Sylvan Lake is continuing to lead the way when is comes to anti-bullying in schools.
On March 15th, students at Ecole Fox Run finished up their Beyond The Hurt Module which focuses on kindness and empathy in order to stamp out bullying on their campus.
“We are finishing up our program Beyond The Hurt, which is a program on anti-bullying and teaching kindness to the Grade 6 students,” Brenda Anderson, Fox Run Family School wellness worker said. “I have 11 Grade 8 volunteers and for the last few months we have been teaching something different to the students.”
On this day, the students participating in interactive activities focused on changing perspectives.
“Today we are watching a video called Perspectables and then we are building some goggles,” Anderson said. “It’s all about changing your perspective and treating people with kindness.”
Anderson believes this program has succeeded in helping creating awareness among Fox Run students.
“I think we have seen success with our Grade 6 students through them learning empathy, which is something we are really big on here,” she said, adding the program has expanded to the public school elementary schools in Sylvan Lake.
We have even taken this program at Steffie Woima, where we worked with the Grade 4 and 5’s there.
“The younger you start, the more success you have,” Anderson said. “We will hopefully be teaching that every year at the different elementary school’s in Town, as well as with our students here.”
Beyond The Hurt is a three module course that starts with an overview, moves on to a Jeopardy-type knowledge game and then finishes with the current module.
“The first module is about all about the different types of bullying; we focus a lot on online bullying because that is very big now,” Anderson said. The Grade 8’s in between then and now did a kindness fair at Steffie, which focused on the lessons of kindness.”
The fair seemed to be a success, according to the staff at Steffie Woima School.
“We had some excellent feedback at the elementary, as well as the teachers here on the importance of continuing these lessons,” Anderson said, adding, “It is really important to teach it over the course of a few months, that way we continually have a reminder about it.”
Anderson hopes that Beyond The Hurt will spread to the rest of the schools in Sylvan Lake.
“I hope to grow it a bit and teach at more schools,” she said. “We did it at Steffie this year, but we would also like to be at Beacon Hill and C.P. Blakely. Just growing the program.”
reporter@sylvanlakenews.com