This year we started using Character Strong at the Middle School. Our students are divided into small groups and they meet once a week for about a 40 minute lesson on social emotional learning. Throughout the process we have developed a Character Strong Committee consisting of 6 students, 2 at each grade level, voted on by the teachers. This year’s Character Strong Student Committee is made up of the following students:
Evie Buckson, Johnna Dively, Neil Jarvis, Charli O'Donnell, Rikki Phillips, and Caden Walsh
Together these students have prepared the following message regarding their experience related to Character Strong this year.
Character Strong, a company that was originally created by John Norlin, hosts videos with children that talk about different questions and issues with today’s kids. There are also character dares, where the program challenges you to accomplish goals by helping someone. For example, telling somebody their shoes look outstanding, or their outfit looks amazing, or just simply by putting in effort to show kindness. Our Character Strong committee was formed when teachers picked six people to join Mrs. Torman, and completing different challenges.
Most of Hinckley-Big Rock Middle School thought that Character Strong would be tedious and awkward. In the beginning, character strong wasn’t favored, but as time goes on we are discovering that Character Strong really helps students, and it is interesting.
Some of the reasons that we enjoy character strong days is you get to understand people, and work with other people that you normally don’t see everyday. Another reason is you have the opportunity to have meetings or talks with the character strong committee, and make new changes for the pep rallies we have every middle of the month. For instance, some of the challenges we planned included decorating our Character Strong doors for Christmas, and growing Chia Pets.
Social Emotional Learning focuses on learning about each others’ emotions and feelings. For each lesson there’s a Character Dare. Those dares have something to do with being kind or helping others. If you complete that dare you are entered into a raffle to get a prize from Mrs. Torman’s wonderful table of joy. As each person completes Character Dares, their team gets a tally and competes with the other Character Strong teams. At the end of the year, the team with the most completed Character Dares will win a prize.
We feel that the Character strong Committee is worthwhile if you get a chance to join. We have found hearing the ideas of others is quite enjoyable, and are proud of our Character Strong program. It really is fun to be a part of something bigger than one grade, or class. For us, Character Strong means we can all have a connection to each other. That is something that takes time and effort that we are willing to put in.
HBRMS Character Strong Student Committee