Nowadays Thanksgiving means less about the past and the holiday itself, and more about coming together as a community.  One of the best ways to gather has always been around a table of food.  On Friday November 15th we celebrated the Mountain View community once again with a traditional Thanksgiving meal prepared and served by teachers and students and enjoyed by all.

Students and staff came together and enjoyed a meal, making laughable moments that we can all remember. We had the majority of students and faculty together in the cafeteria sitting, talking, and exchanging stories. Each person was able to learn something new about the person that they were sitting with. We had students and some faculty work and volunteer serve our food and drinks. As a community we get to see more and more of each other every day but especially on our mentor socials where we have the time to prioritize meeting each other. This mentor social showed us once again what our family is like.

We were all given the flexibility in our hour of the mentor social, we had big and small groups playing soccer & two different sets of groups that played against each other.  The beauty of this hour each month is that it buillds social and emotional resillience within our school.  When school is more than a checklist of tests and projects because its main purpose is to build the essential citizenship skills of community, students remain dedicated to their goals and motivated by peers and teachers.  There is so much to be gained by cultivating an attitude of gratitude around a common table.