To start of the 2011-2012 school year, I returned to familiar territory – Monroe Twp.! This year, the middle school had moved into the old high school, so I was super excited to have the use of their beautiful theater. The group was wonderful from the start with a few younger siblings of my former students. It is always nice to reconnect to where everything started. The group worked really well together and kept focused on the task. By Thursday, I could not believe how great they sounded! What an amazing cast!

This week, I was also asked to speak to the sixth and eighth graders separately as the assembly was only for seventh graders. We had a lot of outstanding communication in those small assemblies. The eighth graders, having seen the program the year prior, had a lot of insight as to the effectiveness of the performance. We discussed their continued role as a bystander and to effectively take positive action. We spent a great deal of time discussing the individual stories of the kids in the powerpoint. A lot of times, audience members see the pictures of the kids who have committed bullycide and think that they bully they endured must have been so much worse than the bullying in their school. They are wrong – that is wishful thinking. Those kids who took their lived endured the same types of bullying as they see everyday. What the kids don’t understand is that you never know how one individual is going to handle being bullied or how much they have to endure on a daily basis. The same types of bullying go on everywhere – it is bad at every school. The kids need to get that through their heads and stop living in denial.

The Friday performance was incredible! My friend and former co-worker and I were so proud of this particular group because they really put everything into this performance. The audience was silent – the seventh graders stunned. The debriefing sessions that followed really opened up the discussion in a positive way. I was so proud of this group and hope they continue to use the momentum they built during that powerful day to be the positive change in their school.