Building life-long skills

Alice Campbell Havre Daily News [email protected]

Eighth-graders at Havre Middle School took a break from core subjects and learned some life lessons ins t ead las t we ek dur ing the E d u c a t i o n a l Wo r k s h o p s and Motivation Day. The mini-worksops, lasting 25 minutes each and developed by the Positive Behavior Committee chaired by As s i s tant Pr inc ipal Jami e Courville, centered on topics that don't necessarily have a way to be explained in the course of a normal day, said Principal Dustin Kraske. Students in each grade at the middle School participated in similar workshops, and Kraske said he hopes to have more sessions in the spring. "I've heard nothing but positives," he said about the workshops that dealt with problem solving and team building, cyberbullying and sexting, assertiveness and self-confidence, sickness and how to prevent it, positively dealing with negative emotions, and tolerance of others. Math teacher Leslie Hanson's eighthgrade students enjoyed the worksops, she said. With most of the students giving the workshops a rating of between eight and nine. "It's hard for us to incorporate (issues) like cyberbullying or that type of thing, but we do try to hit on your wellness," she said about incorporating life issues into the classroom. "I don't know that as a math teacher they always listen to what I say," she said. "They loved the police car," she said, that senior patrolman Andrew Poulos brought with him to show after his presentation about being tolerant of others. A workshop focused on teamwork also was positively received, Hanson said, adding that the students liked working together to complete the activity of moving from island to island without getting in the ocean. "So it was really fun for the kids," she said. "It was a great day." Students also took away some serious lessons at the end of the workshops, she said, like more knowledge about cyberbullying and sexting. "It was a real eyeopener for them," she said, to realize how many copies of images and texts are created and how many people might have access to them. "They need to be aware of what it is that they have in their hand, that it's a pretty powerful tool," she said. Other workshops, like the one focused on emotions and how to positively deal with them, taught lessons that can be carried into high school, Hanson said. That workshop dealt a lot with peer pressure, she said, and "they'll have more of that when they get to high school."