Some Washougal students return to classroom

A decal of a lemon tree adorns the wall next to the main office at Riverside Christian School (RCS), catching the eye of people as they walk through the front door. Above the tree hangs the four words that have been adopted by the Washougal education provider as its theme for the 2020-21 school year: Making lemons into lemonade.

“Each classroom will have a stack of paper lemons,” said RCS principal Tami Wright. “When someone sees a student doing something that shows that they’re working past their issue to create something positive, they will write the person’s name and what they did on (a lemon) and put it on the tree. Then at the end of the week we put them all in a little basket and I’ll read them out loud to the whole school, and everybody celebrates the cool things that people are doing.”