They sat cross-legged on the floor, doe-eyed and innocent, listening politely to group of women from the Junior Auxiliary of Columbus during a special program at Caledonia Elementary School Friday morning.
The subject matter — bullying — seemed inconsistent for an audience of fourth-graders, whose exposure to bullying has been limited.
That’s the whole point.
“We don’t have any serious issues with bullying,” said Caledonia Elementary principal Roger Hill. “For us, it’s educational, a preventative thing. Children need to learn how to communicate and get along with each other. This program helps reinforce what we try to do every day.”
Two classes at a time, Caledonia’s fourth-graders moved through four stations, each emphasizing an age-appropriate topic — distinguishing bullying (recurring personal attacks) from conflict (disagreements that occur naturally and are quickly resolved), the role of the bystander (who can either reinforce or intervene against bullying), the dangers of cyber-bullying and, finally, the importance of acts of kindness, the antithesis of bullying that creates a positive narrative upon which to close the program.
For three years, members of JA have presented the program, called “Choose Kindness,” to fourth-graders at schools throughout the county.
Program chairman Rachel Hurt said JA already had a program for middle-school children on the subject of bullying.
“What we began to hear from teachers and educators is that we really needed to talk to them when they were younger and impressionable to stress the importance of being nice to each other,” Hurt said. “So we did some research to learn how to communicate to fourth-graders on the topic of bullying, not only bullying but the importance of kindness. We want to make them aware of how important even a small gesture of kindness can be.”
At each station, kids were encouraged to ask and answer questions about the topic. At the last station, they were asked to write on small strips of construction paper an example of a time when they had shown or received kindness. Each was added to a paper chain as a reminder of how acts of how individual kind acts relate and connect to others in building an atmosphere of kindness.
A few examples:
“My uncle died and I was crying and my friend told me it was going to be OK.”
“My sister didn’t know how to write, so I helped her.”
“We gave clothes to poor people who didn’t have any.”
“I told my sister she wasn’t a bad person when another girl said she was.”
“My brother finally left me alone for a minute!”
Hurt said early exposure to the subject of bullying will equip kids to recognize it when they see it and know what to do when it occurs.
Caledonia Elementary School will be made up of 200 links for that chain, she said, the number of students who went through the program Friday.
The end of the program, students were provided with “kindness counts” wristbands to wear to help remind them of what they learned.
Some students were already aware firsthand of bullying before Friday’s program.
“I saw somebody get bullied before,” Bayn Yates said. “I went and told the teacher and they stopped.”
Delilah Ordoyne had a similar recollection.
“I saw somebody get pushed down on the playground and the person who did it didn’t help them up. They just ran off,” she said. “So I went over and helped him up and we became friends.”
Bayn said the main thing he learned was simple.
“Just be kind,” he said.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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