From the Deputy Head of Junior School – Wellbeing – Your Invitation

From the Deputy Head of Junior School – Wellbeing – Your Invitation

URSTRONG at MLC School Webinar

Wednesday 20 May 2026 from 6pm-7.15pm, Year 1 to Year 6

We invite all Year 1 to Year 6 families to join our URSTRONG ‘The Language of Friendship’ online workshop. Every two years we run a workshop for parents and their daughters so understand how to complement what we are doing at School and see how useful these strategies and ideas can be used at home.

A letter was sent to all Year 1 to Year 6 parents via the MLC School app, earlier this week – click here to view the letter which includes the link to join ON THE DATE of the webinar.

Our School’s mission includes words such as ‘fearless thinkers’, ‘moral courage’, ‘agents of change’ and ‘Dare to Be More.’ And we actually work very hard at bringing this Mission to life on a daily basis in the Junior School.

One way we work on this, in the Junior School, is through our URSTRONG program. URSTRONG recognises that friendships are everything to young people. It aims to help your daughter with ‘kid-friendly concepts that help kids establish and maintain healthy relationships, manage conflict with kindness and increase their overall resilience.’ https://urstrong.com/

URSTRONG provides practical relationship strategies for our girls to develop positive social skills as well as manage their friendships when things go wrong (and they do – such is the nature of any relationship). It also gives our girls a common language which is clear to everyone and assists with communication during ‘friendship fires’ (problems).

URSTRONGis based on four friendship facts:

  1. No friendship is perfect.
  2. Every friendship is different.
  3. Trust and Respect are the two most important qualities of a friendship.
  4. Friendships change… and that’s OK!

The program also teaches what is a healthy relationship. This is so important for your daughters. Understanding that relationships can be unhealthy and being able to identify actions to take to change this or remove oneself from the situation stands the girls in good stead for the rest of their lives.

Finally, a process for dealing with problems, called ‘friendship fires’ is also taught. Being empowered to deal with small friendship problems themselves give our girls confidence to solve other problems they may face. It also builds resilience and the ability to grow through solving problems themselves. However, there is also a backup for when an adult is needed to help solve an issue, using a ‘comeback statement’ and going to seek the help of an adult. I explain to the girls that dobbing is when you tell on someone with the aim of getting them in trouble and that reporting to an adult about a problem has the aim of getting help to solve a problem. There is a big difference!

If you have any questions or wish to know more about URStrong please go to https://urstrong.com/, There is an excellent parent portal you can sign up for which has many resources which I refer to often. What I love about the portal is that it talks about parents as a friendship coach – it’s such a good analogy!

I hope the session and the parent portal are useful for you to support your daughters in this sometimes-confusing world of friendships.

Click here for the ‘Language of Friendship’ leaflet.

– Joanne Sharpe
Deputy Head of Junior School – Wellbeing