SchoolTube

From: Winston Campus
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Added: 01-17-2008
Description:
Shakespeare’s famous quote, "To be or not to be," inspired many young minds. But, in "Kids for Kindness" our Colonia Middle School service-learning club, our line is, "To be the bully or to be the hero." That is a true question in our present time. Bullies are students or adults who are cruel to weaker people. Hurting others makes them feel better about themselves. The students in our "Kids for Kindness" club have started a program to prevent kids from bullying other kids, and to show the victims of bullying how to handle it. "Kids for Kindness" visits all of our local elementary schools to speak with the fifth graders about anti-bullying. We meet these future sixth graders and talk personally with them in small groups of 7-9 kids and 1or 2 mentors. In the groups, we discuss worries the fifth graders have about entering middle school and we have fun sharing our memories of sixth grade. For example, a question commonly asked is, "Are the lockers big enough for the bullies to stuff us in?" They ask us this question because they are scared about being hurt by bullies and getting made fun of. Afterward, we show two videos about bullying and cyber-bullying. We then meet back with our small groups, role-playing real situations involving bullying with practical solutions. As we showed in our video, we have a pledge that the fifth grade students sign to agree to be bully free when they go to our middle school. One of the promises on the pledge is "To set the example of a caring individual." The pledge is a symbol to show these kids are well educated on the subject of anti-bullying. In addition to our anti-bullying program for the elementary schools, we also started a peer mediation program which is eighth graders helping sixth or seventh graders with conflicts. If the students have a problem, instead of possibly getting in trouble, they go to the eighth grade mediators. In this program, we sit down and brainstorm instead of solving the problem for them. We want to make sure that they will not have the same problem as they did before, so we have them sign a contract. We do this because we know that the agreement may solve the problem. The agreement shows that they are serious with resolving their dispute. We meet with them after one week to make sure they keep with their agreement. Now as you can see we are ready for just about any problem in our school. Not only are we ready, but we know everything about anti-bullying.
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Tags: "Kids for Kindness" Anti- Bullying Program