Miss Montana fights bullying

Second- and third-graders at Lincoln-McKinley Primary School gathered in the school’s gym for a half hour Tuesday morning to hear Miss Montana 2015 talk to students about the issue of bullying.

The assembly was the first of three visits to Havre elementary schools for National Bullying Awareness Month.

Miss Montana Danielle Wineman emphasized each student “is the star of their own story” and, therefore, can determine what the students think about themselves. Continuing the metaphor, she said the students also play roles in the stories of those they interact with.

Wineman is also an actress and said she loves the way that theater can make people feel empathy for one another, something, she said, there is such a dearth of in today’s world. That shortage is most glaring when it comes to kids bullying one another.

“So the fact I have the ability to go into schools all across the state of Montana and build an anti-bullying campaign, an empathy campaign of putting ourselves in each others shoes and feeling for each other, is an opportunity to hopefully change the way they talk about each other.”

When talking to students, she said it is crucial that you be able to relate to them and explain things in terms they understand, which accounts for her frequent use of terms such as star and villain, as well as her references to Disney movies.  

“You play characters in other people’s lives,” she said to the students. “You can be the cool supporting sidekick character, or you can be a villain.”

What determines their role, Wineman said, is how students use their words or as she refers to them: their “superpowers.”

“Every time you use your words, you are making a conscious decision between using your words for the forces of good or the forces of evil,” she said.

At one point, she summoned two students: Linkin Cloninger and Jaidyn Cole from a small sea of eager volunteers to stand with her and hold two drawings.

Wineman said the drawings represented their character, brimming with confidence and hope. She then called two other children to the front: Lily Gregori and Ethan Storz.

Wineman then instructed Linkin and Jaidyn to hand over those drawings to their two co-stars. Once they did, she instructed them to crumple up the drawings, and hand them back to Linkin and Jaidyn.

“When villains and bullies use their superpowers for the forces of evil, they crinkle up our confidence. They wad it up — our self-esteem ­— and they make us feel small,” said Wineman.

At her urging, the crumpled papers were returned to Linkin and Jaidyn, and told them they had one minute to return the pieces of paper to the pristine state they were in when she handed them over, or they couldn’t go to recess.

They frantically began unballing the papers and ironing out the wrinkles with their hands, with the small crowd of classmates laughing as they did so and in unison counting down the seconds until that minute was up.

She said by unwrinkling the sheets of paper they were “rebuilding” their character and confidence. While the condition of those pieces of paper were improved, she said, they were not as pristine as they initially had been.

“This is what happens when we use the power of words for the forces of evil,” she said. “This is what happens when we don’t have something nice to say but we still say it.”

She said by refraining from negative comments, we help others maintain their own confidence and character.

Wineman, who said she has played the piano for 17 years, then concluded the show with two songs: one was a solo from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and the other “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis.