Two Grade 10 students at Penticton Secondary School are bringing back and old favourite when it comes to spreading kindness on Pink Shirt Day.
Adding to the day promoting anti-bullying efforts, Mackenzie Dunham and Jennifer Hayman are paying homage to an initiative started by their vice-principal at KVR Middle School by handing out roses to classmates.
“We did it every year during Pink Shirt Day and we’d have a big assembly to kick it off. But with this big school we can’t really do that, so we hand them out in the morning,” Dunham said. “It impacts everyone in one way or another.”
Students will be treated to two dozen roses, a symbol of kindness, which will be passed from student to student after they are initially handed out. The student decides if they would like to pass on the rose to another student they feel they want to show support.
“It was really cool to see how many people got the rose and how many people could be touched in one day,” Dunham said. “When you pass it on you give them a compliment and say ‘have a great day,’ or something like that. So you try and make someone’s day a little bit better by passing them the rose.”
Bullying and Pink Shirt Day have been mainstays at school ever since the two can remember.
“I believe (bullying) affects everyone, of all ages. It’s never the right thing to do. Everybody needs to be more aware of it and realize how wrong it is and how much it can affect someone,” Hayman said. “That’s why there’s this day for the awareness, but every other day we need to make sure there’s no bullying.”
“It’s about letting people know that if you go just stand by someone who’s being bullied, you don’t even have to do anything, most of the time it stops,” Dunham said.
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Andrea DeVito, vice-principal at Pen High said the day is a symbolic one, a reminder of the critical importance of kindness in our daily interactions. Handing out roses is one way to remind students of how quickly kindness can spread.
“Sort of that exponential effect kindness can have sometimes when you pay it forward is the idea behind it,” DeVito said.
Pen High students will have a pledge board giving them the opportunity to pledge kindness and to treat others with respect and care. The sticky note campaign, leaving notes around the school encouraging kindness, is set to return as well.
Students are taught the difference between the intent of an action and the impact, and if the impact results in a harmful action, it’s never OK. Youth today have more education than ever before around bullying, DeVito said.
“Human nature, I believe, leans more towards goodness and kindness, but I think our kids are equipped with more language than they’ve ever had before. In terms of how to recognize what bullying looks like, how to speak about it and know when teasing turns into harmful actions,” DeVito said. “And of course we are encouraging everyone to wear pink. Just by showing up in pink you’re making that non-verbal statement that you stand against bullying and for kindness,” DeVito said.
Meanwhile over at the Penticton location of the Okanagan Boys and Girls Club, preparation for Pink Shirt Day has been underway for over a month according to area director Jennifer Anderson.
“What we’ve been leading up to is focusing on the awareness piece of the programming with kids,” said Anderson. “We’ve been having it in conversations and doing team-building activities, working together and focusing on kindness and respect, empathy, diversity so the kids are being active.
“It’s a culture, that’s what we’re really trying to change and it’s one step at a time. It’s not to say we don’t have issues here but when we do have them we address it in a kind, nondisciplinary way where we get the kids together and work towards a resolution and really understanding how the other person feels.”
Kids who are “caught” doing nice things for others also receive a little card praising them for their actions.
“It’s important to let kids figure things out for themselves versus being told all the time,” said Anderson.
Pink Shirt Day takes place today, Feb. 22, at Pen High and tomorrow, Feb. 23, at Princess Margaret.
— with files from Mark Brett
