October 20, 2014 at 4:34 p.m.
Diversity Club teaches middle school students how to oppose bullying
Diversity Club teaches middle school students how to oppose bullying
After holding a similar event at the high school last year, the club - which is made up of high schoolers at Rhinelander High School and Northwoods Community Secondary School - went to the middle school in an effort to get the younger kids to begin thinking about how they can put a stop to bullying and make sure everyone at their school feels accepted.
"We are promoting acceptance," said Anavay White, a junior at NCSS and a member of the club.
"We're talking with the kids about eliminating mental health stigmas and we're giving them different inspirational quotes to talk about."
"The key, though, is we're having them split up and meet new people so they're not just sitting with their friends," White continued.
"In school, you tend to stick with the people you know, with your friends, but we want them to open up and get out of their comfort zone and into a new zone where they're able to accept people."
Bullying was a topic of discussion for the group.
"We also asked questions like, 'what do you think bullying is?' because there are a lot of things that kids don't know about bullying," White said.
"Just saying, 'I don't like this person,' can be bullying and we talked to them about that. We want them to understand that saying something as simple as, 'please don't do that,' can stop bullies."
"It only takes one person to stand up and help, so we want them to understand that and accept each other," she added.
White said the club hopes that greateer understanding will lead to greater acceptance of all students within the middle school.
"We're hoping that they can help prevent bullying in their everyday life," White said.
"We want them to take something from this and tell others and help everyone feel welcome."
The club decided to target a younger crowd this year in an effort to reach out to a broader number of students after last year's high school event.
"We did something like this last year and we decided to do it with a younger age group because the high schoolers were kind of (hesitant) to do it," White said.
"We're doing it with the younger kids so they can come up into a more accepting high school."
After a successful middle school endeavor, the club might try reaching out to younger students in the district as well, White said.
"We don't know yet if we're going to do that, but I think that with this being so successful, we may do that," she said.
A pair of seventh-grade students said they learned some valuable tips during the event.
"I learned that a lot of people care about bullying and want to stop it, so if we see something in the halls, we can stick up for them," Madison Carpenter said.
"We can use what we learned to stop it," Mary Bailey added.
Principal Paul Johnson was happy with how the exercise turned out.
"The key part about this is creating awareness with the kids and to get them out of their comfort zones. To have high school peers leading it - to have kids hearing from kids - sometimes is more powerful than any other way that we can send that message," Johnson said.
"It's neat. It's an amazing thing to see."
Marcus Nesemann may be reached at [email protected].
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