Annual School Motto

In keeping with school tradition, rising LCHS seniors compose an annual motto before the start of the school year.  The effort is typically led by the School Captains.  In crafting its motto, each incoming senior class aspires to foster a unifying sense of family for the whole of Liberty Common School spanning grades k-12.   The annual motto is embraced by the faculty and administration.  Copies of the motto are posted in every classroom and meeting space on all campuses.

 

By the time seniors cross their graduation stage, they have spent a full school year animating their noble theme.  Thusly, when printed on their graduation-announcement cards and commencement-ceremony programs, the motto fittingly captures the true character of the class and sums the quality of an entire school year for all Liberty scholars and the school’s greater community of parents, grandparents, alumni, and friends. 

 

Lambent mottos inspire when applied elegantly to those capable of breathing life into hopeful words.  Tightly aligned, they become fixed like a peg in a sure spot, to be a place of honor for a blessed family.  Setting common virtue to poetry, mottos define the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of the origin of these things. 

 

Please see below Headmaster Schaffer’s guidelines for composing Liberty’s annual class mottos.

The 2024-25 school-wide motto, designated by the senior class, is FIRMITAS FACIT FAMILIAM. This Latin phrase translates “Strength Makes Family.”

 

FIRMITAS also translates to “endurance” and “constancy.”  The idea behind the motto stems from experiences and hardships which have truly bonded the special Class of 2025. 

 

The strength of our shared character education, virtue, and mission have carried us forward, whether through the smallest obstacles like a challenging group project, or great obstacles such as the passing of a couple of our beloved peers.  Through it all, this class has endured and remained constant, persevering together through every year, every month, and every day.

 

In helping one another through all levels of adversity, supporting one another through difficult times, and celebrating one another in moments of triumph, our Class of 2025 has found joy.  We have become a family.  Accordingly, we proposed this motto in hopes it may guide fellow students, our faculty, alumni, and parents to find strength in unity ultimately galvanizing a cohesive Liberty Common School family.

 

This motto ideally inspires our whole school as we navigate ongoing expansion and enrollment growth.  As we do, it is important we all realize our virtues, curriculum, and common mission are indispensable strengths.  They continue to bond the school across all campuses.

 

No matter one’s stage along their academic journey, we should all support and help one another.  FAMILAIM is a natural place of timeless tradition to feel safe and achieve the fullness of maturity.  FAMILIAM is created through support and love. 

 

Acknowledging adversity is a universal part of life, we flourish by facing it together, supporting one another, being consistent in our efforts, and truly enjoying being together.  In the end, strength in character gains for us all something precious and profoundly great:  Strength Makes Family – FIRMITAS FACIT FAMILIAM.

 

—LCS School Captains Anagha Mathur (’25) and Will Dannahower (’25)

 

 

It is important the considerations going into selecting annual mottos ensure the annual motto is meaningful, timeless, mature, and aspirational – in other words classical. The motto should resonate clearly when stated in Latin or Greek, as well as English; and, it should reflect well the character of the Senior Class.  It should attempt to inspire all others in the school.  From my standpoint, the better mottos are simple, powerful, motivating, classical, etc.  I’d like for subsequent LCHS classes to shoot for mottos of similar caliber and economy of words.  Lyrics from popular songs, for example, should be ruled out of the question.  The mottos chosen must be as meaningful and impressive at the 40-year class reunions as they are upon graduation. 

 

Selecting these mottos earlier gives us (on behalf of students) a chance to fold the motto into class recognitions – for example, yearbook pages, class t-shirts, class rings, patches for letter jackets, locker decorations, and other school artwork.   If the motto is confined to a few words, we could even consider having it printed upon graduation stoles similar to “First Graduating Class” which we had applied upon the stoles for the Class of 2013. 

 

Each year, the motto of the Senior Class will become LCS’s annual school motto.  In this way, the school will be able to utilize the motto on documents, publications, electronic displays, and other materials upon the beginning of each school year. 

 

Bob Schaffer, Headmaster