Today is National Bully Prevention Day and in honor of that I’d thought I’d share a story from one of the programs I participate in.
Several weeks ago I was one of the speakers at a program called ID Project. It is a program that was presented at a local junior high by ChangePoint. ChangePoint creates learning experiences to create environments where students discover themselves, their peers and empathy at a deeper level. These discoveries unlock innate compassion for others creating a radical positive change in the social climate of a school.
During this program we have a time at the very end called, “Open Mic,” this is where we allow students to take a few moments to go and apologize to someone else in the room they may have wronged. This is a tough thing to do for an ordinary adult, even tougher for an 8th grader sitting in a room of 150 other 8th grade boys!
After a LONG pause the time began and a boy stood up next to me and told me whom he needed to apologize to. So we walked across the room and he began to say, John Smith (names have been changed) I just want to apologize for ______________, I won’t do it again. Would you accept my apology? Then John has the right to say yes or no.
This went on several more minutes before we began to see a pattern, a pattern of people apologizing to John Smith! After the 5th boy stood up and wanted to apologize, (Mind you John is in tears and the boys that are apologizing are tearing up!) Pete stopped and said, “Who else in this room needs to apologize to John? Because... this is not fair to him! If you need to apologize please come over here and stand.” After that statement over 20 boys stood up and headed Pete’s direction. I looked at Pete, he looked at me in disbelief! In my head I’m thinking, this is unbelievable... this kid is a ticking time bomb about to go off! I just want to lay into all of these boy’s... LET’S GO! But then I remembered what we keep telling kids during this time... “HURT PEOPLE... HURT PEOPLE!” and I wondered what had happened in these boys lives to make them do this? Pete had each of these boy’s apologize to John, one by one. Then as if on cue, after the 15th or 16th boy finished, 20 more boys stood up and walked and stood next to Pete. I was not sure what was happening! But, surely they did not need to apologize also? As these new boys took the mic, they each simply said, “John, I want to apologize. Apologize for not being there for you, not sticking up for you and being clueless as to what was happening to you! It will never happen again! Would you accept my apology?”
We were blown away... as time wound down on this portion of the program we gave them a 15 minute break and we chatted with some of the teachers in the room, they had no idea this was happening. As a matter of fact we found out at our closing evaluation that John’s youth pastor was one of the leaders that day, he had no idea either. The next day when we did the girls program John’s mom was one of the small group leaders. After she had finished the day we explained to her what had happened the day before with John, she was shocked and in tears.
Many of you may have the feeling that teens and kids just need to toughen up, be stronger, quit whining, honestly I don’t disagree with some of those statements. But the real truth is, bullying is real... kids face it every day, many times it goes untold to anyone in authority for fear of payback. You see unlike us, that used party lines to talk to friends this is a highly connected generation of teens. They have to deal with social media and texting the bullying continues when they reach, what is supposed to be the safe haven of their homes!
If you really believe that something needs to change and if you want to do more than where orange, repost this on Facebook, then call or text someone that you have been mean or rude to, even if it was years ago. Even if it was the smallest, most insignificant thing. Call or text that person, right now, and apologize.
Now for the shameless plug... If you want to take it a step further, tell your administrators, counselors, principals and congressman about ChangePoint. We would love to come to the schools in your area. We have some compelling evidence as well as stories of major shifts in students' perspectives after participating in this program from a study done in a local school district.
