This week, during Community, I asked the students if they knew the word propriety. Unfortunately, there was not a single student that knew this word, so I allowed them to search it on their phone. Quickly, a student told me it means to relate to ownership. I let the student know that was the definition of proprietary, not propriety. Soon, a student found the actual definition – the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals.
The reason that I asked, is because I have started to realize that for many of our students that did not attend school for periods of time during the pandemic that they either forgot or were never asked to differentiate between the way that one acts at school and how one acts in other places. There is a way that one must behave when in class or at school, in general, that is different from the way one may act at home or when with friends out of school. At school, one must be part of a community, where they must balance their own wants and needs with the wants and needs of the others in the community. While a small school like BHS affords many opportunities to meet individual needs, our students still must realize that they are not the only one that matters.
Similarly, the pandemic limited the number of places our students could go outside their own homes. As a child, I learned that different places and different situations required different behaviors. Whether it is the way that one dresses for church, or the manners required when going to a Grandparents house, or the level of one’s voice in a movie theater – the greater diversity of settings one encounters, the more likely that they will become attuned to the proper behaviors required. Many of our students spent the last couple of years in a homogenous environment, that did not require an awareness of propriety in different environments.
It is hard to fully appreciate that myriad ways that the pandemic has impacted the growth and development of our students. Throughout the year, I will continue to work with our students to become more aware of the behavioral expectations for different settings. Who knows, maybe we will have a seated lunch at some point in the year, which will require our students to practice manners associated with a more formal meal than they encounter on a daily basis.