Students work together to promote anti-bullying message

Date: 5/17/2010

May 17, 2010

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



EAST LONGMEADOW - For many, seeing something often makes a larger impact than merely hearing about it. That's why the students at Mountain View Elementary are taking the issue of bullying into their hands through a unique mural project.

The Pioneer Team at Mountain View, consisting of one student representative from each of the school's 15 classrooms, serves as a leadership team. Its members focus on promoting school spirit, fostering kindness and understanding between students and helping their community, whether it be local - such as planting a tree for Arbor Day - or global - by raising money for earthquake relief in Haiti.

Norma McKenna, guidance counselor at Mountain View, explained there's been a lot of talk recently about bullying at the school.

"It's a topic we touch on every year," she said. "We have done 'No Name Calling Weeks' in the past. What we've been talking about this year is being able to express frustration and feelings before they overwhelm you."

McKenna, who advises the Pioneer Team, worked with school nurse Susan Thomas and paraprofessional Michael Cady and the student team to create the mural. Cady, who teaches cartooning after school, said the goal of the mural is to show all the different aspects of bullying and how to stand up to it.

"It tells a story," Cady explained. "The kids came up with a lot of the concepts. We used their wording and ideas and I put it in a drawing."

Three different scenarios are shown in the mural: bullying on the playground, in the cafeteria and on the school bus, areas students said are the most common places for bullying because of decreased supervision.

"There's not much bullying at our school but the little bit that does go on is a problem," fourth grader Andrew Kingston said. He added that the best way to combat bullying is to stand up for the person being picked on.

"It's tougher being younger when facing bullies because the older kids know you won't do anything," third grader Zach Noble said.

"Talking about it helps a little bit, but if [students] see what we're doing [with the mural] and the effort we put in to it, it may help stop bullying over the years," third grader Madison Maurer added.

Cady agreed with Maurer. "This is effective because in this form, the lesson really stands out. It's in their [the students'] language. The ideas from them is one of the best ways to approach [the issue]."

"Bullying is an issue at every grade level, unfortunately," Thomas said. "This mural is one of our school's attempts at stopping it."