The Herald Democrat

Life lessons
Tom Bean high school students teach younger kids lessons about the dangers of bullying.

TOM BEAN — They are starting small, but members of a Tom Bean High School club are teaching healthy habits that will last elementary students a lifetime.

The Tom Bean High School Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Club did a presentation for the elementary school Wednesday highlighting the causes and effects of school bullying. It was part of community service program the club has been working on all school year, doing projects like helping a family that lost its home to fire and teaching middle and high school students about shaken baby syndrome.

“We wanted to try and do things that would help us get involved in the community,” said Katie Moore, a senior at Tom Bean High School.

In Wednesday’s presentation, the club showed third, fourth and fifth grade students that bullying not only hurts someone physically but also has an emotional effect on a person being bullied. Club members made their point by singling all the blue-eyed-students in the group and not including them in the presentation.

Blue-eyed students said it felt bad to be left out and the other students also said that leaving out their friends made them feel bad.

“I was most surprised by how advanced the students were,” said senior Terri Wyman. “They understand bullying in a way I didn’t think they would.”

In preparation for the presentation, the club had third, fourth and fifth grade students draw pictures showing their opinion of bullying. They also had the students fill out a questionnaire. Using the drawings and answers, the club was more able to direct the program to that age group.

“They (club members) wanted to identify the causes of bullying and how the children feel when they are bullied and give ways to react to it,” said FCCLA advisor Sharon Stephens. “We also wanted to show the students ways to get along with each other by looking for commonalties and show them that making judgments based on appearance is deceiving.”

One way they did that was to have students partner up and find four things in common with each other with one rule: It couldn’t be physical.

“We (club members) learned that there is stereotyping from a young age,” Moore said.

The club got advice from the North Texas Youth Connection on how to teach the topic of bullying.

“We were here to help direct them, but we sat back and watched and they did an awesome job. I am very impressed,” said Faye Roberson, outreach director of North Texas Youth Connection. “We know this is effective and we are going to branch out from this and emphasize bullying as we promote health living.”

Roberson said that many people don’t realize how bullying escalates into teen violence. She recalled the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, in which two students killed twelve schoolmates, a teacher and themselves. A lot of the debate into why the students did it centered around bullying and school cliques.

One thing the club did with the elementary students was to show them pictures of children and let them prejudge the picture. Club members held up the picture of one of the boys who participated in the massacre, and the students, based on their judgment of the picture, said he looked like a nice, smart student. They seemed heavily disappointed when the members told them the boy’s identity.

Terri said that when she was preparing for the bullying presentation, she learned a lot herself.

“When you are preparing for something like this, you have to look back at yourself,” she said. “It opens your eyes and makes you aware of what you do.”

The club will be in the elementary school Thursday, conducting more activities to teach about bullying. Club members plan to stay updated on all their projects from the year, including a challenge made to the elementary students to be nice to somebody they don’t know.