It happens to all of us some time or another and nobody, no

one likes it.  My Fourth grade year at Bells Mill Elementary

school was not the best …for sure. I was bullied, teased and

picked on. Kids stole my ambassador post (a place where I

help kids), called me names, and laughed at me. A lot of

things happened but it all started when my friends and I had a

fight and then nobody liked me anymore. Only my really good

friends would hang out with me…but then nobody would.

Mean remarks were said about me behind my back, I was left out,

everyone found someone else to hang out with and then it just all

got worse.  Someone wrote something very rude and mean in the

bathroom. Then all the girls had to have a talk with the guidance

counselor and principal. By the end of the meeting I had figured

out it was about me but no one would tell me anything about it.

I was mad and fed up with all this teasing and

bulling, so I went to our guidance counselor

and we talked about my problem and how a

lot of other kids were teased too. I suggested

we needed a solution that would cure the

school. My idea was called … “Dare to care!”

It would be a group to encourage caring, stop

bullying, and show others how it felt to be

bullied. We sat there for a while thinking how

we would do it and who would join and help

lead the school in the right direction.

Now in the middle of my fifth grade year nobody is bullied very often

and dare to care is a huge success. Dare to care does caught you caring

which encourages kids to care by recognizing kids demonstrating good

character traits, takes recycling out for the janitor, is going to do a

caring week, helps with saying no to drugs, teacher appreciation

week and is planning to do more great things.

It really worked this October when we did the bullying

chart. (Every month we do a survey to see how people

feel about bullying) Most people were not bullied.

We had achieved part of our goal. Through my

own sadness I have found a way not just to

benefit me but the whole school.

Dare To Care is a program that does different things to help stop bullying and make kids feel happy and supported at school.

Here are some of the things Dare To Care does:


Caught You Caring

A week or two every year where Dare To Care
encourages using the debug steps which are:

Ignore
Move away
Talk friendly then firmly
Get adults help
Peer mediation
and much more is to come


Also every month the kids take a Bullying Consenseagram
to see how incidents of bullying have gone down.