BIONIC Team Programs

The B.I.O.N.I.C. Team has been in schools since 2004. Through the years we have tried and tested what works best in schools. Schools – kindergarten through college – look different in many ways. Besides the age levels, we have B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams in public and private schools, in traditional or online or hybrid schools, and in rural or urban or suburban settings.

B.I.O.N.I.C. has adjusted through the years, and not all school B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams look the same.

These are parts of the B.I.O.N.I.C. program that you can implement in your school. What is exciting is that businesses, organizations, and places of worship are also inquiring about starting B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams, and we will be developing those aspects of B.I.O.N.I.C. in the near future. Let us know if you want to be a part of that or want to pilot a Team in one of those settings.

School B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams
B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams in schools consist of empowering students to reach out to their peers who are new, sick, hospitalized, bullied, or lose a loved one. We also reach out to other schools that experience tragedy, and also to veterans and/or the elderly. Schools can pick and choose which of these “individual teams” – New Student Team, Extended Illness Team, Hospitalization Team, Bully Prevention Team, Loss Team, School Tragedy Team, Intergenerational Team – within a B.I.O.N.I.C. Team they would like to implement at their school. A school staff person sponsors the club with student leaders in charge of each of the individual teams. The best practice is to have a school staff sponsor overseeing each individual team.

#viralcaring
We started the #viralcaring initiative to hopefully flip the devastating effects the COVID-19 virus is having in our world. Knowing how B.I.O.N.I.C. has changed school climates to more caring atmospheres of students looking out for each other, we want to see it happen across the world too. Wouldn’t it be amazing if caring for others in simple ways could go viral so that every person in the world could be reached out to so they would know people care. In a time of social distancing and isolation, we all need that human connection in some way. Follow our B.I.O.N.I.C. social media pages to see our posts: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bionicteamorg, Instagram - https://www.instagram.com.b.i.o.n.i.c.team, and Twitter - https://twitter.com/Bionicteam.

10/10 – I Care Day
What would it look like if every person in a school reached out to make a difference in one person’s life each hour for ten hours on October10th? That would mean that in a school of 1,000, there could potentially be 1,000 positive things happening each hour! Can you imagine that? Wouldn’t that be incredible? On 10/10 – I Care Day we encourage individual outreaches – a thank you card for a teacher, a cup of coffee for a friend, a flower for a secretary, etc. Also, we encourage group outreaches – a football team raking leaves, a choir going to sing at a senior living center, etc. We also encourage community service projects – clothing drive for the homeless, a coloring book drive for Children’s Hospital, etc. we want to see how much of a difference we can make in one day in hopes that people will be inspired to continue reaching out to people.

Worldwide
B.I.O.N.I.C. is in schools worldwide, and many of the needs in some of those other countries are different from those in the United States. We have had inquiries from schools in 35 countries on starting a B.I.O.N.I.C. Team. St. John’s Junior College in Belize City, Belize has had a B.I.O.N.I.C. Team for over 10 years, and we've started teams in India and Taiwan over the last year. They don’t need a School Tragedy Team because there are very few tragedies in their country. But since there are a lot of natural disasters – tidal waves, tsunamis, hurricanes – so they had a Natural Disaster Team instead. B.I.O.N.I.C. Teams internationally can adapt their B.I.O.N.I.C. Team with individual teams that meet the needs of their communities. Instead of their Loss Team delivering a pie, it is more culturally appropriate to do other outreaches.