As a Great Valley High School student walked across the General Wayne Elementary auditorium stage last Tuesday, another student stuck out her leg, tripping her.

Hundreds of GWES students in the audience watched the girl tumble to the ground, after which four GVHS cheerleaders held up signs on stage, asking "What Would You Do?"

The skit and others like it were performed by the Great Valley Drama Guild during General Wayne's "Citizenship/Character/Olweus Bullying Assembly." The scenarios were designed to help the young students respond properly to bullying.

Among the options were: report the incident to a teacher, tell the bully directly to stop, or try to avoid the bully in the future. Students raised their hands to indicate which they would choose, and the cheerleaders usually said that all the options were good.

What is a bully?

Students learned that, according to the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, bullying:

• is purposefully hurtful
• reflects an imbalance of power
• is repeated over time 

A multimedia assembly

The assembly included multiple skits, a puppet show and school employees who dressed up for the occasion.

Principal Bonnie Citron roamed the aisles in a sumo-style suit and road cloak. As she did so, students read a story featuring colors as characters to illustrate how bullying and aggression—red—can grow if they go unchallenged by gentler colors like blue. 

The assembly closed with a video of the school's new official song, "We're All General Wayne." The song was written by music teacher Will Shafer and fifth-grade teacher Chris Salerno, and sung by Shafer.

The video, which showed scenes of the GWES students in the school and on busses, was created by Salerno and librarian Marilyn Rothberg.