CABOT — Most teachers will tell you that school is about so much more than reading, writing and arithmetic. It’s also a place to grow as a person, make friends and learn how to work with others. That is why anit-bullying messages are so important, and it’s also why Cabot Public Schools allowed students to communicate how important it is to recognize and stand up against bullying.
After an anti-bullying assembly last year, Seanna Nickel said she and other students had a hard time connecting with the videos shown. Seanna, who is a senior this year, is a captain of the forensics team, and the team was approached about making relatable videos for the student body.
“We noticed that the video they showed and the things they were saying were very textbook and didn’t really apply to what we go through,” she said of the material shown last year. “The examples were not really relatable. It felt like it wasn’t made for us.”
Over the summer, forensics coach Jennifer Akers met with superintendent Tony Thurman and director of counseling Terena Woodruff about how the students could get involved in the anti-bullying communication.
“[Dr. Thurman] asked me if he thought this was a project the varsity forensics kids could do, and I said, ‘absolutely,’” Akers said. “Ms. Woodruff and I sat down and talked through the vision, and then I sat down with the kids and talked to them.”
Woodruff said she and Thurman are both excited that the students are involved in this project.
“We’ve done so much over the past few years with adults telling kids about bullying,” she said. “It might be a better approach to go with kids talking to kids, students talking to students. That’s the vision we gave the kids. You’re a student, you may experience bullying, what do you need to hear? They took it and ran with it.”
On the afternoon of one of the video shoots, the forensics students showed off their creativity and communication skills. Akers and Woodruff took a seat while Seanna and Lexi Robertson, another captain of the forensics team, took on the roles of directors.
As a camera drone controlled by broadcasting teacher Chuck Massey flew around inside the Cabot Freshman Academy cafeteria, 18 students sat at lunch tables with lunch trays in front of them. Sixteen of those students wore blue masks, and two wore orange masks.
As the making of the video progressed, the students in blue masks got up one-by-one, eventually leaving the two students in orange masks behind. Seanna said this symbolizes how many students in an average freshman class are bullied.
“This video is about the statistics of bullying,” Seanna said. “It shows how many kids in your lunchroom on average are bullied. It’s just to open up [students’] eyes to show them that it is a problem.”
The video shoot also included scenes shot at a middle school and on a bus, and Seanna said there will be a total of five videos before the school year is done.
“Some of the videos later on go into examples of bullying, ways to prevent it and those kids of details,” Seanna said.
The anti-bullying message hit home for the forensic students last year after one of their classmates died by suicide. Some students had already made videos and posted them to YouTube sharing a message of bullying awareness and love for one another, and it wasn’t hard to get everyone on board for this video series.
“We take this so seriously,” Seanna said.
The anit-bullying videos written and produced by the forensics team may be available at a future date on the Cabot Public Schools website, www.cabotschools.org.