Believe It Or Not I Care. Itís the motto that inspired the acronym for the fifth grade peer mentoring group ñ BIONIC ñ at Springs Ranch Elementary School.While attending a counseling conference, Dawn Wiley, counselor at Springs Ranch, heard about the BIONIC concept being implemented at the high school level. Wiley brought the idea to Springs Ranch, which is currently the only elementary school in Colorado to have a BIONIC team.ìBIONIC is just a way for the kids to do a little more outreach and emphasize caring behaviors,î said Debbie Jones, principal. ìWe focus on the kindness of helping, sort of an anti-bullying thing.îJones said students are invited to join the BIONIC team through an application process. ìWe’ve had a peer mediation program here for a number of years, and we had so many apply that we couldn’t accommodate them all so we made a second group, the BIONIC group,î Jones said. ìThe kids were chosen for the group not only because they were helpers but because they needed to help others.îEach one of the 30 BIONIC students works in the cafeteria on a rotating schedule during lunch. They work in groups of two for 15 minutes shifts. ìThey help the littler kids open their juice boxes or help someone who’s dropped something,î Jones said.In November, the BIONIC team sponsored the Veteran’s Day 11-11-11 Make History Today Challenge, which challenged staff and students at Springs Ranch to accomplish 11 acts of kindness throughout the day. Each person who met the challenge received a paper link that became part of a chain of paper links. Wiley wrote in an e-mail to The New Falcon Herald that at the end of the day, the chain represented 4,059 random acts of kindness performed by the staff and students at Springs Ranch.ìWe’re seeing real positive results in the kids who are participating,î Jones said. ìIt’s the everyday little things that add up and count towards making the school a better place. They add up and it creates a more caring atmosphere. When the focus is on caring, it does decrease the negative.î
