A Second Grader’s Genius Idea Helps Lonely Kids Make Friends

For some kids, the playground can be a big, lonely place.
But last year, Christian Buck, a second grader in York, Penn., came up with a simple, but amazing idea to help kids who don’t know where to go during recess or have anyone to play with.
According to Good News Network, the 8-year-old was shown a photo of a special bench at a German school where lonely kids can go to so that other children can befriend them. The young man liked what he saw, and he decided to tell his teacher and his principal at Roundtown Elementary about it, and they thought it was a great addition for the playground. Soon after, the Buddy Bench was born.
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Six months later, Christian’s school project has turned into somewhat of a movement (check out this map of Buddy Benches across the nation). There are also Buddy Benches in schools around Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Italy and Canada, the York Daily Record reports. The newest one just popped up in Lake Superior Primary and Intermediate School in Ashland, Wis.
“It helps the kids who see others on the Buddy Bench, to enable them to approach and ask them to play,” Intermediate School Counselor Kelly Sundeen tells Ashland’s Daily Press. “It also tells the kids on the bench that it is OK to say ‘I need someone to play with.’”
The bench is also a powerful anti-bullying tool that allows teachers and administrators to teach students to be kind to others and not ostracize schoolmates that sit on the bench. “It really builds their self-esteem to ask others to play with them,” Sundeen adds.
Christian has since given speeches in California and Connecticut about his wonderful idea.
“The idea of the Buddy Bench is to allow others to meet and play with new friends or old friends,” Christian explains in this video. “We show we care about others when we ask others to play.”
Isn’t it nice to be nice?

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Confiding Isn’t Scary; It’s the Key to Feeling Safe for These Students

“If you really knew me, this is what you’d know.”
At the Freire Charter School in Philadelphia, that was the prompt given to two dozen students as they stood before 500 peers, sharing personal stories and intimate details about their lives. The concept sounds intimidating, but it is how Freire school officials create a campus environment of empathy and community among its students and prevent future violence and tragedy.
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“When a community can come together and celebrate the humanity in each of our kids,” said school head Kelly Davenport, “that gives each and every one of our students the right just to be who they are, and to make that OK.”

Violent outbursts often stem from feeling isolated, Davenport explains, and creating a public forum such as this lets students know they’re not alone in their struggles. The goal of these sharing assemblies is to give students a means of expressing themselves without feeling judged or criticized, school organizer Dave Shahriari told NPR.

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“Kids have a lot to say, and I thought it could be really humanizing and helpful for the school as a community if they could say it in a safe space in front of each other,” he adds.

Elijah, a tenth-grader, was among the dozen students to share his story at the nearby Unitarian church (the school does not have an auditorium large enough to accommodate its students). He explained he was fortunate to have a support network of friends and a good relationship with his grandmother — but that he is often troubled with depression and has thoughts of suicide.

Upon his confession, Elijah implored his classmates who really care about him and his issues to stand up. The church roared with a standing ovation. Weeks later, Elijah still feels the love.

“They hug me or they give me a handshake, and then they was telling me stories like, ‘Yeah, I know what you was dealing with. I went through the same thing,'” he said.

Another tenth-grader, Tyshierra, revealed that behind her humor and lighthearted personality, there’s a story of loss and hurt. The West Philly native confessed to classmates that her mother was a drug dealer and was allegedly strangled to death by her boyfriend.

Shortly thereafter, Tyshierra’s father passed away of liver cancer. After a whirlwind of meetings with child protection caseworkers and participating in counseling programs, she and her siblings were finally taken in by their aunt.

“Losing my mother was my biggest fear,” she said. “Since that has already happened, I fear nothing and no one. Ya’ll see me as goofy, funny or whatever else, but deep down inside, I’m hurting for the way my life is.”

But even Tyshierra has felt the powerful effects of the brave choice to share her story with her peers.

Before the assembly, “everybody just was like, ‘OK, we at school,’ ” Tyshierra said. “But now, it’s like we feel like a family, like we know all that about each other.”

Perhaps it helped that the students divulged their secrets in the calm sanctuary of a church. But regardless of the location, it’s empowering to see a school that’s making its students feel safe with something other than added security or more metal detectors.

Watch How This Boy With Autism Renders His Class Speechless

Like any other kid on the planet, Jake is just a boy who wants friends. Unfortunately, his differences (he has autism) make him a walking target to bullies at school.
But one day during gym class, Jake did one of the most powerful things that few would have the same courage to do: He spoke up.
In the moving video from UpWorthy, Jake delivers a message that’s exactly what his classmates needed to hear.
“I don’t think you guys see me for me. I just think you guys see me as a big target,” Jake says as his eyes well with tears. “I want to try to be your friend but you don’t try to be mine…and that really makes me feel bad that you don’t really want to know me.”
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Jake’s message is an invitation for us all to talk about bullying, as any child across the country could be in the same situation as he, whether their families know about it or not. In fact, 3.2 million students in the U.S. are victims of bullying each year, and if things aren’t handled correctly, bullying can turn tragic, as demonstrated in the 2011 documentary Bully, which followed the lives of five kids who faced bullying on a daily basis. The film particularly focused on 11-year-old Ty Smalley and 17-year-old Tyler Long, who took their own lives because they were fed up with bullying.
Happily, Jake, who’s now a junior in high school, told UpWorthy that things are getting much better at school.
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“Bullying has had a big impact on my life, but since the movie I’ve made a lot of friends. Recently, I have joined my high school football team! At first I thought they would all be complete jerks, but actually they are pretty cool guys and have helped me through a lot of situations — they stand up for me!”
“For other kids with autism, if you’re getting bullied, try and tell them to stop and not give a reaction — if that doesn’t work, go to an adult. It might seem hard cause we can’t handle stress as well as other kids, but you will get through it and you’ll be awesome — actually you already are!”
Who’s our new hero? Clearly, it’s Jake.
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Once the Target of Bullies, This Teen With Tourettes Is Making Sure No Other Kid Suffers

Jaylen Arnold knows exactly what it’s like to be attacked for being a little different. The Lakeland, Florida boy was born with Tourette’s Syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes him to involuntarily tic and make sounds. He also has Aspergers Syndrome and severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Unfortunately, his differences made him a target of bullies. As Yahoo! Shine reports, the teasing got so bad he had to be taken out of school. But instead of suffering silently, when he was only 8-years-old, Jaylen decided that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that the bullies would never get to him. He also wanted to make sure no other kid—especially ones with disabilities—would go through what he did.
With the help from his friends and family, Jaylen launched his own charity, the Jaylen’s Challenge Foundation, to put an end to bullying through education and urging tolerance.
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“Once kids are educated about it, they won’t bully so much,” Jaylen writes on his website. “I put it to the test with the class at the school I attended here for a few months. It was a huge success! You should have seen all the kids coming up to me that use to make fun and copy me. They were actually telling me they were sorry!”
Now 13, Jaylen makes appearances at schools across the country to help banish bullying. According to Yahoo!, the seventh-grader has spoken to more than 60,000 kids, in the hopes that his message will create a domino effect of change.
“I’m trying to make the world a better place in any way that I can, because if I can help one person, then that person can help someone else, and then that person can help someone else,” Jaylen said. “We all come together to end bullying.”
Jaylen’s mission to stamp out bullying has already received national attention. As you can see in the video below, he recently received a $10,000 check from talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres to help him in his cause.
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This Anti-Bullying Video Teaches Us the Power of Two Simple Words

“There’s enough heartache and sorrow in this life without our adding to it through our own stubbornness, bitterness and resentment.” That’s the message of Mormon leader Dieter F. Uchtdorf in a powerful new video that aims to put an end to bullying.
The short film, created Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and starring Utah teens, strikes a modern chord because it depicts high school students as victims of cyber-bullying, a behavior that’s unfortunately becoming more and more common. In 2011, the National Crime Prevention Council found that cyber-bullying affects almost half of all American teens. And sadly, the consequences can be quite serious. A new study published by the journal JAMA Pediatrics, found that children who have been cyber-bullied are three times as likely than other kids to have thoughts of suicide. As the Los Angeles Times reports, between 5 and 8 percent of American teenagers try to kill themselves each year.
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In the video, Uchtdorf teaches us the two simple but powerful words that we all should know when it comes to bullying: “When it comes to hating, gossiping, ignoring, ridiculing, holding grudges, or wanting to cause harm, please apply the following – stop it.” Those words couldn’t be any more true today.

The Brilliant But Simple Way This Teacher Stops Bullying

How can you know when a child needs help, but is too afraid to speak up? For one exceptional teacher, all it took was a simple classroom activity, says mommy blogger Glennon Doyle Melton in a now-viral Momastery post.
Here’s how it works: Each Friday afternoon, this unnamed teacher asks her class to write down on paper the names of four students whom they’d like to sit next to, and one “exceptional classroom citizen.” The students then hand their list to the teacher.
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So what’s the point of this exercise? The teacher isn’t arbitrarily shaking up seating arrangements — she’s actually trying to immediately identify which kids aren’t getting mentioned, which kids were mentioned in one week but not the next, or which kids can’t even think of any friends to write down. “She’s pinning down — right away — who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying,” wrote Melton, whose son, Chase, is one of the teacher’s students.
The teacher has used this method every week since the tragic Columbine shootings as a way to spot and fix problems in her students early on. “This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION,” Melton writes. “All outward violence begins as inner loneliness.” The post was shared more than 1 million times less than a day after it went up and has touched the hearts of many more. If you scan the comments section, you’ll find that other teachers and even entire schools want to try out this technique, too. It just might be the start of something big.