Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk smiles as the flash mob dance routine he was part of at Kingsway Garden Mall on Thursday finishes up. The dance also featured 130 students from Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools, and was done to raise awareness about National Bullying Awareness Week. (GLENN COOK, St. Albert Leader)
UPDATE: The video of the GSACRD flash mob has made its way across the Internet, including one of celebrity gossip columnist Perez Hilton’s websites. Click here to check it out.
==========
It was snowy and cold outside, but some local students and dignitaries heated things up in Edmonton’s Kingsway Garden Mall during Thursday’s lunch hour.
Approximately 130 students from five Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional District schools were joined by GSACRD superintendent David Keohane, trustee Jacquie Hansen, Alberta Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk and CTV meteorologist Josh Classen, entertaining the lunchtime crowd at the mall’s food court with a spontaneous dance number that also served to get the word out about National Bullying Awareness Week.
“I was about 10 seconds behind on every move, and about two beats off,” Lukaszuk said with a laugh after the flash mob wrapped up. “But it’s quite a bit of exercise for a lunch hour, right after I had a taco.”
Even though his dance steps weren’t quite up to par, Lukaszuk said it was still important for him to come out and lend his support to the anti-bullying message.
“You have to lead by example,” he said. “If I’m saying that eradicating bullying is important to me, then I have to show that it truly is.”
The awareness week coincides with the launch of a new anti-bullying campaign from the provincial government, which Lukaszuk said would be different from others that have run in the past by being much more visible.
“It will be much more vocal. It’s an in-your-face campaign,” he said. “We’re waging a war on bullying and we’re making Albertans aware that bullying happens everywhere. It leads to suicides; it’s a very serious matter. It’s not only something that happens in schools.”
There will also be anti-bullying measures in the new Education Act, which is expected to be tabled in the Alberta Legislature in the spring.
Students participating in the flash mobs were from Morinville Community High School, St. Albert Catholic High School, École Secondaire Sainte Marguerite d’Youville, Richard S. Fowler Junior High and Vincent J. Maloney Junior High.
Hansen, who also serves as the president of the Alberta School Boards Association, said that teachers and education leaders have a big role to play in making sure anti-bullying messages get through.
“At the end of the day, we have to help our kids understand from inside that hurting somebody else is [devastating],” she said. “They have to learn the empathy — what’s it like to walk in another person’s shoes?”
That extends to cyberbullying, she added, which can be forgotten since it’s harder to detect and doesn’t happen on school grounds.
“If we don’t actually teach our kids not to bully, it will continue to be something that’s unseen,” Hansen said. “But if we can actually give them a conscience to say, ‘We’re not going to do this,’ then we’ll see a decline in [bullying]. It really is about empowering the kids to stand up to bullying.”
— GLENN COOK, St. Albert Leader
Loading ...
