When I think back on high school, some of my favorite memories are the opportunities I had to work with my classmates. Well, these students representing both high schools in Marysville Ohio got to work together with classmates from all over the city to create a program to help out students in third and fourth grade in the city’s elementary schools. The Marysville High 5 REACT Club is this week’s A+ Award winner. REACT is an acronym and it stands for Respect, Equality, Acceptance, Communication, and Trust. An acronym is an abbreviation formed from the first letters of other words and pronounced as a word.
The club’s members represent both Marysville High School and Marysville Early College High School. The group participated in a national competition called Invent 2 Prevent that challenged them to create a plan to address hate or bullying in their community. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that our A+ Award winners finished in first place! The first place prize included a $5,000 grant to develop and implement their plan.
At this point you’re probably wondering what the plan was, well, it is impressive! The members of the club created a program to help Marysville students in third and fourth grade deal with hate, bullying, and the social isolation that many students your age have been struggling with over the last few years because of the pandemic.
The team created a board game that can be used by students to help them get to know each other better, a curriculum that can help teachers, a mentoring program that allows high school students to work with younger students, and they’re even working on an app and computer game. When we asked the team how they were able to develop such an impressive program, they explained that the club has smaller teams to help them reach their goal. Each team has a focus and the members of those teams were specially selected because of their talents, skills, and interests. The High 5 REACT club has teams that focus on curriculum, mentorship, technology, social media, and branding.
This week’s A+ Award goes to the Marysville High 5 REACT club for helping to spread respect, equity, acceptance, communication and trust in their community!
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