ESSENCE Brings Joy to Others
ESSENCE: The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, which determines its character. In other words, essence is your ability to BE you!
The ESSENCE young women ' s groups within Northwest Suburban’ s eight member districts have been learning about character development. As a part of character development, group leaders discuss the importance of caring and showing
compassion towards others, learning what gratitude is and giving back. The Essence group members decided to make fleece blankets and put together personal hygiene packets for homeless youth and families. The participating schools are Buffalo Community Middle School and Buffalo High School, Rockford Middle School, Maple Grove Jr. High, Edgewood Middle School, Elk-River High School, Rogers High School, and Zimmerman High School.
ESSENCE implements four key educational concepts that help girls think about their current life situations and future goals in a constructive way: Achievement, Opportunity, Aspirations, and Expectations. The goal of ESSENCE is to help middle and high school girls that may be struggling with academics, decision making, self esteem, social skills, cultural and ethnic identity, bullying, and conflict resolution, to learn to cope with life issues through positive and productive discussions and activities.
North View Junior High IBMYP Students Stuff Over 500 Bears
For many years, North View Junior High International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme students have had the opportunity to weave IB curriculum with real life circumstances. The IB Learner Profile concept of Caring helps students make a personal commitment to service and through the Mother Bear Project, students bring comfort and hope to children affected by HIV / AIDS with a teddy bear.
This year over 70 students stuffed 500 teddy bears in an hour and a half! This brings North View’ s total bears stuffed in the last five years to 5,000! Former NVJH parent, Judy Johnson, has been knitting bears for the Mother Bear project for years and continues to bring hundreds of bears to North View for students to stuff. A way of staying connected to the school and to the students; Judy knits 1,000s of bears throughout the year to be stuffed and then sent to Africa.
The Mother Bear Project is a program dedicated to providing comfort and hope to children affected by HIV / AIDS in emerging nations. More information about the Mother Bear Project can be found here. National African American Parent Involvement Event at Northdale Middle School
Schools across the country honor and celebrate Black History Month throughout the month of February. Monday, February 10 was National African American Parent Involvement Day( NAAPID). Anoka-Hennepin School District’ s Northdale Middle School in Coon Rapids invited all families to“ Our Village, Our Kids!” event. Treated with dinner, students and families visited information booths and were serenaded by student lead musical groups. Keynote speaker, Mr. John Warren, spoke about being a parent, being better and being engaged! He led parents through an activity on how to be the best parent possible with all the obstacles facing everyone everyday. Pictured at left is NWS’ s Ayenna Davis singing the Black National Anthem.