Students at école Nesika Elementary School will be celebrating Pink Shirt Day in two ways today.
Some students will be wearing pink, the colour chosen to raise awareness that bullying is a practice that hurts everyone.
Other students will be wearing T-shirts with words chosen by the Nesika students to reflect the school’s Kindness Crusade/la Croisade de la Gentillesse campaign.
These T-shirts are red with black writing, reflecting the school colours.
Last year principal Yvonne Davis said each of the classes in the school came up with words that reflect ways of being kind to create a more thoughtful, gentler society.
“Instead of anti-bullying, we have the kindness crusade,” Davis says.
The school logo is on the front of the T-shirts.
The words reflecting the kindness crusade are written in a circle on the backs of the T-shirts.
The circle symbolizes the First Nation’s and School District 27’s learning circle and as a symbol of continuum, suggesting that once kindness begins it spreads, Davis says.
Some words are in French while others are in English, reflecting that Nesika is home-base to the city’s elementary French Immersion program.
Words such as: happiness, polite, cheerful, loyalty, helpful, sharing, generous and in French: respectueux, gentil, aimable and more, swim around in the circle which has the bigger words Kindness Crusade and the French version Croisade de la Gentillesse in larger letters at the top and bottom of the circle.
Asked what might be done to stop a situation of bullying, Grade 6 student Hope Pilkington said: “First you would try to get them to stop. If they don’t stop, tell an adult.
“If they don’t listen to the adult, then the adult might want to tell their parents.”
école Nesika promotes kindness