Students at Wellborn Middle School are not just Warhawks; they are also members of one of six houses representing different character traits.
Coeptis, be courageous; Inventa, be of integrity; Navita, be involved; Nitimini, be accountable; Odyssea, be compassionate; and Phoenicia, be resilient.
Each of these houses has four smaller families that create an even smaller group for students to belong.
“Our big motto is ‘You belong here,’ so we want everyone to feel like we’re part of a family,” Wellborn Principal Jeremy Stewart said. “… It’s like a cornerstone of who we are.”
The development of the houses began with input from faculty, staff and parents via social media in April 2018 before the College Station school opened its doors that August. Then, it was fully implemented by the 2019-2020 school year, gathering enough momentum to withstand virtual learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The 24 eighth graders who were elected by their peers to lead their house family met Friday for a leadership conference before the hundreds of seventh graders at the school learned which house they had been selected to join.
Aubrey Litton, one of the family leaders in the Phoenicia house, said being able to connect with other leaders allows her to see students’ perspectives to solving problems and see their leadership styles, helping her become a better person and a better leader.
As part of Friday’s leadership conference at the school, Chris Field, founder and executive director of Mercy Project, spoke to the family leaders.
“If you really boil it down, every person is a leader. The choice is which way you’re leading people,” he said. “Every one of us has influence. It’s just do we have small influence or big influence and what do we do with our influence?”
He encouraged the student leaders to focus on three C’s: compassion, courage and creativity, saying he hopes they have compassion to feel, the courage to show up consistently and the creativity to find new solutions to old problems.
“When you combine compassion that you feel all the way in your gut; when you combine the courage to show up and do something; and when you combine the ability to solve old problems in new ways, you become an unstoppable force,” he said.
He reminded them that they have the choice every day when they wake up to choose who they are going to be and it is up to them to do one right thing at a time and choose to do the next right thing.
Maryn Paine, a family leader in the Coeptis house, said she learned from her own family leader last year and feels she has become a good replacement.
“I feel like I’m helping people connect with other people by showing their best character traits,” she said.
Litton said the houses do compete with each other and a champion is named at the end of each year, but the houses together represent the character traits everyone – students, faculty and staff members in each house – should try to exhibit.
“It’s very much a lesson for the future of how we would use these qualities and how we can really connect with them in our everyday lives,” she said.
She said she connects with resiliency as a softball and volleyball player because she has to pick herself back up, pick up her teammates, work through mistakes, listen to her coaches and grow from each experience.
Paine said the house teams have pushed people to get out of their comfort zone. A year ago, she said, she would not have represented Wellborn Middle School at the district-wide Convocation like she did this year.
She said the houses have helped people learn more about themselves.
Stewart said the school’s culture has been shaped by the introduction of the houses and the character traits they represent with students, faculty and staff all being part of one of the houses.
“There’s value in making kids feel seen and heard,” he said. “There’s value in building the character, and there’s also something to be said about it not just being just the students and not just being just faculty and staff. Every person that walks in the door deserves a seat at the table.”
Even beyond preparing the students for high school and their post-secondary pursuits, Stewart said, the school’s mission is to help students make the world a better place.
“We should all be striving to make the world a better place,” he said. “Love more fiercely, lead with compassion, create real change in our community, work hard; do the things that need to be done to make the world better than it is, whatever that is.”
Field said their impact will be “incalculable” if they can understand how powerful their actions and choices can be in their school and in the greater community.