Respect Day at Forest Grove High School
Our school celebrated R-word day by promoting the idea of respect, as opposed to focusing on not saying the R-word, as this was part of Special Olympics new stance on R-word day. A big group was collected made up of people from various leadership and inclusive classes to create a video showing how excited everyone was to promote respect. It also featured a few people telling why respect was important to them. To see our great video, click on our link: https://youtu.be/G1EysPbUl6I or watch below!
Our school had also received a ton of the new respect campaign shirts which we sold to the students here so that everyone could promote respect through their clothing. Even though that seemed small, it was very important for our school to do.
As a youth pair, Heidi and Claire discussed their ideas on how to respond to people using degrading language, including the R-word. We decided that it is very important to stand up for people who are being bullied through these words and in other ways, as well as explain to people why using the R-word is not something that should be socially accepted. Heidi believes that you should treat all your friends like family and stand up for them if they are being hurt by anyone else. Even if the person being verbally attacked is not your friend, or is even a complete stranger, standing up for them is very important. People being bullied should be brought into your friend group, regardless of how others may view them or treat them, as everyone has the responsibility to treat others with the respect they deserve.
It is very important for us as youth to embrace and talk about the Respect Campaign in many different settings. Every year we have a group of students that attend a Youth Leadership Summit where we usually talk about the Respect Campaign and tell other schools what we do to spread the idea of respect. On a smaller scale, youth are responsible for standing up for their peers in just a school setting, like we talked about in the prior paragraph. That is a very simple, easy way for us to promote unity and inclusion and thus be leaders in the Respect campaign.
Forest Grove High School, where Claire and Heidi attend school also has a class that specifically works to promote unity and even runs the Respect Campaign, a class called Partner’s Class. Everyone can be a part of Partner’s Class and it provides a way for people of all different abilities to understand each other in ways that they might not have before.
Forest Grove High School works very hard to promote the Respect Campaign and to spread the ideas of inclusion and unity throughout our school and community as a whole.
To find out more about the R- Word Campaign, go to: https://www.specialolympics.org/News_and_Stories/Stories2010/Respect.aspx
For a behind the scenes look at our Youth Leadership from Team Oregon at work, check out this picture below!
#BeFearlessBeKind #RiseWithUs #YLE2018