One of Hugh Boyd’s School Story Foci is Student Connectedness and Engagement levels, and we work very hard to build a sense of community and pride in our staff and student body. We often ask the questions: What are you proud of at Hugh Boyd? What goals do you have for yourself this year and how will attain these goals? How do you push yourself to be your best?

This past year, under the guidance of Student Council sponsor and Student Leadership teacher, Mr. Ricky Mamonluk, we decided to make a concerted effort to celebrate the respectful and kind actions of our students by recognizing them on a BOYD’S BEST board in the cafeteria area.  This year, over 80 students were recognized on the board for making positive contributions to class, for helping other students or visitors in our school, for volunteering to assist with various initiatives like Library Monitors, First Responders, Scorekeeping, Refereeing, and for being kind, courteous, thoughtful people.

The idea was to highlight and celebrate these often-unnoticed actions and bring more attention to them in hopes of seeing an increase of these types of behaviours.  And it worked!  Every two weeks, we updated the board with new nominees and the students were often gathered around the board at lunchtime to see who got mentioned and recognized. We felt this did result in an increase in positive and kind behaviour. We are confident that we have established a very kind and caring community and hope to build on this endeavour next year.

For next year, we plan to have the yearlong theme of BOYD’S BEST for all communications with staff and students and in our Professional Development activities. We will continue to celebrate and acknowledge the kind acts we see from our student body on the BOYD’S BEST board, and we will be sharing the acronym for BOYD’S BEST as follows:

• B-BE Kind
• E-Empathetic
• S-Supportive and Service-Oriented
• T-Thoughtful

Our students and staff are exemplary with these traits, and we will continue to celebrate and recognize the efforts in these areas in hopes of growing the kindness, empathy, support and thoughtfulness of our entire community.