What’s Right With Our Schools: Brown Middle School Wow Notebook

HARRISON, TN (WDEF) – The early teenage years are a challenging time in most of our lives.  A well-timed compliment can put pep in your step and change your entire outlook. That’s the reason a student at Brown Middle came up with the Wow Notebook.

Whitney Whitaker is an English Language teacher at Brown Middle.

She remembers, “Karina came to me with an excellent idea of positive affirmations and how one kind word can change the projection of anybody’s entire day.”

7th grader Karina Jennings explains, “I started it with my friend on Facetime, because I thought, well,  I watched a show where people would just drive around and give people compliments unexpectedly, and then it would just make the whole day better. There were rules on one side of the notebook where they would all write an anonymous note to somebody. They would get the note, then they’ll write it for somebody else. And it keeps going around the school like that.”

She continues, “It will be, for example, like, ‘I really like your shoes today.’ or ‘I really like your hair.’ or something like that.”

Jacob Kidd is also a 7th grader at Brown.

He adds, “I think the quote that I wrote, this is going to make the guy I will be giving this to, is going to make him feel a lot better. Words can brighten a person’s day in any situation, whether they’re having a bad day, you know, they just want to like go to sleep and lay down, or if they’re already having a good day, you can make them feel even better about the situation they’re in.”

7th grader Tamiya Jamar adds, “I feel like some people have bad days in general.  Some people just can’t get rid of the bad days no matter what happened. So, i feel like that one thing can make a whole difference because, if you look at how many people smile at you on your bad days, you realize more people smile at you more than you think, but you just don’t notice it.”

Jacob chips in, “It’s made me feel better about, you know, what I do in every aspect of the day, whether it’s learning, eating,  you know.”

Karina points out, “Well, for my heart, it’s been confidence boosters around 7th grade.”

Ms. Whitaker concludes, “It was difficult in middle school. Middle school is a whole different ball game, and when middle schoolers are learning to see the good in others, we have the potential to change the climate and culture of the whole school.”