Shades Cahaba Elementary School: Building a Sustainable Culture of Character

This spring we celebrated Shades Cahaba Elementary (Homewood, AL) and it’s more than two-decade commitment to cultivating a culture of character for their students.  Leaders both past and present took the stage at our Hope Network Summit to share their journey of building a sustained culture of character at their school.  Shades Cahaba was the first school in Alabama to be recognized as a National School of Character by Character.org and this spring they received the designation for the 4th time.

This milestone underscores the school’s commitment to building a strong culture of respect and responsibility and maintaining a thriving education culture that transforms students and community. We are proud that they are a participant in the Hope Leadership Academy and excited to share their story.

The character journey began for Shades Cahaba in the early 2000s under the leadership of Principal Sue Grogan.  In collaboration with her faculty, staff and parents, the Shades Cahaba Way was born with seven core values defining the character traits they wanted for their students.  The Shades Cahaba Way became so popular that the entire community embraced the values and even promoted the core values by placing “Shades Cahaba Way” yard signs on their front lawns all throughout the community.  In 2005, the Shades Cahaba Way received national recognition as a “promising practice” by the Character Education partnership.  The following year, they received their first recognition as a National School of Character.

In 2013, Grogan retired and Dr. John Lowry became the new principal. Dr. Lowry continued to deepen the character initiative of the school and enrolled a team in the Hope Leadership Academy.  “We went because we wanted to connect to other schools who were prioritizing character and learn from them,” said Dr. Lowry.  Their work evolved the seven core values but remained rooted in a culture of respect and responsibility.

After Dr. Lowry took the role as Homewood Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Wendy Story assumed the principal seat and remains in the seat today.  Like Dr. Lowry, Dr. Story has continued to embed their core values into the school community.  She has implemented a house system of school-wide vertical communities aligned with their core values and she has integrated character into their curriculum by hiring a specials teacher designated to teach character. 

Although the accolades and school initiatives demonstrate commitment to a culture of character, it is the impact on the students that matter most.  We were able to hear directly from Homewood high school senior Merrill Story who began school at Shades Cahaba Elementary after the adoption of Shades Cahaba Way and remained in the Homewood school system until graduation.  Like Shades Cahaba, the feeder schools in Homewood have participated in Hope Academy and cultivated character in their schools.  Merrill stated that she credits the relationships built with teachers in her school culture and “her time at Shades Cahaba for instilling a strong sense of character that I will carry forward in this next chapter of life.”