Students at Coloma Junior High School will celebrate their annual Unity Day this Wednesday, spreading the message that bullying is not OK and not welcome in their community.
Coloma Junior High social studies teacher Kim Kubatzke tells us as part of this third Unity Day, students will wear orange, watch student-made videos, and hear from guest speaker, Kelly Baptist. She’s a Southwest Michigan award-winning author and social-emotional educator.
Kubatzke says Unity Day seeks to help the students understand they can all do their part to make Coloma Junior High a good place to be. It celebrates a positive lesson.
“Stand up against bullying,” Kubatzke said. “They’ll call each other out. We don’t do that here. Coloma Comets don’t bully each other. Coloma Comets are nice to one another. And so we just keep working on it and keep working on it until we change the culture so that everyone who comes here feels like they belong.”
Kubatzke says unity is celebrated all week, but Wednesday is the official day with a student assembly. Since the program started, she says it’s made a difference.
“We had a new student this year and she’s like, ‘I can just tell that I’m in an anti-bullying school.’ She’s like, ‘I’ve never had so many friends and so many nice people.’ And so that spoke volumes.”
Kubatzke says the students get really into the program because it helps make the school better for everyone and ease the pressures of things like social media. Each letter in “unity” is the focus of each day, with U standing for Uplift, N meaning “No One Eats Alone,” I meaning “I Belong,” T standing for “Thank You,” and Y meaning “You Matter.”
The day is held as part of National Bullying Prevention Month.
