Who are these new students to Rowland Hall? This year, there are six new students to Rowland Hall's sophomore team, which means there's six more people who could be in your everyday classes. According to the Rowland Hall website, a value we have as a community is to “see diversity as a strength and an opportunity to expand our perspectives and enhance our community.”Rowland Hall hopes to see diversity in our community with the belief that “everyone deserves respect and a welcome place in our community. Educational excellence is possible when all members of a community have a voice and feel safe being their authentic selves.” As a school, we hope to include and welcome newcomers as much as possible—let's put to the test how good students’ and teachers’ welcoming skills have been so far on these sophomores.

Although Rowland Hall is known for its accessible students and faculty, incoming sophomore Will Berry said that someone who has shown him what it's like at Rowland Hall is Hasan Rahim. I got the chance to talk to Hasan about what he has done to make Will feel at home, to which he replied, “I would talk to him in between classes to get to know him better and also in chemistry, he sat behind me. Then I figured out he was on the cross country team with me and I started talking to him about what he thought of the team.” Before Rowland Hall, Will went to Park City High School and described the change of schools as a “size difference.” He was used to way more kids at his school, some that he didn't know anything about whatsoever while at Rowland Hall everyone knows almost everyone. Some other friends of Will’s have said that he brings laughter, compassion and empathy to our Rowland Hall environment and that they are “glad he came to Rowland Hall.”

Peter Hobson-Roher went to West High previously. Peter informed me that someone who has made him feel welcome at Rowland Hall so far is Owen Taylor. Owen has shown Peter around the school when he was lost and overall shown him friendliness in hopes of giving Peter an inviting feeling to Rowland Hall. He succeeded. Peter and Owen are always seen walking around the hallways at each other's side and laughing with one another in history class. These two are the perfect duo thanks to the engaging abilities that Owen shared with Peter at the beginning of the year.

Despite the fact that Rowland Hall's students and faculty are known for their inviting, accessible, and diverse personalities to newcomers in our community, new students to this year's sophomore class shared with us how good we are at reaching that goal. Some students have proved that and all it took were small acts of kindness.