THE SPEAKER in the crowded room was pulling no punches, telling the sometimes grinning, sometimes grimacing students of St. Margaret’s School in Tappahannock what many knew, but few had heard in such stark terms:

Girls are often mean and vindictive.

They form cliques, often just to exclude others.

And they can do and say the nastiest things to other girls, sometimes just over the clothes they wear.

When speaker Shanterra McBride of “The Empower Program” was done, junior Brooke Shafer said the session at the private girls school in Essex County helped her rethink the way she relates to other students.

“I think hearing something like this makes you think and be honest about how you treat others,” she said, noting that it was easy in a school full of girls to neglect some, even if not intentionally.

Making students think about their lives outside the classroom is just what the school’s relatively new character and life skills program is all about.

Dubbed the Co-Curriculum, the plan now in its second year picks up where academic instruction leaves off, covering topics as diverse as healthy dating, wellness, eating disorders, teen pregnancy, domestic abuse, body image, teen depression, self-defense, and personal goals.

And, for a school where the boarding students are together 24/7, a focus on things like peer relationships, conflict mediation and role-model development.

Officials at the school noted that many of these topics are things parents might discuss with their children at home.

But because St. Margaret’s is home to many of its students for long stretches each year, the school feels responsibility to help cover the topics in order to fulfill its overall mission: “Educating young women for life.”

The program, which tailors topics to lessons appropriate for each grade level, has gotten the school national notice.

That came first in a featured presentation at The Association of Boarding Schools’ annual conference in December, and most recently, in a Jan. 5 column in Education Week, the national newspaper of record for primary and secondary education.