To compliment the Theme of the Year Poster, we created a mini poster each month to focus specifically on that month’s virtue. 

The mini-poster was portrait orientation, 5 ½ by 8 inches, and had the theme, the Virtue of the Month, a quote and an image.  Image, virtue, and inspirational quote all converged to create meaning and understanding about the virtue.

Sometimes I would make this an assignment for a photography/digital arts class or art class.   The challenge was to take the virtue + an image + a quote and through the juxtaposition of the three elements create deeper meaning. 

At its best, working on the Monthly Mini poster for the Virtue of the Month was a lively discourse between students of the Virtues Club.  We had the full spectrum of students from grade 9 to 12, so there were student leaders who had emerged as mentors and the newer students finding their feet as mentees. 

They’d use The Virtues Project™ Educators Guide to help us understand the virtue more completely.  The challenge for the students was to find an image (or images) and a quote that would accompany the Virtue on the poster that would convey the depth of meaning they had come to in their consultation. The group would begin this process early in the month and once they had determined what images and quotes worked for their message, one student took on the work of fitting the elements into the poster design.  I then took on the printing and distribution of the mini posters every month or I would delegate those tasks to a coop student if I had one so that students were empowered to take on as much of the process as possible.  The mini-posters were distributed to all the teachers, secretaries, admin, librarian and guidance councillors.   It was invigorating to see the posters in every room of the school.  It was rewarding when someone would say that they felt the message in the quote & virtue was ‘exactly what they needed’ !