On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, MHS donated 782 pounds of food worth an estimated value of $3,088.90 to our local Green County Food pantry. The food was gathered during a one week Food Drive organized through an MHS CHEESE Challenge homeroom, wherein homerooms competed to bring in donations. Items were brought to the Green County Food Pantry where volunteers Ranee Jones and Robert Ellefson weighed them and put everything into storage to be ready for our community.
We are excited to share that Mrs. Roidt’s homeroom won the CHEESE Challenge followed by Mrs. Bartels’s homeroom in 2nd place and Mr. Brown’s homeroom in 3rd place. It was a wonderful gesture of community service and, hopefully, a lasting reminder to our students of the importance of giving back. Many MHS staff members brought items in to contribute to their homeroom totals, and a number of community members contributed as well.
History of CHEESE Challenges
In the summer of 2022, several School District of Monroe employees from our five schools and central office attended a teaching and learning conference. During the conference, we began thinking of how we could develop essential skills and attitudes in our students that would be useful in the classroom and transferable to any situation whether at MHS or outside of the building. As our recently released school report card shows an increase in academic achievement among our students and is a testament to the hard work and the continued dedication of our staff and our kids, we recognize there are many things a comprehensive high school can offer students to prepare them for their post-secondary lives that extend beyond the classroom.
With that, the Behavioral Leadership Team was convened at MHS that included teachers, administrators, and members of the student services department. This team began important conversations on the qualities that we felt were important for students to embrace and that our community would want our students to possess when they began their lives as high school graduates. We discussed what our community values and would want to see in our students as future leaders. In collaboration with Monroe Middle School, we developed the acronym “CHEESE,” which stands for character, hard work, empathy, excellence, safe choices, and engaged learners. Over the rest of that school year, we began implementing activities and experiences in MMS and MHS homerooms that centered on a different letter of the acronym. We called these experiences “CHEESE Challenges.”
The First Food Drive in 2023
In the fall of 2023, the MHS Behavior Leadership Team sought ways to continue to improve our CHEESE challenges by engaging our students in relevant experiences. We wanted our students to understand that they have a responsibility to support the community that supports them. Considering the “empathy” part of the acronym, we thought a food drive would be a natural fit in November, so we could gather donations before the Thanksgiving holiday. We turned the food drive into a CHEESE challenge and set up the homeroom classes to compete for a prize and bragging rights.
In preparation for our food drive, the Behavior Team reached out to the Green County Food Pantry to find what items were most requested or needed. Then, students and staff members brought these and other donations to the MHS library before school. Student volunteers counted each item, and tabulated totals for each homeroom. It was a hit. In 2023, MHS donated 718 pounds of food. This year, we beat last year’s record by 64 pounds.
Building a Sense of Community
With its two-year success, we plan to make this food drive an annual event and a continued commitment to supporting our neighbors in need throughout Monroe and Green County. This food drive emerged from a larger discussion of what we, as a leadership team, thought we could do to encourage our students to remember their friends and neighbors in need. At MHS, our students participate in a number of volunteer opportunities throughout the school year including working with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program at the high school, operating Kristin’s Closet, a free resource for students to get clothing items, and school-wide participation in our annual Day of Service. When students graduate from MHS, not only do we hope they have the necessary academic skills to be successful in whatever career path they choose, but also that they have a strong sense of community duty and a mind towards civic responsibility to make a positive contribution to the world around them.
— Josh Wilson, PhD, is the Associate Principal of Monroe High School. He can be contacted at
joshuawilson@monroe.k12.wi.us or
608-328-7557.
