51 21ST ANNUAL CRIME PREVENTION GUIDE School receives award for anti-bullying work Published on April 29, 2011 S. Ryan Quigley / Journal Pioneer Summerside - Elm Street Elementary received the Tami Martell Verbal Abuse Prevention Awareness Award at a ceremony in the school gym Friday. The crowd of students and staff greeted Natalie Ricard-Campbell, a teacher at the school, with a cheer as she accepted the award from representatives of the Western School Board. The honour is named after a mother from Montague who has and continues to speak out to create awareness and action on verbal abuse and its consequences. Her work led to the establishment of P.E.I.’s annual Verbal Awareness Prevention Week. It is awarded in each of the province’s school boards to one school every year. Elm Street won the award for their 2010 campaign “Character Matters” in which every month the school would pick a theme and different classes would present a project about the theme at their month-end assemblies. The award is usually awarded in November, but with the Summerside school being closed due to mold, they waited until the students were all back at Elm Street school. The ceremony ended with the Camryn Arsenault, Dawson Drummond, Mikala Barlow and William Rogers all participating in telling a story from the graphic novel they wrote “Standing Small,” in which a boy realizes he can be a superhero by standing up to bullying. Tracy Beaulieu, principal at Elm Street School, said the idea for the project came from seeing posters on different character traits. “We thought let’s let the classes sign up and do some presentation around this character and the virtue, because it’s much more effective to have children studying it, talking about it and teaching it. They learn it more through their teaching and talking than by just having us talk about it.” With 25 homerooms they make sure every class does at least one presentation with the freedom to do it however they want, said Beaulieu. “We’ve had some children do skits on stage,” while others videotaped their presentations and showed it on the screen in the gym. “We’ve had some write stories,” Beaulieu said. “So the kids just take it on in whatever way they want to teach.” It was wonderful to win the award and be recognized for the work they have been doing, said Beaulieu. “The award is really for the children. It’s the children that are really making the difference.”
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