Students With Solutions

For this week's episode of PACERTalks About Bullying, we are excited to share more about Students With Solutions, a creative project designed to help educators continue the conversation about kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. The episode will cover the history of this initiative and how you and your students can get involved!

Transcript

>> Hey there, welcome back to PACERtalks About Bullying, I'm Bailey, we're so glad you're here.

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On this week's episode, we are excited to share with you, a resource that you can use with your students to creatively engage them in thinking and talking about the role we all play in bullying prevention. This project is Students with Solutions, and in this week's episode, we're going to share a little bit more about what the project is and how you can get involved with your students. Now, let's get into the episode.

Let's start off by talking about what Students with Solutions is. This is a project designed to creatively engage your students in thinking and discussing bullying prevention. We have a new contest every fall and spring with a different theme, but they all follow the same format, which is to watch a video, hold a classroom discussion, and then encourage your students to creatively respond to the themes discussed. This is an awesome opportunity to start the discussion about bullying prevention in your classroom, but you also have the chance to receive prizes and recognition.

Now, you may be wondering how the idea for Students with Solutions came about. Well, in 2006, when PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center was first founded, one of the original activities that we had for students was an opportunity for them to design their own poster. Now we received thousands of these poster designs from students all across the country. You can actually see some of them from this original activity right here behind me. Ten years later, we decided to turn this activity into a project where students could all be thinking about similar themes and sharing their ideas for bullying prevention in ways that students can make a difference.

Now that you know more about Students with Solutions, let's talk about the fall 2019 contest and how you can participate with your students. This contest for the fall is sponsored by Planet Fitness and the theme is how we can become a judgment free generation through intentional acts of kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. Let's break it down into the four steps on how you and your students can participate.

The first step, step number one, is to watch the brand new Students with Solutions video. This 3 minute video features students talking about what bullying is, how it feels, and how to be intentional with your actions to make a difference.

Then, step number two, is to hold a classroom discussion. Talk about what it really means to be intentional with acts of kindness, acceptance, and inclusion. On the Students with Solutions webpage, we have a discussion guide, just for educators, on how you can facilitate this conversation with your students.

Then, step number three, is to encourage your students to respond to the themes in their own, creative ways. This could be drawing a picture, designing a graphic, taking a photograph, writing poetry, or even creating their own video. The content can include their ideas about what it means to be intentional or even sharing real life examples.

And then, step number four is to send the content to us, here at PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, for the opportunity to receive prizes and recognition. There's more information on the Students with Solutions webpage on how you can either email us the content or send in physical work.

Now, what are the prizes available? For the 2019 fall, Students with Solutions contest there are some amazing prizes available to benefit your school or classroom. The first main prize, which two classrooms will receive, is a Buddy Bench with a personalized engraved message. The second main prize, which five classrooms will receive, is playground equipment and games. And the third main prize, which ten classrooms will receive, is a Students with Solutions prize pack that features water bottles and hats for your entire classroom. Pretty awesome prizes, right?

So, now what? Well you know how to enter, and we are accepting submissions until December 31, 2019. All submissions will be reviewed by a panel and we'll notify selections by early 2020. You can find out more information on Students with Solutions and how to enter, at pacer dot organization slash bullying, and then search Students with Solutions. Thank you so much again, to Planet Fitness, for sponsoring the fall of 2019 Students with Solutions contest, and we can't wait to see what your students come up with.

And that's a wrap on this week's episode of PACERTalks About Bullying. We'll see you right back here next week and remember, together we can create a world without bullying. See ya.

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