PINK SHIRT DAY - Serenity Lynch, 7, Brooks Newfield, 7, Mataya Castro, 7, Skylar Zager, 10, Gorden Bennett,8, Ava Barrett, 10, Holland Scheyen, 7, Asher Gregory, 7 and Sophia Langevin, 6, take part in Pink Shirt at St. Martin de Porres School Day. Michelle Falk/Red Deer Express

PINK SHIRT DAY - Serenity Lynch, 7, Brooks Newfield, 7, Mataya Castro, 7, Skylar Zager, 10, Gorden Bennett,8, Ava Barrett, 10, Holland Scheyen, 7, Asher Gregory, 7 and Sophia Langevin, 6, take part in Pink Shirt at St. Martin de Porres School Day. Michelle Falk/Red Deer Express

Red Deer schools promote anti-bullying on Pink Shirt Day

Students wear pink and attend events and workshops to learn about kindness

Schools around the province have put on special events to promote anti-bullying, wearing their pink shirts to school Feb. 28th.

St. Martin de Porres School took Pink Shirt Day to the next level by making kindness the theme of the entire month of February.

“It’s an everyday thing—today is Pink Shirt Day, but it’s not a one-day thing we’re doing, we really wanted to carry it through,” said Kristie McCullough, Assistant Principal at St. Martin de Porres School.

She said they have based the entire month on the theme of kindness drawing on it as an extension of one of the seven sacred teachings, which is love and the eagle, and really talk about anti-bullying.

Throughout the month students have done activities interacting with other grades.

McCullough said she has been very impressed with how much students have engaged with this theme and how they are carrying it out.

“It’s interesting how it has filtered through the grades,” she said.

“They’ve brought it down from the top with the Grade fives being our leaders.”

Some students started a kindness team to share quotes about kindness over the intercom each morning.

They are also enjoying doing a book study of Wonder. It is a story about appreciating other people and their differences. She said the students have connected with the story and it is affecting how they act.

Wednesday’s events for Pink Shirt Day were a culmination of the month’s theme of kindness.

Students created painted feathers in the morning combined with a writing project where they wrote a compliment for each person in their class.