The motto for International Community School in Kirkland is, “Forever we rise.”

However, these are not only the words all over the school’s website and its their school wear. The students and staff at ICS take the words seriously and kicked off their school year with two events.

While sixth- through eighth-grade students were off at a camp to get to know each other, high school students stayed at ICS for the school’s third annual Student Summit.

About four years ago, Liz Christenson and former principal Dr. Gregory Moncada, together with other teachers at ICS had the idea to arrange a special curriculum for high school students during their first week of school, while the lower grades were spending time off campus at a three-day camp.

The summit was designed to teach to the “whole person,” giving high school students an opportunity to improve their skills on many levels: academic and college readiness, mental health, social justice, service, community awareness and team building. Event organizers reached out to professionals in their fields to deliver knowledge, impart wisdom, inspire and offer tools to jump start the year.

The summit started with a community project, with freshmen and sophomores being bused to North Rose Hill Woodlands Park. Members of the Green Kirkland Partnership instructed them how to pull weeds and help to restore some park plants. Juniors and seniors took off for Finn Hill Park with members of the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks to help with restoration. They filled two dump trucks full of weedy material, removing about 10 cubic yards of invasive plant species from the park from a work area of about 6,000 square feet.