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Dan Ripley, Communication Officer, Society for Safe and Caring Schools and Communities
Teaching students about the negative impact of bullying is important, but sometimes the message carries more weight when it comes from their peers.
Drama students from Gibbons School (Gibbons), Harry Balfour School (Grande Prairie), John D. Bracco School (Edmonton) and Westpark Middle School (Red Deer) shared their performances on bullying with 160 fellow students at the Students Creating Dramatic Change Youth Action Conference, at Barnett House on May 29. This event was the culminating activity of a Society for Safe and Caring Schools and Communities (SACSC) youth action project designed to address relational aggression in junior high schools.
The students displayed creativity and passion for their subject matter. Performances included a mock game show, musical numbers and a dramatic presentation of the events leading up to the 1997 murder of Reena Virk, a student in Victoria, B.C. The students’ methods of delivery may have differed, but each play shared a common theme: the silence of bystanders allows bullying to continue. During an intermission, Kelly Aleman, a youth action facilitator from Westpark Middle School, asked the students: “How many of you have been bullied before?” Almost all the students in the packed auditorium raised their hands. When he asked how many students wished that someone had intervened, the same number of hands shot up. After their day at the Youth Action Conference, these students are clearly eager to break the silence.
—Photo by Dan Ripley
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