Our Civil Rights team meets one time a week and it is made up of students from all over the school. We have 6 Communities called Oak, Pine, Elm, Cedar, Spruce and Maple. Because we are scattered around, we used Hydra which is now called Sub Etha Edit. This is a program that allowed us to all be in a word processing document at the same time. It is neat because we used different colored text. It is not exactly like chat because when one kid started the document the others had to request to be let in on it.It is like knocking on the door and the one who starts the page says, "yes" and you get in on the writing with your own color text.

We first brainstormed ideas for issues that go on around our school. Then we decided which students would like to make a movie on what issue. Then, we decided that the only way to communicate easily would be to get into a program that let us work together virtually because physically we had study halls back in our individual communities. This program was perfect!!!

Our topics included bullying, excluding others from activities, rumors and harassing in different ways. In SubEthaNet, we brainstormed this and then wrote the script for the iMovie. We did get together physically to work out details like who would help write the story board, who would act and who would film. At our weekly meetings we created the iMovie together on one laptop. We set up interviews with the school resource officer, the principal, a teacher, the vice principal and students all over the school. Ms. Smith and Ms. Richter are the Civil Rights leaders and they helped us make arrangements for this, and they helped us with tech problems making the movies.

We hope you enjoy the movies and we want you to know that even though it looks like these things are a big problem, we address such issues and therefore they don't take over our school. We help educate other kids by going around with Ms. Smith and show our iMovies. We also created Apple Presentations to go along with the iMovies. Every classroom gets visited and we open it up for discussion to problem solve what more can be done to prevent these negative behaviors by some students. We let them know what steps can be taken to avoid being harassed or bullied around. So far, our school is a safe and peaceful place and we want to keep it that way.

All the scenes had us as actors and the situations were made up but could be real in any school. Thank you.

Civil Rights Team at Skowhegan Middle School