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Local Youngsters Receive Achievement Awards

Post Independent
by John Gardner

SILT - Kathryn Senor fourth-grader Riley Bolitho and Scott Hayden, a sixth-grader at Riverside Middle School, were recognized for their outstanding participation in the Safe School Ambassadors program representing the Garfield County School district Re-2 earlier this week.

Through this program, "These two make a difference at their schools every day," said Re-2 school board Assistant Superintendent Dave Smucker.

Both students received certificates of achievement and medals of excellence for their participation in the program at the school board meeting on Tuesday.

"These boys did a great job representing the school district," Smucker said.

The School Safety Ambassadors program works in connection with the Children's Health Foundation in teaching students how to deal with certain peer situations such as bullying and teasing.

"I learned how to support the victim, how to reason and to put the target in the victim's shoes," Riley said.

"Basically we teach them to notice mistreatment of others on the playground," said Riley's mother, Deb Bolitho, who's also a fourth-grade teacher and instructor for the School Safety Ambassador program at the school.

About 30 students participate in the program at Kathryn Senor, according to Bolitho. During the 2004-05 school year, Kathryn Senor was the first elementary school in the state and one of the first in the nation, serving as a pilot for the program. Due to its popularity, it's now in its second year at the three other elementary schools throughout the district.

The program was designed for middle and high school classes by an organization called Community Matters, which wanted to develop a program to teach kids how to deal with bullying after the Columbine incident in 1997.

The students keep track of situations that they witness in the school and on the playground every day. At a weekly meeting with the instructors, they record the information. Then, at the monthly meeting, the students go over the information and are shown what a significant difference they have made.

Riley and Scott presented information to a group of people in Aspen during the last week in August regarding the program and what they have learned by being part of it.

"We talked about how it has helped our school and how it was really important for us to learn about this," Riley said.

"They said that they were nervous before the presentation," Smucker said. "But I just told them that the presentation was just going to be in a living room."

The living room, however, held almost 60 people that night.

"They were the stars of the show," Smucker said. They didn't even have anything planned, they just winged it and did a fantastic job, he added.

The really good thing about the program, Smucker said, is that when the kids learn this stuff at an early stage they take it with them into middle and high school.

And the kids are having fun as well.

"I enjoy it because it's fun, it makes people feel better and feel welcome at school," Riley said.