Courage, citizenship, inclusiveness, service, and heart: These five core values are central to more than B-P’s mission statement. They provide a roadmap for the day-to-day journey of learning, growing students and their caring educators. At B-P Middle School, the core values took on special meaning during a school year like no other, one changed in so many ways by a global pandemic.
“Our focus this year was to instill and support the district’s core values of heart, citizenship, courage, inclusiveness, and service,” said Middle School Principal Wayne Bell. “Our Building Leadership Team thought it would be a great idea to end this school year with our students taking the last week and a half of school to do a project aligned to one or more of these core values. We believed it would be a great learning experience for our students, and the community may also benefit from some of the projects.”
Team members and teachers Briana Nelder, Jason Kruger, Ana Ventre, Mike Nacheman and Amy Hale led the charge, challenging students to consider and create, communicate and share. Each student in grades six through eight was asked to develop a project that ties in with one of the core values of:
• Courage to pursue passions, be curious, be creative and be innovative.
• Citizenship to understand our role in the global community.
• Inclusiveness to accept and support differences in all.
• Service to make other people’s lives better.
• Heart for the children we serve is at the center of all we do.
To inspire the students, the team members created their own core values projects. By the end of the year, the students’ imaginative projects breathed life into B-P’s core values while highlighting the students’ connections to their community. Their projects range from spreading kindness and friendship during quarantine by writing letters, to reducing plastic waste in a neighborhood, promoting foster care of children, building a soccer goal, teaching how to create art and video games, helping shelter animals, and more.
Over the next few months, watch B-P’s social media channels for highlights of some of our students’ amazing core value projects, including those below.
In her Keeping Spirits High project, seventh grade student Josie Arcuri focused on the core values of heart and citizenship. She explained, “[The core value] is shown because heart is being kind to others and always trying to be a better person with your actions and words. Citizenship is supporting the community and helping others in times that they need help.”
Gianna D’Ambrosio’s Making Nurses Smile project centered on the core value of inclusiveness and touched the hearts of local healthcare workers.