Anti-Bullying Week runs this week at Raft River Elementary School. This is the focal week of an on-going full-time program at RRES to help students realize that bullying is not an acceptable form of behaviour.
The highlight will be the sale of pink T-shirts on Wednesday morning. Students are encouraged to wear pink shirts if they have them already. The week will also feature contests, posters and information sessions with older students speaking to younger students.
At noon Wednesday, Feb.29, some members of the Clearwater RCMP will be playing in a floor hockey game with Raft River students. Students from every class will participate in the game.
Mr. Martin’s Grade 7 class will have numerous information boards around the school focusing on the anti-bullying message. The topics include: cyber bullying, racism, sexism, same sex couples, using the word gay, physical, verbal and emotional bullying.
All students are being asked to make a commitment pledge to a bully-free environment. To show this commitment, teachers are asking each student to make a hand print, cut it out and write their name on it. These cut-outs will be put up in displays outside the classrooms. The hand print symbolizes “stop bullying”. The vision is to have 350 hand prints spread out around the school.
Anti-bullying coloring contest will have students coloring pictures that must have one of the several suggested anti-bullying slogans.
Pink Shirt Day began when two teenage boys from a rural Nova Scotia high school organized a school protest in sympathy with a Grade 9 student. The boy had been bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school, so the two students handed out pink shirts to all the boys in the school, making a non-violent statement that bullying will not be tolerated.