This past week we have the good fortune to report an exciting new counseling partnership with the US Navy, called Anchored4Life. The school counselor, Ms. Fox, the advisor, will be working with a team of students to help facilitate positive transition support and build leadership skills within the elementary. These students (three 4th graders & three 5th graders) will be helping Ms. Fox to facilitate the meetings and give information to classes Kindergarten 5- 5th grade during a short 20-25 min morning meeting format, monthly.
Anchor’s away is a program sponsored by the US Navy, specifically to enhance a positive transition to youth in elementary school (all students). We are one of two schools in Korea that are authorized to do this program under the new US Navy Contract here on the Korean peninsula– it is a great honor that we are able to be the first to roll out this important project in collaboration with the counseling department.
The goal of the program is teach and reinforce life skills to better connect with their peers and community during transitions. These transitions include things like moving to a new school, moving away, fear, making friends, healthy bodies, bullies, parent being deployed/moving for job, grief, divorce, families reuniting and integration back into a community. This program also promotes student leadership skills by provide growing opportunities to increase competency and character by positively addressing setbacks. This program also helps build confident leaders who inspire others by contributing to a caring and supportive environment. These are all aspects that Ms. Fox works with students on as a whole at BFS and believes it will help enhance our counseling program and school as a whole.
Part of the program also is to have an inspiring quote that is related to the theme of the month. Students Team Leaders will pick the quote to share with a classroom. Alongside this there will be opportunities for us to establish ‘crew members’ in each class to help our team leaders in individual classes. The crew members, assigned unofficially, would be one boy and one girl that teachers see as kind leaders in their classroom that could help us transition the youngest kids to eventual team leaders down the road when they get to 4th and 5th grade. These student crew members are support for others in the class, and will be a face for new students seeking information and help during transition times as well as a classroom contact for our Team Leaders and Ms. Fox for the classroom activities.
