Lend a Hand and Take a Stand

Parkway Heights Middle School held its first Anti-Bullying Film Festival Friday night, red carpet and all. 

Guests were escorted down the red carpet to well-dressed adoring fans cheering and welcoming them to this important event. Panther Hall (the MUR room) was adorned with stars, a symbol of the students who have pledged to stand up against bullying, popcorn and hot dogs served.

Five short films were features, all written, filmed, directed and acted by students.Mr. Covacha and his Leadership class spearheaded this project in conjunction with Parkway’s Anti-Bullying week. 

Anti-bullying week consisted of the students pledging to stand up against bullying by decorating a star and signing it these were hung to let everyone know that we are committed to stop bulling. During lunch the students wrote hurtful words with chalk outside and threw water balloons at them to try to wash it away. The next day students wrote positive words in the same location again with chalk but left them there to share the positive messages.

Meanwhile all week in the fourth period class the students worked on an anti-bully message on the classroom door for a contest. We even had a friendly game of Volleyball and Basketball against Alta Loma this week further showing that we can be sportsmanslike without bullying.

The grand finale of the week was the well put together film festival on Friday night. In attendance were both administrators, both counselors, staff, students, parents and school board trustee Liza Normandy. 

The five films featured were each done by a different committee of the Leadership class touching on physical, verbal and cyber bullying. These videos were shot entirely on iPhone video cameras. The message was clear Bullying is not ok. As Principal Redmond stated, "Don’t think of this as being the end of bullying week, but as the beginning of setting a new tone at Parkway.”

There were also performances by “After School Breaks,” our hip hop club, led by Mr. Ledesma, and an acoustic rendition of “Perfect” by Ms. Ofrecio, Mr. Mathews and students Ariana and Marco.

The Parkway students worked hard on this production that stemmed from a vision Mr. Covacha and I had last spring, but together they made it a reality and the award goes to PHMS 2012 leadership class for job well done!