The fourth grade class at Greensview Elementary conducted a project called "Friend or Foe" to address the issue of relational aggression or bullying. They researched the topic, surveyed students and teachers, and found it to be a problem. Their solution is to form a P.R.I.D.E. team of students who will educate others about friendship, work with the counselor, and help mediate peer problems. They designed materials to support the program and surveys to measure its effectiveness over time. The students improved their research, public speaking, and problem solving skills through this project.

1. 2014 Youth for Justice
Meg: Welcome to the Greensview Elementary School Youth for Justice presentation.
I’m Meg, and this is Hera, Julia, Millie, Max, and Malachi. We are in the fourth grade
Integrated Studies class, and our project is called Friend or Foe. The focus of our project
is to raise awareness of a type of bullying called relational aggression, to help students in
our school to be better friends, and to decrease relational aggression.
Millie: At the beginning of our project we researched bullying and relational aggression
by exploring websites like the National Bullying Prevention Center and Stop
Bullying.gov. We also created three different surveys for our school to find out how
relational aggression affects Greensview students. We surveyed our kindergarten
through third grade students about friends and bullies, our fourth and fifth grade
students about friendship and betrayal, and our teachers about the seriousness of
relational aggression in our school. We also asked our school principal about
consequences for relational aggression and our counselor about the types of problems
she often sees in her office.
Julia: We learned that relational aggression is a type of bullying that uses relationships
to hurt people. Examples include gossiping, teasing, excluding other students, and
pretending to be someone’s friend for a hurtful reason. We learned from our survey
responses that students and teachers in our school see relational aggression as an
important problem that needs to be solved. We were surprised to find that even some of
our youngest students are afraid to come to school from time to time because of other
students.
Max: To accomplish the goals of our project, we designed a plan that would start during
the 2014-2015 school year. The goal of our plan is to change beliefs and attitudes so that
students in our school understand how harmful relational aggression can be and how
they can help stop it. Our plan involves forming a team of third, fourth, and fifth grade
students called the P.R.I.D.E. Team.
Malachi: In our school, P.R.I.D.E. stands for positive behavior, respect, integrity, duty,
and empathy, so we thought it would be a good name for our team. Students who are
interested in being on the P.R.I.D.E. team will complete an application that we designed.
Then teachers will vote on the students they believe would be the best members for the
team.

2. Hera: P.R.I.D.E. team members will have three jobs. The first job is to educate other
students about relational aggression and how to be a good friend. To accomplish this,
P.R.I.D.E. team members will create informational handouts for students and teachers.
They also will present information during our monthly school assemblies, which are
called Town Meetings.
Meg: The second job of the team is to work with the school counselor to design and
present friendship lessons to students in kindergarten through second grade. And the
third job is to go through student mediator training with the school counselor to be able
to help other students who are having problems with peers. For our Youth for Justice
project, we designed a sample handout about relational aggression, a sample Town
Meeting Agenda, and sample friendship lessons and crafts for grades K-2.
Millie: We believe our plan will have a positive impact at Greensview Elementary, and
to help make sure it is continued in the future, we will design relational aggression
surveys that students and teachers will answer at the start and the end of each school
year. We will use the survey answers to decide if the P.R.I.D.E. team’s work has been
successful and to decide if changes need to be made.
Julia: Before starting our Youth for Justice project, we worked on an environmental
science unit that involved problem solving. We were able to use the skills we learned in
that unit during our Youth for Justice project. For example, we were able to write
research questions that guided us when we were looking for information on relational
aggression. We learned how to rank the solutions we had brainstormed using an
attribute chart.
Malachi: During our project, we increased our knowledge about bullying and relational
aggression, and we improved our persuasive writing and speaking skills. We also found
that students at different ages experience bullying in different ways.
Hera: Now that we are done with our Youth for Justice project, we are really excited
that we have designed a solution to the problem of relational aggression that will help
students at Greensview Elementary feel happier and safer, even years after we have
moved on to middle school and high school.
Max: Thank you for looking at the materials we have created.