Northeast Christian Academy
ACSI Region: South-Central
Location of School: Kingwood, TX
Program Objective: to provide an incentive program for students that encourages positive behavior while training them for godly service
Summary of Program
The Northeast Christian Academy Elementary BUGS Program was started as an incentive program to encourage positive behavior and train students for godly service. This program is meant to support the school philosophy that “the product of Christian education will be a servant fully equipped to serve the Lord with excellence and gladness. The student should strive for excellence in all things, knowing that whatever is to be done is to be done as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23)….”
As the school’s principal, I hoped to develop a training program for young servants of God. I wholeheartedly endorse our school’s philosophy and wanted an elementary program that would speak to children’s hearts about servanthood.
As I talked to the Lord about these thoughts, I remembered a program called BUGS—Being Unusually Good Students—which a friend of mine started to target students who needed recognition for anything they did of a positive nature because they did not usually behave. However, I wanted BUGS to stand for something different, and God gave me the idea about Becoming Useful Godly Servants. I was excited about what phrases the program could entail, such as “students caught bugging others,” “come in and bug me,” and “who’s bugging you?”
I discussed the program ideas with the teachers before they left for the summer. There was a great deal of excitement, and I felt a sense of cooperation. That summer was exciting because many creative ideas flowed from God to me. I designed an award certificate that the teachers use to record the incident for which a student is being recognized. For example, students might win awards for picking up paper on the playground, cleaning tables in the lunchroom when not assigned to do so, helping a student clean up a spilled drink, being friendly to a new student, sharing pencils and snacks with someone who forgot to bring them, and bringing a gift for “the little girl who cried at the Christmas program.”
Students bring their BUG award to me, and we discuss what they did to receive it. I sign the award, place a sticker on it, and allow the students to get something from my “BUG box.” The BUGS of the week are listed in the school’s weekly newsletter, and they are announced before the whole elementary school on Friday morning, when we emphasize our BUGS, birthdays, and Bible verses in the daily opening exercises. As an encouragement to the staff, I place the name of the referring teacher in a drawing, and I take one lunch or recess duty for the teacher whose name is drawn.
In addition to having a clean playground, a clean lunchroom, and students who exhibit very polite and caring behavior, I see very few students for discipline problems. When they do come to my office, a positive relationship has already been established, and they are not afraid to discuss what behavior resulted in their being sent to my office. Our parent surveys indicate that the parents and students are very happy with the school and its programs. I believe that the BUGS Program has helped create a caring atmosphere in which children can reach their highest academic potential and can learn to love God with their whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love others as themselves.
BUGS (Becoming Useful Godly Servants) 7.4