A group of Timberlane Middle School students has been recognized with two awards for efforts to promote diversity and tolerance at their school. The Timberlane KidsBridge team received the 2011 Young Humanitarian Award from The College of New Jersey’s KidsBridge Tolerance Museum Board of Directors on June 16.
Also, the group’s Diversity Appreciation Day activity has been recognized by the national Character Education Partnership as a best practice and appears on its website. The group will receive an award from the CEP at a national conference in San Francisco in October.
The Tolerance Museum at TCNJ is an interactive exhibit that seeks to foster the understanding of differences among students in the greater Mercer County area.
The Timberlane team is made up of 25 students who were recommended by their teachers as demonstrating leadership potential. Teachers noted that they accepted differences in others, were interested in improving the school climate, worked well in groups and enjoyed learning new things about themselves and the world around them. Over the course of last school year, the team worked with their advisors, guidance counselor Georgette Rogers and teacher Maureen Kelly, on a number of ways to promote diversity.
One of these ways was creating and hosting Diversity Appreciation Days, a two-day event last November. The team set up seven diversity “stations” that all students visited. They included “Diversity Jeopardy,” a game in which students answered questions about different cultures based on information collected in a school wide survey. Another was an “Insecurities Snowball Fight” in which students wrote down something they were insecure about, crumpled the papers up, and threw them at each other. The papers were unfolded and read, displaying that no one is perfect and everyone feels insecure. Another station encouraged students to read accounts of cyber-bullying and then to brainstorm ways to prevent and respond to such incidents.
Other school-wide activities created by the team included diversity quotes read over the school announcement system and appearing on school computers; diversity skits played on the school TV station; and tie-ins to school curriculum that included a social studies diversity poster contest and science class discussions of scientists who had faced discrimination.
The group also served as promoters of Challenge Day, a national organization that brought a daylong event for eighth graders to Timberlane that involved communication and tolerance exercises done in small groups. The event is designed to break down barriers among students and promote understanding of differences.
”This group of students, along with Ms. Rogers and Mrs. Kelly, did an incredible job throughout the year reinforcing the important message of accepting and embracing student differences,” said Timberlane Principal Tony Suozzo. “They put a tremendous amount of time into these diversity activities, and there is nothing better than kids teaching kids. They had a truly positive impact on the student body at Timberlane.”
”Their message will continue,” said Mr. Suozzo, “with a new group of students this coming school year.”
