An invitation…

Today, ICS mom Marney Mayo kicks off an exciting aspect of this blog. All year, in a variety of ways, teachers, parents, students, and members of the greater ICS community will take part in telling the school's story.

Marney is the Missouri-born mother of a fourth-grade student and a sixth-grader. Her daughter was part of the first ICS kindergarten class. Marney shares a book she's found formative about how to build the kind of community that nurtures her own kids as well as those from halfway around the world.

The book is Clifton L. Taulbert's "Eight Habits of the Heart: Embracing the Values that Build Strong Families and Communities."

Marney writes: "Clifton Taulbert came and spoke at ICS about a month before the school first opened. He loved the idea of creating a school to build community among all the kinds of differences our students would reflect.

"As a black child in a small Southern town, he grew up in a place and time where the world told him he could be nothing. But these messages were counterbalanced by the positive values and high expectations of the community surrounding him. This book is a tribute to those ordinary folks and the qualities they lived out that created that community.

"Our society today sends many negative signals to newcomers. The intentional creation of a community of high expectations that includes, but is not limited to, newcomers, helps us all."