PTSA STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE ACTIVITY: BE A HERO WEEK

 PTSA STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE ACTIVITY WEEK: BE A HERO,

One of the things I love is getting to work with the PTSA Student Representatives at the Junior High and High School. I just love working with the youth. 

This past February our state PTSA did something I thought was pretty awesome, they had weekly virtual speakers for the Student Representative to get on and listen to. They were great! One in particular that I really enjoyed and so did our student chair, was by Paul Parkinson and it was about being a Hero. I'll link here to the video just incase you would like to view it: Paul Parkinson Virtual Event Paul, is also the co-author of a book called "Unselfish Kids" and he wrote the movie "Rising Above", also titled "Nowhere Safe". It is an excellent movie that I highly suggest that all parents of teens watch with their teens. It is about cyberbullying and even in person bullying and rising above it.

What we really liked about his presentation was that anyone and everyone can be a hero. It doesn't have to be something huge that we do, we can be a hero by doing just simple acts of kindness. I spoke with our Student Chair and we decided that our next month's PTSA Student Rep activity would be focused around the theme "Be A Hero". We also wanted to include the entire student body in it. So I came up with themes and ideas for each day. We heard from many afterwards how much they loved it and hoped that it would be something that we would do each year.

So, here is what we did:

The first day, Monday, we had a kick off at the school. We had a table set up in the commons during both of the lunches at the school. The focus was, "What is a Hero?". We had a poster and items at the table that symbolized what we would be doing throughout the week. Some of these items we were giving away. To receive one of the items, the students needed to fill our a "Be a Hero Compliment Card".  

On the card they would write a compliment to either a student or faculty member at the school. The cards would be delivered to that person on Thursday, as part of our Thursday activity. The items we were giving away were wrist bands and stickers from Zero Fatalities, who focus on driving safely. We gave away candy and we had some beanies with the school name on them. It was a big hit and we had close to 100 compliment cards filled out. One of the most important things was using all of the social media channels to get the word out. 

Tuesday, was "Heroes Drive Safe". We really wanted to incorporate driving safe into our be a Hero week. The day we did this was a big testing day, so we needed to do something that focused on things outside of the school. We had given away the drive safe wrist bands and stickers from Zero Fatalities. We also, shared a whole bunch of information about driving safe that we found on Zero Fatalities. I posted probably ever 2 hours on our school Facebook page. Here is a link to Zero Fatalities. I focused on their themes: Drive Alert, Drive Focused, Drive Calm, Drive Sober, and Buckle Up

Wednesday was, "Be a Hero, Look out and Stand up for Others". Before hand, I had photoshopped some super hero images and put our Administrations faces on them. To do this I erased the face of the image and layered behind it the face of our administration. Here are the super hero images I used, Kids and boys wearing Superheroes costume. 

Cartoon Vectors by Vecteezy

I made these into half sheet posters and they were hidden throughout the school. We took pictures that were clues of where they were hidden. If they found one of the images they could bring it to the office for a prize.

Here is the post that was shared on social media that day. We just really want our students to treat each other with kindness and respect. We are all on the same team. 

For the prizes we just did 2 liter bottles of pop and had this tag on it. We also encourage the students to be more aware of those around them. To stand up for each other and to look out for each other. Some kids got super into this activity! 

Thursday's activity was probably my favorite. We actually had the kids fill out the compliment cards at the table on Monday, then these cards were delivered on Thursday. We read through them to make sure they were appropriate. There were the sweetest messages on them, that just made the whole thing totally worth it. On Thursday, we also encouraged everyone, to take time to compliment people throughout the day. 

Friday, was the final day of the Be A Hero week, and its focus was on doing small acts to help others. Throughout the day there are many opportunities given to us to help and spread kindness to someone. The students were encouraged to do small acts of kindness throughout the day. It takes being more aware of those around us and to think of ways we can be kind. One social media we shared some cute images of kids being heroes, with some quotes about kindness. 

I've had some interest in the ideas and printables, so I decided to do this post. For the printables I am offering, the prize tags, the compliment cards and the background for the posters and the daily prompts, so you can personalize it for your own school or group. This would be great to do in any school setting, whether it be elementary, junior high or high school. You could also do it with a church group. Or even with your own family. The purpose of it, is that we can each make a big difference and be a hero in someone's life, just by doing small things.

Here are the links to the printables, click on the free download buttons:

Link to the background for the poster and daily prompts. This is a jpeg image, so you can download and save it, then open it up into photo editing software to edit it. I use procreate (which you need to purchase, definitely worth it! I have the pocket edition on my phone that I did a lot of the daily prompt with), the free options I use are paint.net, snapseed app, and LiveCollage app.

I printed these out onto card stock. I tried to fit as many on a page as I could, to cut down on printing costs. I printed enough so I had 100 compliment cards.

I also, printed these out onto card stock. We attached them onto 2 liter bottles of pop. But they could be attached to any prize. The pop is always a big hit with the kids though!

Thank you for stopping by! I hope that this post was helpful. If you have any additional questions send me an email to lifesjourneytoperfection@gmail.com. 

Here's another fun activity that we just did with our Junior High PTSA Student Reps, Twinkies and Thank Yous: