“Have you ever been teased or made fun of?”
“When a person is mistreated, how do their feelings change?”
“Do you believe young people can improve schools and communities?”
These are just some of the questions asked at today’s Safe School Ambassadors training at Sleepy Hollow High School, where 40 9th, 10th and 11th graders and 8 faculty members spent a second day addressing bullying in school. Thanks, in part, to a grant from Kids’ Club, SHHS is tackling this unfortunate reality head on by giving students tools for action when they hear or see mistreatments of their classmates.
Many of the students said they wanted to be involved in this program because they had witnessed incidents of bullying and mistreatment themselves; they were happy to develop skills that would help them act when they next encounter these scenarios (rather than just feeling bad about them). The instruction also included advice on when not to act and when to get an adult involved. The expectation is that the Ambassadors will model appropriate anti-bullying responses to their peers going forward. We congratulate the students for wanting to step up to make a difference in their school and community, and we look forward to seeing this positivity spread among their peers.