No, but it’s highly recommended. In order for them to teach their students to be Friendship Ninjas, they must be Friendship Ninjas themselves!

Our Friendology 101 Educator Training is video-based and included within the Good Friends, Great Friends, and Best Friends memberships. It allows your teachers to learn directly from our Founder, Dana, at any time. In addition to learning how to teach the curriculum and implement a whole-school strategy, they will learn the science of friendship and why social-emotional learning must be prioritized in schools! Many of our URSTRONG Schools have had their entire staff trained in our curriulum, so that they’re all on the same page and working together as a team. Another bonus within the training is seeing pictures and hearing ideas from other URSTRONG Schools around the world!

If your school is ready to be Best Friends, you get two live sessions to bookend your training. You also receive guided support to help you plan the perfect schedule, along with lots of tips and guidance from Tyson, our Director of URSTRONG Schools.

URSTRONG is a school-wide relationship strategy that can complement existing wellbeing programs or serve as the foundation for an emerging social-emotional wellbeing program at your school.

What’s unique about URSTRONG is that everything we do is through the lens of friendship skills. This is because all of the wellbeing science proves that relationships are the heart of wellbeing. Research shows that healthy friendships in childhood and adolescence promote positive mental health improving reslience, self-concept, a sense of purpose, academic performance, and attitudes towards learning (Vitaro F., Boivin M., & Bukowski W.M., 2009). We also know that when children experience unhealthy friendships, conflict in friendships, or social isolation, they often display symptoms of anxiety, depression, and have difficulty learning. In addition, children who are struggling socially are more likely to disengage and avoid school. Ultimately, when we get friendships right in schools, students flourish.

Our Friendology 101 Facilitator’s Guide demonstrates how our curriculum aligns with CASEL’s SEL framework and Positive Education’s PERMA model. We have also built out a number of resources that demonstrate how to align our friendship strategy with other social-emotional frameworks. For example, Zones of Regulation, Character Strengths, and theoretical frameworks focused on neuroscience, such as Dan Seigel’s Flipping Your Lid model of the brain and Ash Buchanan’s Benefit Mindset (an evolution of Growth Mindset). In our Friendology 101 Educator Training, we discuss other programs and resources that have a natural fit with our social-emotional wellbeing approach (e.g. Bucket Filler resources, Kimochis, Leader in Me, PBL, Restorative Practices, Berry Street, etc.).

Be sure to get in touch to learn how schools at different stages of their wellbeing journey have integrated URSTRONG into their wellbeing frameworks.

It does! Friendology 101 meets learning objectives that are set out in provincial, state, and national health curriculums around the world. The development of interpersonal skills, emotional literacy, and conflict-resolution are central to the URSTRONG programming.

In our Educator Resource Centre, you will find documents that map our curriculum to standards around the world including the Australian Curriculum and a Scope & Sequence document that will help you introduce Friendology 101 to your students. We also clearly list our Student Learning Outcomes within every resource and lesson to make it easy for you to map it against your school’s standards. Our Facilitator’s Guide also details how our curriculum aligns with the CASEL framework and the PERMA (Positive Education) model.

Let’s just say, we are a PRO-FRIENDSHIP program! While we don’t use the word “bullying” in our curriculum (because the word is misused, misunderstood, and results in people labeling a child a “bully” – which is name-calling in our eyes!), we are teaching friendship skills that PREVENT bullying. In fact, we were awarded the Inspiration Award by the Government of Alberta, Canada for our leadership in bullying prevention.

Using kids’ language for kids’ problems is a big part of our success in URSTRONG Schools! Here’s an article that explains the important difference between a Friendship Fire, Mean-on-Purpose, Mean-by-Accident, and Bullying.

Great question! Our URSTRONG Schools can attest to the impact that our program has on a community and we’ve loved hearing so many success stories over the years. In addition to Case Studies that demonstrate the impact at individual schools, here are some resources that speak to the evidence-based foundation of URSTRONG:

• Be You Programs Directory (Assessment by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the University of Melbourne)
• Victoria Department of Education Schools Mental Health Menu (We are an approved, evidence-based provider endorsed by the DET in Victoria)
• Department of Education South Australia: External Progams Wellbeing Directory  (We are an approved, evidence-based provider endorsed by the DET in South Australia)
• Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA Wellbeing Consultants have adopted our whole-school friendship strategy & curriculum in their strategic system-wide approach to enhance wellbeing)
• Maroondah Positive Education Network (Along with a Friendship Ninja Zone in their local shopping centre, we have URSTRONG Schools across Maroondah who also all use our Friendship Journals)
• URSTRONG Impact Report (in collaboration with Simon Fraser University, Canada)
• Friendology Facilitator’s Guide (highlighting some of our research with thousands of schools since we began in 2009)

We also provide URSTRONG Schools with a Pre & Post Assessment tool, developed in collaboration with Simon Fraser University. This allows schools to capture their own data to demonstrate the impact of the program and the improved ‘friendship literacy’ amongst students.

Please reach out if you’d like any more information and we’d be most happy to put you in touch with a URSTRONG School to share their experience!

We’ve found that hosting a Language of Friendship (parent-child) workshop is a great way to introduce URSTRONG to your school community for a few reasons:

• These workshops are very popular as they provide a host of kid-friendly concepts and tips for parents to create dialogue with their children around friendship issues.
• We also provide complimentary tickets to all teachers so that they can learn the same language and skills to support the students at school.
• This is also a great no-cost option for schools as they most often provide a venue and promotional support while the parents register and pay for themselves.

Every school has different needs and challenges and most of our introductions have come from dedicated parents, teachers or administrators who have emailed or called to learn about URSTRONG. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at info@urstrong.com to start the conversation.

Currently our curriculum and resources are only available in English. However, you are welcome to teach the lessons in any language you want – just noting that the handouts and resources are in English. Hopefully one day we will be able to offer our resources in a range of languages!