Notice anything about the message on the blue bookmark the principal and staff have been handing out? What do the first letters spell out?
This community safety tool was inspired one day when the principal, Staci Ross-Morrison, and the PTSA president, who happened to be Kristen Caven, were doing a round of school grounds. “I wish there were some way to get kids to think differently about the word “snitch,” said the principal. By the time they returned to the office, they had come up with a slogan that could put the word in a different light.
The bookmark provides, on one side, some concepts Caven discovered as an anti-bullying educator, like the difference between “tattling” and “telling” – and the importance of being an upstander. On the back side, it provides a list of resources that students, parents, and community members can use to anonymously report incidents, including important phone numbers and a link to the community safety boosters program.
The PTSA provided printing for 1000 of these bookmarks, which are shared and used to report safety issues such as drug use and criminal activity. The bookmark concept is designed to fight the “don’t snitch” culture that creates peer pressure for children to keep silent and let crime happen.
Oakland Tech’s neighbors are invited to help us protect the safety of our students. Additional bookmarks may be printed using the linked file below.
SNITCH bookmarks
via Re-Defining Safety | PTSA.
The Zorgos Reader 