BLOOMFIELD, NJ — The alphabet — all 26 letters — met 26 homerooms to spell the “ABC’s of good character,” at Fairview Elementary School, on Wednesday, Jan. 20. The lettering, and the words prompted by them, were for another “Block the Bully Day” — a communal activity, the second of the school year, aimed at reminding children to cooperate with each other and respect differences in people.
Encouraging these goals was an activity that involved the homerooms of two different grade levels combining and working together. Children from each homeroom would find their partners because their respective teachers had provided them words that matched. These words included some that exemplified good character and some that did not, for example: fairness, compassion, sharing, teasing, tattling and rumors.
Once a child found their partner, they would discuss what the word they shared might say about a person’s character.
Each teacher also had a 16-inch letter which was pasted on a large rectangle of paper. The children decorated this paper with smaller letters. But first, they had to think of a word — a good-character word — with which that letter began. When they came up with the word, they wrote it on the letter. This they pasted on the paper rectangle.
At the appointed time, all classes headed for the gym. Twenty-six children, each displaying the decorated paper — now banners heralding good character — were called to the front of the gym. Banner and child were placed in alphabetical, colorful order, from one side of the gym to the other.
Fairview guidance counselor Sybilree Fitzgerald, who cut out all the letters and prepared instructions for the teachers and supervised the event, commended everyone for a job well done. With the experience fresh in their minds, the children headed back to homeroom.
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