A little boy in Santa Fe, Texas is inspiring millions after he stopped Thursday to say the Pledge of Allegiance and a quick prayer — even though he was running late for class.

As other students rushed past him, kindergartener Royce Thompson at Roy J. Wollam Elementary School froze in place when the school began to say the Pledge of Allegiance. His mother, Heather Nelson, said she had dropped him off at the beginning of the line of cars, and was thoroughly confused when she drove up to the end of the line and saw that he was still standing outside.

“I couldn’t really tell what he was doing and I was saying ‘Royce..go..go’ as kids walked around him,” Nelson said in a Facebook post that has received nearly two million shares and comments.

But Royce just stood there.

Cibby Moore, a police officer standing nearby, put her hand over her heart and told Nelson, “Mom, he’s doing good. He stopped for the Pledge of Allegiance and now he’s praying.”

“I couldn’t believe that he acknowledged that that was a moment of, you know, you need to stop and do the pledge — and he did,” Officer Moore told Fox 26 during an interview. “And he just ignored all the other kids around him and kept doing it. It was awesome.”

When Fox 26 asked Royce about his actions, he simply replied, “I said a prayer.” He then recited his prayer, saying, “Thank you God. Thank you for giving me a wonderful day.”

“Since they do not have prayer in schools he says a prayer silently,” his mother further explained, “and that’s exactly what he was doing.”

The Santa Fe Independent School District has garnered attention for prayers before. In 1995, two families brought charges against the district for allegedly “engage[ing] in several proselytizing practices, such as promoting attendance at a Baptist revival meeting, encouraging membership in religious clubs, chastising children who held minority religious beliefs, and distributing Gideon Bibles on school premises.”

The suit landed the district in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in June of 2000, where the high court concluded that district “policy permitting student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violates the Establishment Clause.”