The Jasper Elementary School was peppered with pink Feb. 25, as students of all stripes donned pink shirts to show their support for Pink Shirt Day.
Pink Shirt Day is an anti-bullying campaign that aims to raise awareness and prevent bullying in schools across North America. David Shepherd and Travis Price of Berwick, Nova Scotia organized the original event. The students organized their peers into a show of solidarity, after one of their schoolmates was picked on for wearing a pink shirt to school.
The “sea of pink” shirts they and their classmates wore attracted national media attention, and since that day in 2007, Pink Shirt Day has spread across North America.
Jasper Elementary School didn’t have a formal assembly recognizing the day, but in classes across the school, students talked about bullying.
The Jasper Junior/Senior High School also encouraged its students to wear pink in support of Pink Shirt Day, and several classes held conversations around bullying during final period. Teachers led the discussions by showing video clips related to the history of Pink Shirt Day, as well as some PSAs and spoken work poetry.
At Jasper Elementary, John Auger’s Grade 4 class spent the afternoon talking about what Pink Shirt Day meant to them, and what students can do when they encounter bullying in their school.
After a history lesson about the event, and discussion about why they do it every year, the class broke into small groups and acted out short skits demonstrating bullying scenarios, and what to do when confronted with them.
They also watched a series of small “webisodes” that followed a group of students and their struggles with bullying.
Sophia Mastrianni is one of Mr. Auger’s students.
During her lunch break she talked to the Fitzhugh about why she wore pink. She said that the day was an important way to encourage students to think about bullying, and the impact it can have on people.
“I’m a big supporter of anti-bullying, because I know kind of what it feels like. And I really think that it shouldn’t happen, because it’s just unfair to the people who are getting bullied. It’s probably the most crude type of entertainment for the people who are bullying,” she said.
Mastrianni said that her own bully used to say mean things to her, and she would wonder why he kept doing it.
“Occasionally it will just be like: OK, this guy’s getting really annoying. He just needs to stop. And then once they keep doing it, it’s just like why are they doing it? It’s just kind of getting hard on me.”
She said that while she is grateful it’s not a problem for her anymore, she thinks it’s very important that schools prevent it from happening to anyone else.
She said when students see bullying happening in her school they might think about Pink Shirt Day and do something about it.
“If they see someone getting picked on or anything like that, they can stand up for them and say ‘hey, why are you doing that? Imagine how it feels for them, you really need to stop.’”
She said that she thinks every school should do everything it can to support the yearly initiative.
“I think that it is pretty necessary, and if there’s any schools that aren’t doing it they definitely should be. If there’s bullying going on they definitely should have an anti-bullying day or something like that to prevent it from happening.”
Trevor Nichols
[email protected]
