Naming the "Leopard of the Month" at Winecoff Elementary

This article was written by Susannah McIntyre, K-2 School Counselor at Winecoff Elementary in the Cabarrus County Schools District in North Carolina. She is completing her second year at Winecoff, where she started the school’s Leopard of the Month program this year. 

The Positivity Project (P2) curriculum is cemented into our students’ routines at Winecoff Elementary. For students to grasp and fully understand a concept, it needs to be part of their routine. Our students encounter P2 in several ways throughout their school day, which familiarizes them with the concepts and the message.

Character Strength Discussion on Wake Up Winecoff

Every student at Winecoff starts the school day watching our news broadcast, Wake Up Winecoff. They learn what is on the menu for lunch, submit shout-outs to other students to be read, and learn about a P2 character strength. The segment centers on the strength they are currently covering in their classroom P2 lessons. Students receive an age-appropriate explanation of what the strength means, along with practical, relatable examples of how it is displayed.

Classroom Lessons That Use Our Own Examples

After Wake Up Winecoff ends, every classroom teacher launches into a P2 lesson on the character strength highlighted in the news. Teachers follow the P2 character education curriculum using the provided PowerPoint and videos. It is also important to give examples that pertain to your class or school community specifically.

For example, a teacher giving a lesson on perseverance can talk about how the class showed perseverance last week when they learned a new, difficult math concept and kept trying even when it took a long time to learn.

Getting the Whole Staff Involved

P2 can be implemented in classrooms and applied schoolwide. Between starting a student of the month program, wearing P2 character strengths on our lanyards as buttons, and building P2 curriculum and discussions into our monthly staff meetings, we make it a priority to get all staff involved and engaged with P2. Getting the whole school involved spreads the message further and creates a community anchored in character.

Leopard of the Month

I started a new program at Winecoff this year called Leopard of the Month. I saw resources from other school counselors about their student of the month programs, and I wanted to take that and shape it to fit Winecoff, our population, and our school community. I want to build our school community and highlight students who are showing spectacular growth or ability in certain areas.

To bring it full circle with our P2 curriculum, I decided to build the P2 character strengths into the program. We pick a character strength for each month and ask each teacher to choose a student who either showed outstanding use of that strength or tremendous growth in it. It is important to highlight students who have displayed the strength since the beginning of the school year, and to recognize those who have shown growth in that area.

I decided to include our Specials teachers as well. Since they do not have just one class, their job is extra challenging because they have to pick one student from the whole school who especially demonstrated that strength in their class.

How Students Are Recognized

After a teacher picks their student, the names are announced on the morning news and in a ParentSquare post for all parents and guardians to see. Students are given a certificate of achievement, and their picture and a statement from their teacher go on a bulletin board in a common area. These pieces allow students to be recognized at school and at home. Posting the names on ParentSquare encourages celebration and connection with families and guardians. Family engagement is a powerful tool when supporting students and celebrating their successes.

Being recognized this way builds confidence, pride, and a sense of community for these students. They are proud of themselves for being chosen out of their whole class and for seeing a picture of themselves up in the hallway for the whole school to see.

A sense of community is built because other students in the class cheer for or congratulate the student who was chosen. That reinforces that we can be happy for the people around us when they receive something we did not, which is a great lesson to learn.

Announcing the Next Month’s Strength Early

To help with the next month’s nomination process, we announce the character strength ahead of time. When we announce the Leopards of the Month for December, we also announce the strength we will be celebrating in January. That gives students time to anticipate what they can practice and focus on in the coming month so that they might be the next student chosen from their class or by a Specials teacher.

What Does the Future Look Like?

Our implementation of the P2 character strengths and curriculum has gone well for students at Winecoff this year. We plan to stick with what has been working while finding other ways to use these concepts. Our current use of this curriculum, and the many other ways it can be applied, will help WES grow and remain a place “Where Everyone Succeeds.”