else steps up for the good of the community. 

Part of our freedom is personal responsibility, getting to class on time, the ability to leave campus, and to use your free time wisely, but it is also throwing your trash away when you finish eating. But as we all can see when we walk through the atrium, we are still working on that aspect of personal responsibility. So if you are eating lunch and you see people push their trash to the middle of the table and walk away, you could remind them to throw away their trash. You could ask someone else to remind them. You also could throw it away for them until you get the courage to remind them. Are we a community that just walks away from trash on a table? Are we a community where that is the first impression visitors get of our school? 

Part of the freedom at this school is taking care of others. There are lots of ways to take care of others–checking in with someone, saying “hi” in the halls, seeking the help of a counselor. If two people get into a physical altercation you can try to interrupt that situation. A friend could speak up and say it is not worth their time, they could take them on a walk, they could seek the help of an adult in the building.  But even if you do not feel that you can not interrupt the situation safely, you should not film it for your own entertainment and gossip. Why should people from our community hurting themselves be entertainment for us? Is that who we are? 

We are all growing and learning and each of us will have our moment, but it is how we move forward and learn from those mistakes that makes us stronger. As a community though, I believe we should take responsibility for each other; to step in when someone else is unable to take personal responsibility. Help each other have good days.

Respectfully,

Julie Stevenson
Principal