BCHS Art Trading Cards: Mental Health Awareness Week 2017

Today marked our the final art therapy based project, sponsored by my Spectrum club’s DEHR grant, for the 2016-2017 school year. For information on past projects please check out the following links:

Heart of A Community: BCHS Students Fill Their Hearts

ART THERAPY: We All Wear a Mask

For this final exercise we decided to try an art trading card technique. Art trading cards, are similar to hockey cards, or pokemon cards. The image on the front represents something about a person. The back of the card provides a name and a few details about the person it represents.

Based on our success with past project, we chose to make this a multimedia task with minimal instruction so that our students had plenty of opportunities for personal reflection.

Students were then asked to complete 3 cards.

1. To keep
2. To trade
3. A final card to contribute to the BCHS commemorative collage.

*although we allowed complete freedom for the first two cards we asked the students to base their third card on what it means to be a member of the Bishop Carroll community

With Spotify “tunes for the coffee bar” channel streaming in the background. We provided our students with two hours to work on their projects.

The results were amazing.

We are waiting for the last few cards to come in and then we are planning to mat the cards in a single frame in order to create a legacy piece to remember not only Bishop Carroll’s 45th anniversary, but also the year we were able to collaborate between art and counselling thanks to our amazing DEHR grant.

Thank you ATA.

Sincerely

Mrs. Luong

The BCHS 3rd Annual “WE DON’T SAY ” Campaign

2017 Marks the third year of the BCHS Spectrum clubs annual “WE DON’T SAY” Campaign. For information on our previous campaigns please check out the following links:

Creating a Culture of Caring At Bishop Carroll

We Don’t Say 2.0: Our #Carrollculture of Caring Continues

We proudly launched this year’s anti- slur campaign on March 19th, 2017 during the 4th annual BCHS Mental Health Symposium . A big thanks especially goes out to the Bishop Carroll commuity for coming up with our phrases,  Grade 12 executive Olivia Quinn for leading our project,  Arlene Hufalar from the BCHS Photography club for taking photos for us, Spectrum alumni Sara for designing the posters,  Mr. Audet for printing our posters, Mr. O’ Flaherty for approving our messages and Ms. Luong and Boppre for acting as club sponsors.

Here are the phrases that made it into our campaign this year.

 

What phrases and responses might you have added? Feel free to share this campaign with others, or add comments.

BCHS 4th Annual Mental Health Symposium

On Wednesday April 19th Bishop Carroll’s Mental Wellness Team, Spectrum Club and Jack.org partnered together to put on our school 4th annual Mental Health Symposium.

(see 1st, 2nd, 3rd)

Our fabulous, student run event,  involved 100 participants from four different schools in the Calgary area. Participants were encouraged to participate in a number of mental wellness activities including building gratitude baskets, sketching to the fabulous tunes of our very own Kate Stevens, making a button with the Spectrum Club  and being the first to view the launch of the The BCHS 3rd Annual “WE DON’T SAY ” Campaign.

Our students were reminded that everyone experiences “Mental Health”, however at least 1/5 Canadians will experience Mental Illness in their lifetime.

One of our morning keynote speakers  was Calgary teen Maggie Harder who was the original initiator of the  Amazon Suicide Shirt Campaign which took place in January 2016. Maggie spoke to our students about the fact that language matters, and it’s important to stand up (in a positive and constructive way) for what you believe is important.

ART THERAPY: We All Wear a Mask

One of the innovative projects I am pleased to work on this year involves a collaboration between myself, another counselling colleague and our art teacher. BCHS Spectrum Club’s mission is to bring people together and spread a message of love …

Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms

What is your passion?

You know that one topic/ idea that energizes you whenever you think about it?

For me, one of my passions is school counselling. I love my job!! I also love learning about new ways to connect with my students.

When I became aware of Coursera`s MOOC Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms a few months ago I was immediately drawn to the concepts of character and positivity. As a school counsellor, I am constantly looking for new ideas and strategies to support my students in becoming the best that they can be. I was also taking #DCMOOC,  a course on digital citizenship, so I anticipated that many of the concepts and ideas from both the courses could be merged. I hoped that this course would provide me with a few tips and tricks to help me connect with my students in meaningful ways.

I was not disappointed.

Throughout the course we explored a number ideas including:

• character strengths – those universal aspects of our personalities which will impact how we respond to our world.
•   PERMA – Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment- a definition of happiness identified by Dr. Martin Seligman.
• CBL character behavior language – developing metacognition of specific strengths such as grit increases resilience.

• GMgrowth mindset – knowledge that intelligence can change.
• CR constructive responding –  all interactions we have our students convey a message therefore strive to create purposeful  active responses.

• micro-moments– those spontaneous teachable moments which can be enhanced through the conscious use  of CBL, GM and CR.

At the end of the course we were asked to create a visual of our learning.

This was mine

Each student is a lake.
Character Behaviour Lanugage are pebbles on a beach, you can pick up hold and examine.
Constructive Responding happens when you toss a pebble (CBL) towards your student.
Growth Mindset are the ripples that form on the lake once the pebble has been tossed. Some tosses cause large ripples, some cause smaller ones but all comments contribute to change.

Erin

Thank you to Dave Levin and the Relay Graduate School of Education for an inspirational learning opportunity.