courage

Back-to-school rally draws community together for backpack give-away, lessons on school safety

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Alachua County Public Schools’ annual backpack give-away has a new theme this year: “See Something, Say Something, Do Something.”

The Florida school district’s 19th annual Stop the Violence/Back to School Rally at Santa Fe College centered on a new program for area schools this year that officials hope will help students respond to emergency situations, and active school shooters, in particular, The Gainesville Sun reports.

The event – sponsored by People Against Violence Enterprises, Alachua County Public Schools, Meridian Behavioral Healthcare, as well as other area businesses and community groups – introduced students to the ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evade) method to keep them safe, with the promise of additional training for students and staff during the first week of school.

“We are going to teach your kids to fight back as a last resort,” Andrew Davis, a school resource deputy with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office told those who attended.

Officials doled out 2,500 backpacks filled with school supplies, and shared information about school calendars, supply lists, free- and reduced-price lunches, and after-school opportunities. But Gainesville Police Department Chief Tony Jones said a major goal was to compel students to do the right thing, and inform police if they’re aware of threats to their school or classmates.

“I want you to be safe this school year,” he said. “If you see something, say something.”

“This lets us set the stage for stopping violence in schools,” school board chairman Gunnar Paulson told the news site. “What could be more appropriate than talking about this right now?”

Parents who attended seemed to agree, with some recalling how the event made an impact on them as youngsters in the school system.

“I’m here because it’s important to teach our children about how to stop the violence in our schools and neighborhoods,” said 29-year-old Julianne Williams, whose two children will attend Lawton Chiles Elementary School in 2018. “I probably came here every year when I was in school to get backpacks, and now I’m bringing my children.”

The August rally drew many students and parents, as well as a wide variety of local leaders, from elected officials or those running for office to school leaders, parent-teacher groups, school vendors and others.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, pointed to the importance of school practices and connections to the community in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education in a variety of different schools.

“How a school is organized, the course structure and classroom practices, the relationship between school and outside civic institutions – all these matter in the moral and civic formation of the child,” he wrote.

The ALICE Training Institute website offers additional details on the methods this organizations uses in K-12 schools to prepare students and staff for the worst.

“Families and communities expect schools to keep their children safe from all threats including human-caused emergencies such as crimes of violence,” according to the site. “In collaboration with local government and community stakeholders, schools can take steps to plan and prepare to mitigate these threats. Every school Emergency Operating Procedure should include courses of action that will describe how students and staff can most effectively respond to an active shooter situation to minimize the loss of life, and teach and train on these practices.”

 

Student explains how her Christian faith supports strong character

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Dinuba High School student Audrey Menard is well-known for her outstanding character, and she isn’t shy about explaining what drives her to stay kind and positive through life’s challenges.

The California junior is active in Dinuba’s Ignite Club, a Christian student group on campus, and it’s her faith in Christ that has helped her stay strong when her “papa” was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, Your Central Valley reports.

“I came home after a choir concert to find out my Papa was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” she said. “At first you didn’t want to believe it and it was really shocking.”

Ignite Club advisor Christopher Seitz, a Dinuba science teacher, credited Menard’s ability to persevere through the bad news to her Christian faith.

“Audrey had a positive attitude, in fact she says, ‘We believe he will be healed.’ And I was floored by that statement and I think she can say that because she has a profound faith,” he said.

Despite her own issues, Audrey has continuously worked to help others at school, serving as an example of kindness and compassion for both students and staff, Seitz said.

“Her smile alone is enough to make me smile and people respect her, students and teachers alike, because she is so mature for her age and radiates beauty and kindness,” he said.

Menard, who was recognized for her remarkable character by Your Central Valley in February, said her faith has taught her to use kindness and resilience to her advantage, particularly when times are tough.

“When it feels like everything is going wrong in the world to focus on that positive thing,” she said. “That can change your whole view on everything that will get you through the hardest moments.”

“I have this positive mindset that (papa) is healed, we are going to pass through this, and it will be a miracle that we can use to help other people,” Menard said.

Menard’s story highlights the important role faith plays in many students’ lives, and it serves as a reminder about the critical sacred quality of good character.

“This point bears repeating: character does not require religious faith,” James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in The Death of Character. “But it does require conviction of truth made sacred, abiding as an authoritative presence within consciousness and life, reinforced by habits institutionalized within a moral community.”

The Ignite Club obviously offers one avenue for reinforcing the religious habits that guide Menard’s strong character. Teachers can also take the lead in encouraging students to draw on their deepest convictions – including religious convictions – in ways that honor the sacredness of those beliefs and makes space for the convictions of others.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers a research report titled Flourishing from the Margins: Living a Good Life and Developing Purpose in Marginalized Young People that explains how students perceive their own sense of purpose and their vision of a “good life.”

In addition to research on how character education plays into education, the report suggests key recommendations for educators and provides teaching resources to help put the findings into action.

Disabled National Honor Society grad explains how a new school changed his life trajectory

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Charlottesville, Virginia High School senior Julian Smith has had a lot of struggles in life, but with the persistence of his aunt and teachers at the Virginia school he graduated as a member of the National Honor Society in June – a feat some thought he’d never accomplish.

Smith was born with cerebral palsy, quadriplegia and several intellectual disabilities, which made for a difficult childhood growing up with his grandmother in Maryland. He struggled in school, in part because of his physical issues, but also because his teachers had little faith he could perform at the same level as his peers, The Daily Progress reports.

By the time Smith entered ninth grade, school officials said he had the cognitive abilities of a second- or third-grader, but his aunt Joanna Moore knew better. When Smith’s grandmother could no longer care for him, Moore took over and pushed the teen to live up to his potential.

“Up until that point, everyone just saw the wheelchair, saw the level he cognitively tested at and assumed he couldn’t do the work, he couldn’t be in the general population classes,” Moore told the news site. “I know his capabilities and I knew how smart he was, and I knew I had to fight.”

Moore said it wasn’t easy. The two studied relentlessly to help Smith get through the basics.

“At first it was catching up: addition, subtraction, multiplication – things no one had ever thought he could learn and so no one had bothered to teach him,” Moore said. “That was a lot of work, and I think both of us struggled.”

“High school was very hard at first, just getting used to how everything worked and the speed, especially for me, because I can’t think as fast as other people can,” Smith said. “It took memory, a lot of studying and a lot of concentration.”

It also took a different kind of school – with educators who believed in him – to help Smith flourish. When the two moved to Charlottesville for Moore to attend the University of Virginia, Smith’s experience at school drastically changed.

Unlike his teachers in Maryland, educators at Charlottesville High School shared Moore’s confidence Smith could excel in his studies – and he did.

“He loved it, I loved it, he felt so supported,” Moore said. “They had so many different mechanisms to get him to succeed. They believed in him.”

On June 14, Smith graduated with honors and with acceptance letters from three universities: Wright State University in Ohio, Edinboro University in Pennsylvania and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, which he ultimately chose to stay close to home, The Daily Progress reports.

Smith’s inspiring story is one example of the profound impact adults can have on students – a reality researchers at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture noted in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education in a wide variety of schools.

“As a rule, students want their teachers to think well of them and respect them, and they recognize teachers as role models as they do other adults, such as coaches, administrators, and parents,” according to the study.

Without Moore and educators at Charlottesville High School, Smith undoubtedly would not have been so successful.

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers other examples of students “Flourishing From the Margins” to highlight how parents and educators can achieve similar results.

TX schools partner with Sandy Hook Promise to launch anonymous bullying reporting app

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Students in Houston, Texas schools will soon have new, anonymous ways to report bullying, an effort spawned by a state law focused on fighting bullying online.

Texas lawmakers approved David’s Law last summer to ensure the state’s public schools “have the authority to address cyberbullying that occurs off-campus,” according to David’s Legacy Foundation.

The law requires schools to notify a bullying victim’s parents of an incident within three days, as well as the parents of the aggressor. The law gives schools the authority to expel students who encourage others to commit suicide, incites violence or releases indecent images of another student, and promotes mental health education and use of counselors to resolve student conflicts and bullying.

David’s Law also requires schools to include anonymous ways for students to report problems with bullies.

The Houston Independent School District is complying with a new tip line, website and mobile app that will allow students to report incidents of bullying without the stigma of going to the school office or approaching adults or police.

“The main thing is you’re providing students voice,” HISD’s head of student support services, Anvi Utter, told Houston Public Media.

“You’re providing them a safe place where they can talk about things that are happening at school, that’s outside of school,” Utter said. “And students will know that they’re being heard and that there’s going to be a response to this.”

HISD’s anonymous reporting system is provided by the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise, created in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Connecticut in 2012. Utter believes that while the new approach will ultimately reduce bullying in schools, she suspects it will initially create more reports by allowing students to voice their concerns from the shadows.

“I actually think there’s going to be an increase in our bullying reporting because this is anonymous,” she said.

The system also reflects a unified approach – from lawmakers to counselors in schools – for dealing with students who prey on their classmates.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, notes in “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideals and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

To date, nearly 3 million people have taken the Sandy Hook Promise – “I promise to do all I can to protect children from gun violence by encouraging and supporting solutions that create safer, healthier homes, schools and communities.”

The national nonprofit offers a variety of programs and resources for educators and parents, from suicide prevention, to safety assessments and other guides to help prevent violence in schools and to reduce and eliminate harm to young people.

 

Student’s senior project connects personal story of hope with others struggling to overcome

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Journey Smith’s Grade 12 project at British Columbia Canada’s Whistler Waldorf School is making a big impact, both on those involved in “Hope The Documentary,” and the 18-year-old herself.

Smith told Canada’s Pique News Magazine what started as a year-long thesis on the role of hope evolved into something much more, largely because her own story of overcoming adversity connected with others she knows who have struggled in life.

“In my 18 years of life, I have faced a lot of adversity. I was actually diagnosed with a condition called hydrocephalus, which is essentially fluid on the brain. I suffered a stroke at birth,” Smith said, adding that she’s underwent numerous surgeries related to the condition in the years since.

“This project was super important to find other people who have faced different types of adversity and how, through their journey, they’d overcome it,” she said.

Smith teamed with family friend and commercial videographer Andi Wardrop, who credited Smith’s intimate connection with those she interviewed for bringing the film to life.

“Journey’s story, first of all; and probably most of all, is why people get so attached to this film. The few times that (I) had met Journey, it seemed like she didn’t have a disability, which is interesting now that I know her so well,” Wardrop said. “Watching her start to give herself permission to be exactly who she is through talking to these other people, as soon as we started the film I knew it was going to be extremely powerful. It was definitely Journey’s story that I got attached to.”

“Hope The Documentary” features a local photographer who overcame breast cancer, a man who launched a mountain-bike charity following the death of his young son to cancer, a widower grieving through the unexpected death of her husband, and Smith’s personal neurosurgeon, who has treated the student since she was a toddler, according to the news site.

The focus on hope also aligns with the values and mission of Whistler Waldorf School.

“At Whistler Waldorf School, students learn from an early age to engage in their own learning process. The imaginative play and grace of the early years evolves into an experience of meeting the beauty and complexity of the world with sensitivity and hope,” according to the school’s website. “This foundation leads to a rich academic experience that supports young men and women in realizing their full potential as students, as people, as members of the global community.”

Scholars at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia point out that schools play an important role in the “moral ecology” of a community, which strongly influences students’ character.

“When social institutions – whether the family, peer relationships, youth organizations, the internet, religious congregations, entertainment, or popular culture – cluster together, they form a larger ecosystem of powerful cultural influences,” editors James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson wrote in “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of character development practices in a wide variety of U.S. schools.

The Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues offers resources for educators working to influence positively the moral ecology of their communities and build character in students.

The report “Flourishing From the Margins,” for example, analyzes findings from data collected on 3,250 young people in a variety of educational settings, and offers teaching tools focused on character that educators can use to help struggling students to thrive.

 

JROTC students excel: ‘Comes with being part of something much bigger than themselves’

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Ashby Foote, city councilman in Jackson, Mississippi, is a big fan of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, and for good reason.

Foote recently penned an editorial for the Clarion Ledger that offers his take on the program amid a district overhaul designed to reinvent education in Jackson Public Schools, and why he believes district officials should pursue opportunities to expand the Corp’s  influence on students.

“ … While new leadership works to reinvent and reinvigorate Jackson Public Schools (JPS), it is worth highlighting an old program within JPS that excels at the highest level – the Junior Officers’ Training Corps. In the critical metric of graduation rates, JROTC achieved 95 percent, far surpassing JPS’ 70 percent, Mississippi’s 83 percent and the national high school rate of 84 percent,” Foote wrote.

“But it doesn’t stop there. JROTC cadets also outperform in daily attendance, grade point average, ACT scores and acceptance to institutions of higher learning.”

Foote explained that JPS’ JROTC program, a staple in the district since 1936, initially started as a means of preparing young men for the possibility of war, but gradually evolved into a program with a laser like focus on citizenship, character development, and successful living after school.

The councilman contends “JROTC’s dramatic outperformance year after year doesn’t happen by chance,” and pointed to the instructors – all retired military with 20 years or more of experience – for offering students something that “goes far beyond education credentials.”

“They bring a can-do, purpose-driven culture that comes with being part of something much bigger than themselves,” Foote wrote. “They bring experiences from lives lived across the world, and in some instances, under the most adverse of conditions. And they bring organizational values including structure, ethics, discipline, accountability, mutual respect and a passion for success.”

The program also offers students “an impressive array of extracurricular programs” each summer, including camps at the Nanotoxicity Computational Chemistry Institute, National Flight Academy at Pensacola Naval Air Station, Mississippi State Engineering/Geosciences STEM Camp, William Carey Health Careers STEM camp, and the Southern Miss Computer Science/Cybersecurity Camp, among other training opportunities.

“JORTC works,” Foote wrote. “It works because it brings the right capabilities and a tough love commitment to critical tasks that are vital to the long-term future of JPS and Jackson.”

Researchers at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia point to importance of creating “thick” and “dense” moral cultures like the JROTC in “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of research into character education in a wide variety of schools.

Researchers noted that “the source and setting for moral and civic education matter – that the ‘thickness’ of cultural endowments and the ‘density’ of moral community within which those endowments find expression are significant in the formation of personal and public virtue in children.”

Educators looking to delve deeper into character formation, and the virtues promoted by JROTC, can find resources at Virtue Insight. The site is a blog by the UK’s Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues that more closely examines the virtues that support strong moral character – temperance, courage, justice, and practical wisdom – through the observations of former priest and theologian Thomas Aquinas.

Newcomer to America champions social justice and equal rights

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When 13-year-old Natasha Wanjiru escaped the slums of Nairobi, Kenya to study in America on a scholarship with Bridge Academy, she didn’t forget about her siblings and countless other children who weren’t as fortunate.

Two years later, while home in Nairobi during summer break, Wanjiru spoke about her time at the prestigious Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, and how she’s now working to expand opportunities for young girls back home to follow in her footsteps, Standard Media reports.

Her journey started when she joined a Bridge International Academy in Kenya with her brother in 2013 and saw a poster offering scholarships to study in America for top students, according to the Bridge website.

“I got really inspired,” she said. I never knew that something that great could happen to me. So I worked really hard because I knew if I could study in the United States it would really help my family.”

Wanjiru received high marks on achievement tests and initially landed a scholarship through the Kenya Education Fund to cover tuition her mother could not afford at Moi Girls High School in the Kamusinga slums of Nairobi in 2016. After only about five months at the school, she was selected by Bridge International Academies to study at Episcopal High School starting in ninth grade.

She’s now working to recruit her school community in America to contribute to her “change4change” project to sponsor kids from her slum to attend Kenyan secondary schools.

“Teachers and my schoolmates are passionate about changing the lives of children in Kenyan slums. They have been contributing to the course and we have managed to sponsor 30 students,” she said. “There are 18 others with individual sponsors.”

Wanjiru said it’s an effort inspired by her own experience and fueled by a passion for social justice and equal rights.

“The problem with the society is that a single negative narrative of poverty associated with children in slums has curtailed our ability to see the potential in them,” Wanjiru said, referencing a TED talk from her favorite fiction author Chimamanda Adichie of Nigeria.

“I get disturbed at Episcopal when I imagine the number of girls, especially in slums and rural areas, who do not go to school due to lack of fees and end up in early marriages,” she said. “I am working towards getting an organization that is actively involved in social justice issues like education.”

While it’s difficult to know how much Episcopal High School contributed to Wanjiru’s sense of social justice and equal rights, it’s clear those virtues flourished when she landed in America.

Researchers with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture noted how urban public high schools value compassion in “The Content of Their Character”, an analysis of character education in a wide variety of U.S. schools.

“The teachers, staff, and administrators all deeply prized compassion,” researches wrote, “especially in each other, and then to some extent in their students.”

The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues offers lessons for educators to help students consider how they practice compassion in their lives. One lesson, “Build Your Own Virtue: Compassion” encourages students to draw inspiration from literature and history, and to look to role models that bring the virtue to life.

 

Student born with no hands wins national handwriting contest

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Chesapeake third grader Anaya Ellick had her sights set on winning the 2018 Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest for cursive, and the hard work payed off in May when she took home the trophy.

What makes the feat all the more amazing is Ellick was born without hands, WVEC reports.

“Anaya is a role mode to everyone,” said Sarah Cannaday, Ellick’s teacher at Greenbriar Christian Academy. “Her classmates see her and see her doing the same tasks they are and they are often amazed that she can do just as well as they do, sometimes even better.”

Ellick was honored with the Zaner-Bloser 2018 Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellence in Penmanship during a May 9 presentation with her teacher, parents, classmates and administrators at her school. The Nicholas Maxim Award is for students with cognitive delay or intellectual, physical or developmental disabilities.

A team of occupational therapists review entries and pick a winner. The annual award is part of the national Zaner-Bloser handwriting contest, which has recognized the outstanding penmanship of K-8 students nationwide for more than three decades, according to the news site.

Ellick, a soft-spoken and humble 9-year-old, said her key to success is simply not giving up, despite some who doubted her ability. She won a similar handwriting contest for printing two years ago.

“People said I could not do it,” she said. “I would tell them I could do it.”

What is apparent in this story is Ellick’s total lack of victimhood, of not being defined by her disability. What it also shows is that the pendulum in some schools is swinging back from self-expression to self-discipline. This research can be found in The Death of Character, written by James Davidson Hunter. Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture are encouraged by this shift.

Ellick said it felt good to be recognized for her hard work.

“I felt happy, excited, and proud of myself,” she said.

Cannaday told WVEC Ellick’s personal drive is infectious, and not just for her classmates.

“She’s just really inspired me to work harder, because I look at her and she never says ‘I can’t do it,’” Cannaday said. “She never makes an excuse.”

Teachers with younger children will find this resource, from the UK’s The Jubilee Centre helpful for teaching students about virtues they should be acquiring at a young age.

University of California Los Angeles ROTC staffers ‘walk the walk’ when confronted with fiery crash on LA’s 405

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Six staff members of University of California Los Angeles’ Reserve Officers Training Corps recently put on an impromptu demonstration of what it truly means to don a military uniform. And it’s already having a major impact on the program’s roughly 100 cadets.

The staffers – Maj. Tyrone Vargas, Lt. Col. Shannon Stambersky, Maj. Steve Kwon, Sgt. 1st Class Rhu Maggio, recruiting officer Romeo Miguel, and program manager Victoria Sanelli – were en route on Los Angeles’ infamous 405 freeway in early May when they came across an 18-wheeler toppled on the center divider and engulfed in flames, Stars and Stripes reports.

“It looked like it exploded,” Maggio, who was driving the crew back to the UCLA campus, told KTLA. “Dust went up, there was a giant fireball.”

The group’s mini-van was among the first on the scene, and the four uniformed ROTC instructors quickly went to work, drawing on their 15 years of Army experience, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The two civilians with them, meanwhile, collected water and fire extinguishers from other motorists.

Maggio and Vargas pulled the big rig driver from the wreckage, but another person was trapped in a crumpled Honda pinned under the truck. “That’s when we all rushed to aid the trapped driver of the car,” Kwon said. “The fire was already burning and picking up flames.”

The soldiers worked to keep the flames at bay and dislodge a chunk of concrete in the way. Others dumped dirt to quell the blaze. Eventually, someone arrived with a battery-powered metal saw, and a soldier cut through the car to pull the driver free.

“Within 30 seconds, the entire vehicle was engulfed in flames,” Kwon said.

Much of the rescue was recorded by passing motorists and posted online, and the ROTC staffers’ efforts did not go unnoticed. “I truly believe they saved his life,” Jose Ahumada, with the California Highway Patrol, told KTLA.

“We train, we work, we’re ready for when anything happens to make decisions and then lead,” said Vargas. “Everybody just fell in line … We could not have stopped the fire. It was too big already. But we had enough time to save this individual.”

“We talk about our deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, but never in a million years would you ever expect to be called upon to do something in Los Angeles,” Stambersky said.

Vargas said he’s already heard from at least one cadet who watched the videos online.

“Good job,” the cadet said. “You walk the walk.” This is the crucial moment in moral development, where adult leaders demonstrate under pressure the fruit of good character. Researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture quoted a teacher in their study, “You can talk all day long. If you don’t walk the walk, they’re not buying it and they [students] know the difference.”

 

Paralympian teaches students character through archery, life story

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Sammi Tucker is teaching students in Sherrill, New York about persistence and focus, mindfulness and inner peace.

The U.S. Air Force veteran became the first woman to represent the United States in the Open Compound Para Archery Division during the 2016 Paralympics, a feat she accomplished after losing her left hand in a motorcycle accident that drastically changed her life, the Oneida Dispatch reports.

People learn best through story, experience, and indirection. Here as anticipated by researchers at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture life lessons and moral culture are taught through the informal articulation of adult role models. They concluded, “The moral example of teachers unquestionably complemented the formal instruction students received, but arguably, it was far more poignant to, and influential upon, the students themselves.”

Tucker explained how the experience shifted her outlook, and how archery helped her refocus on the things that truly matter. In school, Tucker said she was withdrawn, and became sad and afraid after high school. Years later, she crashed her motorcycle after an emotional event, and the sleeve of her jacket got caught in the chain of the bike, resulting the loss of her hand.  “I’m laying in the ditch and all I could think was that I was 41 years old and I didn’t know if my life mattered,” Tucker told students. “I didn’t know if I really loved anybody or if anything I did ever made a difference in anyone’s life.”

Tucker said she heard and felt God’s presence, and it propelled her to not only overcome the crash, but to rebuild her life with excitement. Along the way, she found archery.  “When you’re shooting, you can see your inner thoughts reflected on your target,” she said. “It’s an amazing resource for connecting to yourself and building mindfulness skills. It really is meditation. I developed a tuned-in ability to what I was thinking, because even if I wasn’t on the range, I was so aware of what I was thinking and that translated into daily life. That self-awareness has probably been one of the most impactful things in my life. And for kids to develop that skill now, it’ll transfer into everything.”

The talk and archery demonstration – in which Tucker draws her 45-pound bow with her teeth – took part with students of a variety of ages at Warrior Archery, part of the Oneida Indian Nation’s Oneida Heritage Sales and Retail. It’s part of a character building partnership between the Oneida YMCA and Oneida Heritage.

Students were also encouraged to try archery themselves, with Tucker’s help and pointers from young archers like 5-year-old Molly McHugh who are already in the program. McHugh’s parents said archery has become an analogy for Molly to improve her life and those around her in a supportive environment.

“She’s very motivated and keeps pushing through,” Molly’s mother, Lynne McHugh told the Dispatch. “And while she’s tiny, it makes her feel powerful.”

“You get these three different age groups together, all focused on one target, pun intended, and look at how they’re all getting along, encouraging and supporting each other. There’s no bullying or negativity,” Tucker added. “There’s just fun and encouragement. I think that’s what the sport of archery is. It’s a competition with yourself that brings out your inner strength.”

Teachers and principals working to strengthen moral and citizenship formation in their students will find information, strategies and lesson plans at the UK’s The Jubilee Centre.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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