MIDDLEBORO — At the Nichols Middle School in Middleboro, selfies are encouraged and encouraging students to see themselves in a positive light.
Each Thursday morning as buses arrive at the NMS, Principal Martin Geoghegan and Assistant Principals Greg Thomas and Stephanie Rae, phones at the ready, greet students with some positive, encouraging words as they disembark and head to class. So there is no mistake and so the message doesn’t go in one ear and straight out the other, the positive messages are printed out and used as props for selfies that make up the #PositiveSignThursday campaign.
And in a further effort to make the message stick, more reinforcement comes via Twitter and Facebook, where the NMS principals post the photos for all to see.
“All you need is some paper and a sharpie and a positive message,” — and a Twitter account — said Geoghegan, who’s earned a reputation as the school’s Twitter-savvy principal with regular posts and blog entries about things happening at the school. Geoghegan noted that at the NMS they advanced the concept a bit and print out the messages on paper, and often include related graphics to really dress up the signs, but that other schools working by the example, or just getting started, can keep it simple with pen and paper.
“And it really has been a positive thing,” he added. “I had a parent tell me that her daughter really looks forward to it, that she wakes up early on Thursdays to make sure she has the right outfit on for her selfie,” Geoghegan said.
“And it brightens our day, too, to have students who are looking forward to getting to school and taking a selfie with their principal. It’s fun for us, too, for sure.”
The weekly selfie sessions originated at Case High School, and Case Principal Brian McCann, who shared the idea with Geoghegan and other area principals at a meeting a couple of years back.
“It’s such a great idea, and he told me how well it went over,” Geoghegan said. “I said I’d like to try it at the NMS and that we should try to get some other principals in the area to give it a try and see if we could start a whole phenomenon.”
And while #PositiveSignThursday hasn’t caught on far and wide, yet, local schools in Mashpee and Norton have joined the fun and Geoghegan says schools from as far as Iowa and Texas are getting in on the act with similar programs — and he knows this thanks to the hashtag, #PositiveSignThursday.
Thomas posts his selfies to Facebook and Twitter and says the growing popularity of the initiative among the NMS student body is evident in the 30-plus images he collects every Thursday morning, of which a few are selected for posting on Facebook and Twitter.
Sure, it may sound like a lot of hype, and another excuse to indulge the social-media bug, but the hope is the early morning interactions, the photos and the Twitter and Facebook posts combine to create some buzz and work to keep the message front and center for the day, or more. And Geoghegan, Thomas and Rae agree there is just something inherently uplifting about greeting the kids with a positive message and something fun to start the day.
“The kids have really taken to it,” said Thomas. “Last year, when we first started, they looked at us like we were a little crazy, but this year, they’ve really jumped in with both feet. They get off the bus looking for us and looking to see what the signs say that day and take a picture with us. It’s really a lot of fun for everyone.”