Timberlake's choice? Kindness

By DEVIN HEILMAN

Staff Writer

SPIRIT LAKE — This week at Timberlake High School, sophomore and Club P.E.A.C.E. member Kaylin Zagelow witnessed students sharing kind moments more than usual.

“I’ve noticed a couple things in the hall," she said Thursday. "People are being a lot nicer, commenting on things like, 'I like your outfit today.'"

Kindness, empathy and school unity were the big focus for students this week, which they dedicated as "Black Out Bullying" week.

"It’s a positive awareness week," said freshman class president Hanne Larsen.

Students of all grades, clubs and abilities participated in activities throughout the week promoting an anti-bullying attitude. The Tiger TV station aired informative segments, the school welcomed a guest speaker, students played games at lunchtime and they prepared posters for Timberlake's first all-school lip dub. The lip dub, conducted Thursday, was organized by Club P.E.A.C.E (People Everywhere Are Created Equal) and its adviser, English teacher Jennifer Whaley.

"We have been working hard to really stress how we are trying to be a 'bully-free' school and that we are a family and inclusive of everyone," Whaley said.

"It's been great," Hanne said. "We've had stories told to us about different schools where you can see bullying, and that just makes us realize that Timberlake is a really great school because you don't see bullying as much, actually not at all. I've never seen true bullying here."

Although apparent bullying isn't prevalent at Timberlake, Hanne said the topic is important for students to understand because it can happen in other ways, such as on social media.

"You’ve heard of bullying like from the first grade. ‘Don’t bully,’ but the word kind of gets numb,” she said. “We just wanted to make it a little more clear about how well Timberlake fits together.”

ASB president and senior Mark Schell said different types of bullying can be overlooked, making it that much more important to discuss the topic among the student body.

"Really, we’re focusing on anti-bullying and school unity," he said. "With this lip dub, everyone’s getting involved; everyone’s working together for it. You see a lot of school unity through that and I think that’s what it really comes down to."

On Wednesday, the school assembled in the gym to hear Greg Sommers of Idaho Drug Free Youth share his experiences with bullying.

"Timberlake is really like a family and everyone connects really well," Hanne said. "It’s like a huge web of everyone just connecting and it’s really great. (Sommers)’s like, 'Timberlake is probably one of the best schools I’ve seen due to communication, the staff and everyone.’ It was pretty great."

Senior and Tiger TV student Drew Petersen said "Black Out Bullying" week has been a positive thing and he really enjoyed Sommers speaking to the students.

"He sort of set the tone for the whole week," Drew said. "He talked a lot about how even if we don’t have that big of a bullying problem, we have a sort of empathy problem and he talked a lot about what kids can do to improve their empathy."

The lip dub features the colorful array of Timberlake's students, faculty and staff lip-synching to War's "Why Can't We Be Friends?" and Aretha Franklin's "Respect" as the camera crew rolls through the school. It took about two months to prepare and choreograph. The video should be posted to YouTube and the school's website, http://tlhsweb.lakeland272.org, by early next week.