“I wanted my students to have the skills and confidence to deal with challenges in their relationships and to invest in healthier friendships.”

URSTRONG’s Educational Consultant, Megan Booth, recently had the opportunity to talk to a school about integrating URSTRONG into their school’s wellbeing program.  They talked about their experience with other programs and resources and discussed some of the reasons why they hadn’t been as successful as they had hoped.

What they really wanted to know was, “What makes URSTRONG different?”  Below are a few of the details Megan provided to demonstrate why URSTRONG works.

  • It has been thoughtfully created for teachers, by a teacher! The level of detail in lesson plans is amazing and the hard work is all done for you (even the permission notes are ready to go!).
  • It uses simple (kid-friendly) language. When this becomes a shared language used by children, teachers and parents it has a profound impact.
  • It is skills-based. Many programs educate students about what bullying is, different types of bullying and the bullying cycle but don’t actually give children any useful strategies for dealing with bullying or managing challenges in their friendships! This is where URSTRONG is different! Children are taught skills which enable them to manage conflict, deal with Mean-on-Purpose behaviour and grow healthy friendships.
  • It is for the whole school community! Students, teachers and parents use common language and strategies to grow healthy friendships and navigate relationship challenges. This makes everything a whole bunch easier as everyone is on the same page.
  • It has in-built pre and post evaluation tools that enable you to track your students learning and skill development.
  • URSTRONG is more than a program. It is a school-wide relationship strategy, providing a clear, consistent Bullying Prevention Framework that guides interactions and informs decision-making, not just another program that will sit on the shelf!

From the words of Megan Booth, School Counsellor 

“URSTRONG works! I can unequivocally say this, as I’ve seen it work in my own school community. When I discovered URSTRONG via a Google search, I was supporting two groups of students (in grades 3 & 6) experiencing significant friendship challenges. While I thought I had a fairly reasonable bag of school counselling tricks, nothing seemed to be making a significant difference to either situation. My students were stuck and I felt stuck too…This was until I found urstrong.com.

URSTRONG’s approach and language immediately made sense to me (and I knew it would make sense to my students too)! I did not want to be the educator telling my students to “just ignore” mean-on-purpose behaviour, as clearly that wasn’t working!! I wanted my students to have the skills and confidence to deal with challenges in their relationships and to invest in healthier friendships.

URSTRONG made an enormous difference in our school community and I have the data that supports my student’s learning and skills development too. I know that  URSTRONG is different and it works! It has the potential to transform a school’s relationship culture and relationships are foundational to everything!”