Puppets give Plains Elementary School students tips

The Sanders County Coalition For Families is trying to stop bullying by teaching kids at a young age that it's not good.

SCCFF staff members used puppets to get their message across to the students of Wildhorse Plains School Wednesday. Bullying is a nationwide problem and it's not going away, said Abby Harnett of SCCFF. “It's epidemic and it's everywhere,” said Harnett, who, along with Michelle Fitchett-Pirker, visited 75 students from kindergarten to second grade for just over two hours.

The kids were broken into three groups for the 30-minute lesson provided by Fitchett-Pirker and her puppet assistants - four boys from Spring Creek's Camas Ranch. The overall theme for the lesson was “Hands Are Not For Hitting” and “Friend Power,” said Fitchett-Pirker. The puppeteers and one of the teachers read from a script to provide the scenario in the puppet show. One of SCCFF's programs has been dealing with the bully problem in Sanders County, but this is the first time they've used the puppets.

The play, “The Trouble With Patty,” centered around Patty, a new girl in school who was being mean to other kids. However, after one boy found her crying and she opened up to why she was being a bully, things changed for Patty.

The other children used different tactics to deal with Patty. The play was stopped a couple of times so that Fitchett-Pirker could make a specific point about bullies and how to deal with them. Once the show was over, she asked the children in each group if they had ever had bully problems. She showed them the slogan “TELLIT” - Think before you react, Express yourself, Leave the situation, Laugh it off, Ignore the bully, and Tell a trusted adult. At the end of the talk, the children raised their right hand and took a pledge to become part of the “Hands Are Not For Hitting Team.”

“If you laugh about it, that takes away the bully's power,” said Fitchett-Pirker. She said this is the first school stop, but she's received a good response from students and teachers alike. She plans to talk with students at Dixon and Thompson Falls and would like to visit all the schools before the school year is over.

She'd like to talk with students from kindergarten to seniors, but hopes to at least get in the grade school children. They talked with Plains junior high and high school students in February.

Harnett said it's important to get the message to the younger children in hopes of stopping it before they get older. “Prevention is the key,” said Harnett. Even though bullying at an older aged can lead to more be more serious fights, which can also lead to more serious injuries, at a younger age it can have a physiological impact on a child. “It's still damaging to their self-esteem and their school performance,” said Fitchett-Pirker.

Fitchett-Pirker also noted that bullying doesn't always mean merely hitting, but can also be damaging another person's belonging, name-calling or intimidation. It's disrupting to the class and teacher at any level, she added. And if a student is the recipient of a bully, the student's performance may go down or the student may eventually drop out of school, she said, adding that the schools have been very supportive in their programs.

Fitchett-Pirker and Harnett have been also working with a group of fifth- and sixth-graders in Thompson Falls one day a week about bullying problems. Called “Code Girl,” they've met with an average of 11 to 15 girls a week. Fitchett-Pirker said they wanted to work with girls of those grades to maybe head off any problems before they enter junior high school. And Harnett believes it's working because she's received word that the number of students wanting to see the school counselor has dropped.