Principal’s Message October 2024
Each year the CGS Staff embraces a theme for the duration of the school year. A few years ago, we decided to share our staff theme with the entire CGS community in the hopes that it would be of comfort and support, during our long COVID struggle. To our delight, everyone whole-heartedly embraced our ‘We Can Do Hard Things’ mantra and it truly took on a life of its own. Since then, we have decided to always share our Theme of the Year with everyone, parents and students alike, in hopes that it will bring us closer together as a community, as we strive for a common goal.
This school year we have chosen the theme, ‘Spark Joy’. This theme was chosen before Inside Out 2 was released at the theatre and before the Harris/Walz campaign in the U.S. Presidential Campaign labelled their candidates as pure Joy. In choosing our theme, we weren’t hopping on a bandwagon, but it was chosen simply because the world needs more Joy right now!
It is important to note that Joy is NOT Happiness, although the two concepts are often confused as one in the same. Unlike Happiness, Joy is a state of mind. Happiness generally comes from external factors such as material things, people, places and experiences. Meanwhile, Joy is a more internal feeling that is generally not affected by the outside world, so completely in our control. Mindsets, like Joy, are more consistent and can withstand difficult times. We can’t always be Happy, but we should always be able to find Joy. It is a bit like gratitude that way!
Joy is a choice and if we shift our mindsets to believe that, then we should be on the lookout for moments that could use a spark of Joy and permit ourselves to create small moments of pure and unadulterated Joy. This is where the power lies and creates a belief that although Joy can’t always happen it CAN happen at any time.
After reading the book “Joy is my Job” I learned a few very important things about Joy that I would love to share with all of you.
If we keep running on the hamster wheel of life, Joy may never find us…we must find IT!
But so many people would say they are simply too busy to go looking for ways to find Joy or spark Joy. The reality is that if you catch yourself saying you are so busy or so burned out or overwhelmed or life is too chaotic, then chances are you need more Joy in your life ASAP. Author Lisa Even shares, “Too tired for Joy? The barrier of being too tired is challenging because we will always be tired on some level. How about ‘I am tired but having a blast along the way’!” Don’t you just love that idea?
If you are looking for an easy way to sneak in some Joy, follow your “golden hours”, which are short periods of time when you are at your best, and capitalize on that. The goal should not be to redesign your schedule or become frustrated trying to fit Joy in, but rather identify snippets of time here and there where you can create some Joy. You can keep it very simple knowing that Joy often comes in the simple things. Joy will happen without effort, but if you are not intentional with Joy, you are leaving potential enjoyment on the table. And finally, one of the most mind-blowing things I read in this book is that most of us will work close to 90,000 hours in our careers (WOW), and that is a lot of hours to not have Joy! So, let’s find and spark some Joy even while at work.
Our CGS Educator Team has committed to find and spark Joy and actually curate Joy every chance they get this year. We hope that you will join them. If we all think of Joy as our legacy for ourselves and others it should be easy to recognize the importance of it in our lives. So, we will do our best to Spark Joy at school and hopefully you will all find ways to Spark Joy at home and together we will be one Joyful/Joy-filled Family.
Onward,
Marie Bates
Principal