The childhood phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” is a lie.
“Words are powerful, and when people say mean things to you, they hurt you,” said David Miller, of the Urban Leadership Institute, while addressing about 150 Carroll County public school middle-schoolers Wednesday in New Windsor.
The deadly Columbine school shooting in 1999 is an example of how repeatedly saying mean words to people, or bullying, led the students to “snap,” said Miller, co-founder of the Baltimore organization that promotes positive youth development activities.
“They were verbally beat up everyday. They were called weird. People told them they dressed like aliens,” he said.
Avoiding gossip is a way to stay away from people who use mean words to hurt people, said Meshelle Foreman-Shields, a consultant with the institute. “Disregard the gossip,” she said. “Don?t internalize stereotypes.”
Students should tell adults about bullying incidents or if they know someone has plans to hurt others, said Miller.
“You are not a snitch if you tell an adult,” he said.
Students attending the school system?s eighth annual Middle School Multicultural Leadership Conference said they had learned valuable lessons.
“Even if you don?t think something you?ve said will have an affect on someone now, it could later in life,” said Zach Gorsuch, 12, a seventh-grader at Oklahoma Middle School.
“[Hurtful words] can have a ripple effect. They don?t only hurt the person, but they can also hurt their family,” said Amanda Lucarelli, 12, also a seventh-grader at Oklahoma.
The conference?s purpose was to help students “embrace each other?s similarities and differences,” including using positive language, said Patricia Levroney, minority achievement liaison for the Carroll school system.
The conference has had a positive effect on students, said Virginia Harrison of the Carroll County Human Relations Commission, which partnered with the school system and Carroll Citizens for Racial Equality to start the conference.
“A student who graduated from the school system told me that the conference had changed his thinking,” she said.
