FORT SMITH — The newest after-school club at Trinity Junior High School this year is also one of the most popular.
The Pure Heart Girls, student-founded and led, gives girls a supportive community that reinforces the values they learn at home and school and gives them strategies to combat negative peer pressure.
“Cortney Banning came to me in August with a plan to start an all-girls’ group to focus on prayer, support, discussion and dialogue about the pressures of being a teen in our society,” principal Dr. Jim Hattabaugh said. “Almost 50 girls signed up and have been meeting on a regular basis since school started.”
Banning, a ninth grader who attends Immaculate Conception Church, chose a future-oriented leadership team focused on making every girl in the culturally diverse student body feel welcome. To encourage younger leadership, she asked eighth grader Jordan Dart to help her. To make non-Catholic students feel welcome, she asked Carolina Coleman, who attends the First United Methodist Church, to join her. To reach out to students from other cultures, she asked Haymée Giuliani, who teaches religion and Spanish and works extensively with Hispanic students, to be the group’s advisor.
“My parents encouraged me to co-found the group,” Coleman said. “They felt it was something Trinity really needed. Trinity is a family, but we really didn’t know each other very well. Mom felt it was an opportunity for all of us to come together.”
Banning found a curriculum through Facebook, where a Texas student had founded a similar group, “Pure Heart Girlz,” several years ago. The flexible curriculum is currently used in eight after-school clubs across the country. After talking with the group’s founder, Banning learned that her program could easily be adapted for Trinity.
“I felt that everyone here has a relationship with God and wants Trinity to be a more God-centered school,” she said. “We wanted girls to be able to be themselves and be more open about making the right choices.”
In biweekly meetings, students take turns leading the group through a curriculum that includes games, presentations and large and small group discussion. Dart, who planned to lead a coming meeting, chose to present a booklet, “The Body of Christ,” that helps teens learn how to have conversations with Jesus.
“The booklet presents real-life situations and reminds readers to pray for one another because Jesus likes generous hearts,” she said.
“We need to learn how to tell God what’s going on in our lives and to ask him and one another for help,” Coleman added. “Pure Heart Girls teaches us how to build a relationship with Christ and with other people, too.”
Some of the games include putting together Scripture verse puzzles and trying to find items in backpacks to cover each letter of the alphabet. They serve as icebreakers to help the girls work as teams and get to know one another better. Twenty-minute presentations are followed by discussions on how to apply the lessons to real life.
At the end of the school year, each club member will receive a purity ring. The group plans on raising the money to provide the rings through fund-raisers, such as bake sales and free dress days.
The founders are aware of their need to be good role models.
“My mom was concerned about the responsibility; she told me that I had to walk the walk and not talk the talk,” Dart said.
Ninth-graders Banning and Coleman hope their experience at Trinity will give them the knowledge and support to start a high-school-level group next year.
Hattabaugh, who said that a group of male students plans on starting a similar group soon, has no doubt that Pure Heart Girls will continue to be a positive influence on Trinity and Fort Smith.
“It takes a great deal of leadership and courage for students to initiate something of this nature. I am very proud of them,” he said.
Giuliani appreciates how the group has brought a new feeling of family to Trinity.
“I just love to see all nationalities, with diverse interests and backgrounds mingling,” she said, “and it surely is beautiful to see seventh, eighth and ninth-grade girls interact with one another, learning from each other’s experiences, giving each other advice like sisters.”
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