Being kind is a lesson to learn and share

In another lifetime, before I landed here at the venerable VCNB, I worked at a different newspaper. I was hired as the sports reporter, mostly based on my ownership of and ability to use a 35mm camera.

I know the difference between a football and a softball in a pinch, but don’t ask me what offside means or what the tennis kind of love is.

I got to go to some wild and wooly high school basketball games, and I also got to cover some wild and wooly board of education meetings. Out in the middle of nowhere, on a dark snowy night, while executive session debates raged until 2 o’clock in the morning. It was a good time.

When I interviewed with the News-Bulletin, I was presented with a choice of beats — one included the Valencia County Commission and the other a local school board. After listening to three years of performative B.S. from a school board that shall go unnamed, I couldn’t do it again, so I signed up for the county beat.

I’m going to stop you here and acknowledge that had I known about the hospital debacle, I might have signed up to cover the glue stick eating brigade, but hindsight and all that.

For those of you not in the know, the journalism industry has been whacked about more severely than a candyless piñata at a kids party. We’ve lost people and papers by the handfuls and your local publication is no exception.

As we downsized throughout the years, those of us left behind had to pick up more beats, had to embrace the deplorable reality of doing more with less, which meant yours truly picked up an education beat.

To say I was disgruntled is an understatement of epic proportions. I braced myself to learn the jargon again, to hear about pedagogy, lesson plans and bell schedules and be told all the machinations are “for the children.”

I know every job has its challenges and aspects that aren’t fun, so I put on my reporter hat and waded in. There’s been drama and chaos, highs and lows, some rather rousing bickering and a lot of mind-numbing tedium. Welcome to local bureaucracy and government procedure.

However, through the thicket of policy and procurement, there’s recently been a glimmer of something new — kindness.

For the last several Belen Board of Education meetings, student leaders from across the Belen Consolidated Schools district have given updates on what their student councils have been doing this year, what they’ve accomplished and more importantly, their values and mission.

Over and over that word kept coming up — kindness — exhibiting it, rewarding it, encouraging it. The board members were quick to home in on the idea as well, reiterating that in the world of today how incredibly important it was to display and act with kindness.

As I listened to the presentations, it was easy to see a convergence of priorities happening. Students had decided kindness and respect for each other was what should lead the way, and the adults in the room had also made that same decision.

There’s something called “tone at the top.” It’s pretty much what it sounds like — those in leadership set the tone and expectations for everyone in the organization.

In the last year, I’ve sat and watched the Belen Board of Education take purposeful steps to set that tone — a tone of respect, cordiality and camaraderie.

Do they always agree with each other? Absolutely not, but they are willing to have civil discussions and hear each other out.

As the adults, they are doing the work to set the tone, to model the behavior they and others expect to see in students. The students are putting in the work as well, working in tandem to set the tone they want to see among their peers.

Does this mean there aren’t challenges that need to be addressed throughout BCS? Of course not.

Our whole system, from the top down, is a work in progress, but it is heartening to see the willingness to make changes being embraced, “for the children.”