A few weeks ago, the school experienced its first ever Everybody Loves Everybody week, in an effort to promote kindness among the student body. However, did we need it in the first place? Has it since made a change in the school’s environment?
Everybody Loves Everybody week, known as E.L.E. week, started March 3 and ended on March 7. Each day had a different theme, starting with “Give a Compliment,” followed by “Take Care of Yourself,” “Random Acts of Kindness,” “Meet Someone New,” and lastly an all school picnic on the South Lawn.
“We like to focus on athletics and arts and academics,” said Assistant Principal Liz Chacon. “But there’s also the importance of that implicit curriculum of working to achieve our own goals, working to be great students at Redwood, and treating each other well.”
According to Chacon, the week was designed to encourage students to be more empathetic with their classmates than they would be on a regular day.
The idea came from Site Council, a group of Redwood administrators, staff members, PTSA members, and students who meet monthly to discuss ways to improve the school. They recently requisitioned the help of the Leadership class to make the week happen.
“We originally had the speaker and we just thought that E.L.E. week would be the perfect thing to surround it,” said Site Council and Leadership member, Jessica Flaum. “We had heard about it from other schools and they said that it was really successful and people liked it.”
In the March Bark survey, 19.4 percent of students reported being a victim of bullying by other Redwood students through the internet or text, 23.8 percent reported being a victim of verbal bullying on campus, 9.4 percent reported being a victim of physical bullying on campus, and 28.1 percent believe bullying to be an issue at school.
“I think we needed E.L.E. week as a reminder that we need to be nice to everyone, because even though this school doesn’t necessarily have a lot of bullying, it’s important to remind people of the value in being kind,” said sophomore Audrey Genest, member of both Site Council and the Public Relations committee of Leadership.
Although teachers and students alike think that a week of activities will not have significant impact on the social aspect of school, they hope that it will make students think about how their actions affect others.
“The hope is that students would then start taking the initiative to do it on their own,” Chacon said. “So they don’t necessarily need to wait for that week of activity, it’s all about developing that state of mind that they would really start to be conscious of students around them and really be aware of being kind and paying something forward.”
Although E.L.E. week may not leave a lasting impression on everyone, it has impacted some students.
“The people that have always lived by the E.L.E. week morals are still doing it and people who don’t think it’s valuable just ignore it and always have. I don’t know if it had a lasting effect on everyone but I know it did with some people,” said sophomore Julia McNally.
