A pair of Thompson Middle School teachers want to build school pride. How you can help.

As the dawn of a new school year approaches, a group of teachers and parents are trying to instill school spirit by fundraising for sweatshirts for all Thompson Middle School students and teachers.

“When you have the shirt on, you know that you’re representing Thompson and that comes with responsibilities and specific behaviors that are expected and we hope that the community will begin to recognize the shirt, they’ll recognize our students with positive and kind words and enthusiasm,” TMS teacher Tina Brownell said.

The shirts Brownell and fellow TMS teacher Marie Nunes are fundraising to purchase are long sleeve red shirts from NOSOLO, a clothing brand launched by Newport locals John and Sarah Toracinta in 2019 to promote mental health awareness. The front features the NOSOLO logo, which stands for “Nobody Goes Solo,” and the back has the middle school’s logo.

NOSOLO typically donates a portion of the proceeds from shirt sales to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, however, the brand decided to use a portion of the sale of the TMS shirts to local mental health organizations, such as Newport County Mental Health. Brownell and Nunes are attempting to raise the $12,000 needed to buy 600 shirts for every student and teacher at TMS.

The two are envisioning “Paint TMS Red Days,” possibly on Fridays, where everyone in the school comes dressed in their shirts as a symbol of school pride. They also suggested they be used for school field trips.

Nunes and Brownell said the past few years have been difficult for TMS students, from the COVID-19 pandemic to recent administration changes, and the school has garnered a reputation for unruly students. The teachers said coming back from online learning meant students had to learn, or re-learn, the expectations for behavior in an in-person classroom.

They’re hoping these shirts will, in some part, make students check their behavior while wearing the shirt to make sure they’re representing the school well, or to check in on fellow classmates who might be struggling with mental health.

“We want to continue to promote a positive climate and culture,” Brownell said. “We don’t want to make it out like it was so awful before, so we want to continue to promote and strengthen positive climate and culture.”

The teachers said they want to implement quarterly “Recognition of Accomplishment Ceremonies” to reward students who have been behaving in accordance with the school’s “P.O.W.E.R,” acronym: participate, organized, work hard, effort, and respect. In seeing their peers be rewarded for good behavior, the teachers are hoping students will be “positively peer pressured” into acting similarly.

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“We want the kids to want to come to school and want to learn and feel rewarded,” Nunes said.

Brownell and Nunes are accepting donations via check and have asked people to either email them to pick up donations or for donors to send checks to “TMS Middle School c/o Climate and Culture T-Shirts, 55 Broadway, Newport, RI, 02840.” The duo are also working to get a Venmo account set up so people can donate through the app.

This article originally appeared on Newport Daily News: Thompson Middle School teachers fundraise for school spirit shirts