This year, Mashburn is working on creating community between among all students from all grade levels. So, “houses” were created—think Harry Potter! The second week of school, each grade level had the opportunity to walk across our stage and draw a colored sticker out of the treasure box. That color represented their new house! Students will be a valuable member of this house’s family every year they are at Mashburn. So, if a child is a member of the purple, Erevu, house in first grade, he/she will grow in that house all the way through fifth grade! All houses have students from prek-fifth grade in them.
We plan to have house meetings every three weeks. Each week, we will do a team-building activity, a character trait lesson, awards for perfect attendance, and classroom recognitions. This past week we talked about each individual house and what their house meant. For example: In the Jabari house we discussed that Jabari is the house of courage and Jabari means fearless. We talked about being fearless does not mean you cannot be afraid but that you are not afraid to face your fears. We will keep you posted on which character trait we are focusing on at each meeting so you can follow up at home. There are six houses in all. The students really enjoyed the house meeting, and we have gotten great feedback. We are also seeing some great community within our building between house members.
Here are the six houses, their color, names & definitions, and house traits:
Mahari-“Inner Strength” Loyalty House- Yellow | Erevu- “Clever” Ingenuity House- Purple | Sonke-“Respect” Respect House- Orange |
Jabari-“Fearless” Courage House- Blue | Gamba –“Warrior” Strength House- Red | Amina-“Truthful” Integrity House- Green |
