It’s the beginning of the last week of the month and everyone in Bruce M. Whittier Middle School is anxiously waiting for the list to be posted. On the way to lunch a few people check the list and see to their delight that their names are on the list. The hard work and effort that they put into their schoolwork and being the best student they can be is finally rewarded. That’s right, another Fab Friday is coming up.
“I wonder what we are doing this month” is the most common question buzzing around the middle school around this time. With a generous donation from Robert’s Apple Orchard we were able to pick a bag of apples to take home in September. In October we got to carve pumpkins and have a contest with yet another donation from Chipman Farms. The most recent Fab Friday was the movie “Christmas with the Cranks,” played in the auditorium with a snack. This reward is for the students who have worked hard to get all of their work in and who were well behaved for the whole month.
Mrs. Janet Jones, our school’s dean, was the one who came up with this splendid idea. Her reasoning? “The students were always being disciplined for wrong behavior, not rewarded for doing the right things that they have done. We need to celebrate the good things that students are doing for a change.” She also wanted to call the “fence” students, or those who were on the fence of being good students and bad students, more towards being a good student. I myself have noticed that more and more people have tried to improve their grades and keep up with their work so that they can join their friends in having a good time. This is happening slowly, but surely. Each time we have a new Fab Friday we are joined by more students. Mrs. Jones said that she would love to see this improvement happen much faster, but she is happy that she is getting the little improvements.
The original idea for Fab Friday actually came from her own children’s middle school. They had a free period once in a while that everyone was able to participate in. Mrs. Jones took that idea, and modified it a bit. She made it so that we would only have a Fab Friday once a month, and that it is obviously more extravagant then a free period. Another addition is that we have to earn our participation by being a good student and having all of our work in.
Who comes up with these great ideas to reward us? The staff team throws ideas up in their meetings and Mrs. Jones gets ideas from the parent advisory team. They want to have bigger rewards like a trip to the movies, snow tubing, bowling, and a movie at the recreation department. None of these are for sure though, because the ideas aren’t ever known until about two weeks before.
We now all know what we are doing this month. This month we are going to have a choice on what we want to do. We can watch a movie, make wreathes, make ornaments, go caroling, make snowflakes and listen to music, have an open gym, or homework help. The students of Whittier Middle School are in the holiday spirit as you may have noticed. In that spirit everyone is allowed to come to this Fab Friday and experience how fun it is. We hope that this will attract more and more students because they get a chance to see what they may be missing.
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