A Place of Safety, Belonging, and Care

Hawthorne Elementary in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, serves about 250 students. Counselor Morgan Towner says one of the school’s central commitments is making sure students and families experience school as a place they can trust.

That trust is built through steady outreach. Once a month, Towner and her team host Living in the Circle family nights, where families share a meal, do activities together, and talk with staff. Parents whose own school experiences were difficult sometimes arrive cautious, but the family nights give them a reason to come through the door. “We’re really trying to make that connection between school and home,” Towner says, “and be one cohesive team.”

The school grounds much of its culture in the Circle of Courage framework, built around belonging, generosity, mastery, and independence. Those values show up in how staff respond to students who are struggling. Towner tells the story of two students who arrived at different times during the year and seemed standoffish, never quite engaging. Rather than labeling them as difficult, staff kept investigating. Both students turned out to have undiagnosed vision problems. The school connected them with eye care and glasses. “We never would have figured that out had we not used the strategies that we teach kids all the time: take a step back, try to examine the situation,” Towner says.

That same patience showed up in how the school’s fifth graders handled the unexpected loss of a teacher midyear. In the months that followed, students practiced the skills they had been learning, naming their own grief and giving grace to the adults around them who were grieving too. One student told a teacher, “I can understand how hard that is. I wish that you wouldn’t hurt so much. I care so much about you.” Towner says that students would not have been able to say that a year ago.

Kindness also extends beyond the classroom. Through the school’s Ubuntu Leaders program, students make tie blankets for classmates and families facing homelessness, loss, or other major hardships. Towner puts her philosophy simply: “If you take nothing else away from our school, I want you to take away the skills on how to be a good person and how to show up for your community.”