Chilhowie school soars away from bullying

BY DAN KEGLEY
Staff

Billy Dungan worked through a pre-flight checklist Friday afternoon, making sure his Cessna Skyhawk was ready to fly a special mission. After a morning of rain and low-hanging clouds that threatened to cancel the flight, the skies opened up and the sun shone on the runway at Mountain Empire Airport.
Set to take off at 1:45 p.m., the small plane would soon bank and circle above Chilhowie Elementary School, where Dungan teaches fifth grade and where a week of anti-bullying activities themed “Soaring Away from Bullying” was awaiting culmination in his flybys.
“We wanted to do something different to cap our anti-bullying week,” Dungan said.
It was a week that began in late June when a team of teachers took intensive training in the well-known Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, said CES Principal Sanders Henderson.
When the school year began, classrooms held powwows where discussions centered on subjects like respect and citizenship. Bullying, Henderson said, was not mentioned until last week when it had everyone’s attention.
Daily activities included making posters promoting “Soaring Away from Bullying” and showing ways to help those being bullied. They performed skits to reinforce those ways of helping. They wrote tips on preventing bullying and being a friend for those experiencing it on slips of paper put inside helium balloons for release Friday after special assembly programs.
Those programs featured Richard Adams of Staunton, an Olweus-certified presenter who visits schools as I Can Man with music and messages about bullying, character and other aspects of being a good student.
Then Friday afternoon, wearing new T-shirts proclaiming them “Little Warriors Who Care,” the students and staff went out to the at-last sunny playground. Students in grades one through five and staff members, wearing orange shirts, formed a big solid orange circle representing a hot-air balloon. In black shirts, kindergarten and pre-k students formed ropes and the balloon’s basket as Dungan circled above.
Black helium balloons bearing the students’ tips inside rose above the school grounds and drifted on the wind to later fall and perhaps help someone else cope with or end bullying.
Back on the ground, CES fifth-graders Emily Frye and Aaron Olinger got the message. They said Monday they learned what a bully is.
“It’s one who punched you, physically hurts you or they say mean things,” Frye said. When those things happen, you “tell a trusted adult,” she said.
Olinger learned something about people.
“People I thought were my friends were picking on me for their own amusement,” he said. With that knowledge, Olinger said now “I stay with the people I know are my real friends.”
Henderson said he wanted to publicly thank those of his staff who became the Olweus team for his school and started the special week last summer.
“I think it’s a very positive program,” and team member Leslie Frye. “Parents and students are very receptive to it.”

dkegley@wythenews.com