Upstanding Plan!

Print one Upstanding Plan Worksheet for each group.

Sometimes bullying can happen in public, online or in front of a crowd. The research is clear that when someone has the courage to stand up (in any non-confrontational way), it stops the incident in its tracks pretty much immediately!

Pink Shirt Day originated because of a couple of Upstanders distributing 50 Pink Shirts to students at school as a response to their mate being bullied for wearing a pink shirt. Tamariki learn more what being an Upstander means in this activity by creating with a short video about the positive actions we can all take to stop bullying.

Say: Are you up for a challenge? The topic of this challenge is sticky and needs to be carefully considered, but I think you’ve got the creativity and compassion to do a great job!

This activity concentrates on creating a ‘safety video’ – just like Air New Zealand!

Air New Zealand have become a bit ‘world famous’ for their inflight safety videos – here’s some examples of how they do things –

• Rap Version
• Hobbit Version
• Exercise Version

Ask:

What’s the purpose of these videos?

- They tell us what to do if something happens.

It’s interesting that Air Air New Zealand use so many different ways to promote this same information – the plan. But all of the videos leave us with the key messages and basically place you in charge of taking the right actions if the need arises.

This tells us too that important and SERIOUS messages don’t always have to be boring or leave us feeling worried!

Say: The team at Pink Shirt Day are setting a challenge. They want to see how we as a team can create our own safety video. Our safety video is about how to be an ‘Upstander’ when bullying occurs.

Discuss:

• What is an Upstander? (see the information supplied below!)
• Why do you think Upstanding is an important role?
• Would we be an Upstander for anyone, or only for a friend?
• How would being an Upstander make us feel? Before, during and after bullying has occurred?

What are the key links that the team at Pink Shirt Day want us to recognise between the Air New Zealand safety videos and an Upstander Video?

The team at Pink Shirt Day think you could show your video at assembly and empower the whole school. The Pink Shirt Day team would also LOVE to see your video and may even share it on social media to inform the rest of New Zealand how things are done at your school! Use our hashtags #pinkshirtdaynz and #upstandernz so we can see and comment on them.

Vital things to feature in your videos!

The Upstand Project is a great NZ website to learn more about being an Upstander.

These are our Five Actions on the best approach to being an Upstander (did we mention this is the most important info?!):

1. Awhi/support the person experiencing bullying – awhi the person being bullied, even if you just stand beside them and let them know you’ve got their back and they’re not alone.
2. Distract – interrupt the bullying in some way. Ask if they would like to play a game. Anything non-threatening will do the trick.
3. Call it! Let the person doing the bullying know that what they’re doing isn’t okay. It can be hard in the moment but it can make a huge difference. If you feel safe to, use your words to show kindness and aroha to those involved.
4. Leave and act – if you don’t feel safe to step in while the bullying is happening, move away from the situation and have a wee think before actually doing something. E.g. letting the person who was bullied know that you saw it and perhaps ask what might help, or call it quietly with the bully.
5. Get some tips or help – you don’t have to deal with bullying alone. Seek out some help from others – friends, whānau, parents, teachers, or a helpline, and then act on their advice or have them awhi you to act. There are people who care and want to help!

It is action 4 and 5 here that David Shepherd and Travis Price of Berwick, Nova Scotia chose – they were the originators of Pink Shirt Day! In 2007 they bought and distributed 50 pink shirts after another male student was bullied for wearing a pink shirt during the first day of school. The next day, everyone turned up in pink – some from head to toe – to stand together against bullying. How cool is that example of Upstanding?

These Five Upstander Actions all need to fully feature in your video – they are the most important pieces of information to convey.

Some extra tips:

Advise tamariki they can work in groups of 4 or 5, but no more than 6. Ask them to form their groups before you give them the final tips and advice.

When groups are formed say:.

• It’s important that you use your strengths to get the video made – some of you may be better at script writing, while others might make great be actors or narrators, and you might want to take turns directing. Because your ‘crew’ is small you will probably need to play more than one role.
• An important consideration is that just like the Air New Zealand videos, there are many different styles of videos. You can choose from many options including – animation, talk to camera, interviews, music, humorous, picture videos, puppets – just let your imagination lead the way!

It may help to include a few little mantras to get the videos made:

1. Stay on topic.
2. Research and plan first.
3. Listen to each other.
4. Work as a team.

The research and storyboard

Set tamariki up to start their research and begin their storyboards. The storyboard depicts each camera ‘shot’. It’s important this is marked out so tamariki keep organised, on task and remember props and costumes they may need to make or bring along.

We recommend having ‘creative meetings’ daily with all tamariki or each group to ‘report’ how they’re getting on – let tamariki know this and give them the ‘deadline’ for their video being completed (perhaps a week and they work on it each day).

Also say that if there’s any aspect they need to ‘move forward’ on, you can make that decision for them, or edit material as you see necessary.

Filming

Tamariki can use whatever recording equipment is available – iPads and Chromebooks will work fine, and generally tamariki are very used to the video editing apps available. Our motto – make the tech as simple as possible for everyone!

The big premiere!

If tamariki agree, we suggest you celebrate the videos. You could host a special red carpet premiere event where whānau and the principal come in to enjoy the videos (with popcorn perhaps!). Other options could include sharing the videos with the rest of the school over the next few assemblies, adding them to your school website, sharing with whānau using Seesaw or however you communicate digitally. Oh, and did we mention sending them to us too?! We would especially love to see their work - hashtags #pinkshirtdaynz and #upstandernz.

Tamariki may want to know if their videos have had any impact. They could create a school survey for tamariki to fill-in, and perhaps teachers to see what they’ve noticed.