character champion

the irony in madelyn's 'moving down' at school the past two days was that she was awarded "character champion" for the month of february! she even forgot to bring her award home yesterday because she did not get her things together at the end of the day.

this is the surprise that i found out about during the parent-teacher conference and not shared in my earlier post. matt and i had discussed it and we decided that whenever she got the award at school, we would take her to dinner, wherever she wanted, to celebrate. and she brought it home today, when she got yellow. well, that took care of those plans. we were pretty disappointed because she has been talking about trying to be "character champion" for a few months now and told us that she was always trying to be her best because any one could nominate her at any time for anything.

this is a program through the ymca to recognize students for showing "trustworthiness, respect, responsibility and caring toward the school and [their] classmates". the principal and someone from the ymca come into the classroom to congratulate the student and present them with a certificate, dinner voucher for a local restaurant and a guest pass to the ymca. apparently they make it a pretty big deal.

we got a nice letter home (even with all of the typos from it being a fairly form letter) - it actually made me tear up because i was so proud of her. here is what her teacher said when she nominated her:

"madelyn is a great role model in our classroom. she strives to do the right thing, all the time, even when no one is watching. she is a very caring friend and is always lending a helping hand. madelyn is respectful to the teachers and adults in the building. she is very deserving of this Character Champion nomination." her teacher told me that madelyn really deserved this during the conference and madelyn said one of the boys in her class told her that she really was a caring friend and deserved the award.

we are so proud of the person madelyn is growing up to be and the choices she is making about how she treats others. love.