St. Teresa of Avila School – Bucket Filling for Jesus Brigade Retreat

The Bucket Filling for Jesus Brigade is a group of Grade 4 and 5 students who choose to be leaders in the school community to support mental, emotional and physical health initiatives. These students will get the opportunity to attend a retreat at Sacred Heart Parish. There will be a mass in the morning and the afternoon will be filled with training and planning sessions encompassing faith. This program has been allocated $900.

Testimonial

The ‘Bucket Filling for Jesus’ Leadership Club members chose to change their name to ‘Health Champions’ at the beginning of the school year. Though the name has changed, it did not shift the priority of the group but rather allowed for student voice. Our club members were encouraged and supported to grow in their faith journey through our offsite retreat, acts of service and leadership opportunities throughout the school. All students attended a Leadership Retreat early in the year at Sacred Heart Parish where they participated in faith-filled activities. The retreat focused on leadership qualities, conflict resolution, new games to share with students and food preparation.

Our Health Champions also worked hard to help our school counsellors promote ‘Food for Mood’ by leading classroom discussions about how to nourish our bodies so we are spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically healthy. Student Leaders have monthly commitments, one being to help at our monthly Bucket Filling Assemblies to create excitement by leading certificate recipients in with signs/pom poms. Their second monthly commitment is a job that requires them to demonstrate leadership skills around the school in a variety of ways, such as creating a bulletin board to promote healthy life choices, providing outdoor equipment for each grade to use during recess, helping our kindergarteners during lunch, organizing and running games at recess. Leaders model our virtues and promote these through their work in our school all year long. The funding from the Education Foundation was used for supplies/food for our off-site retreat at Sacred Heart, supplies for school activities and our Halloween candy exchange program thus far. Typically in the spring, we use the remainder of the money to purchase supplies for our outside PLAY program to encourage mentorship with our younger students.

A big thank you to the Education Foundation for supporting our programs at St. Teresa of Avila School!