 I want you to raise your hand if you've ever posted something to like social media, any kind of social media, like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, any of that, okay. Now keep your hands up if you have ever taken a photo down because it didn't get enough likes or like you didn't get the amount of people that you wanted to comment on a picture, okay. Can you tell me why? Why would you do that? Just because it's embarrassing if you get like three likes instead of like, like I see no people are going to be like 80 likes and I get five. So it may have been like a split decision to put something up, like an instant decision, something that you may not have thought all the way through before you posted it to your social media account. But at some point in time you had to thought in the back of your head, I might have gotten judged by this, judgments in our life every day. In my class today we did a pause lesson, pause stands for positive attitudes will succeed. It is our anti-bullying support system groups that we have here at Ellis Middle School. We meet twice a month and we have the same groups throughout their entire sixth, seventh and eighth grade year. Do you think that we get judged by the people that are at Ellis? Naming some examples, not names, but types of people that might judge us at Ellis. Athletes that are like really good might judge like kids that like downplay his points. Some kids get like invited to sometimes like all the parties and then some kids just barely get to go to a single party and then like those kids when they go to that party they feel like left out because no one will like hang out with them. We've all been trained to do the pause program. We get the material and curriculum for pause through our guidance office and they make sure that we all have our materials whether it's worksheets or videos or sometimes it's manipulatives too like we use note cards and blocks and rocks and things like that just depends on what we're talking about. What sort of prejudice or judgment have you felt in your life? Like here at school or at home? Is there anything that you want to share about judgment in your life? Justin? I kind of think most of the times when boys like pick on people it's because of like either they're trying to make themselves feel better about like at home like they're going through tough times like parents probably getting divorced or just something that they just don't really want to talk about and they try and like find another way to make them feel better but then it's not the right way. Right. Right. It's real good. Encouraging engagement in the pause group is vital to making pause work. You can't stand and teach to the kids. You have to be with them, not above them. I have to say like guys I'm with you guys more than I am with my own kid most of the time awake at least and I see a lot of judgment but they're getting judged in school every day they have to have a safe haven they have to have somewhere that they can feel comfortable so you have to keep that in mind you have to make sure that they understand that actively being involved in the discussion makes the program work. Do we have cliques here? Do y'all think? Yes. You think we have cliques? Girls, I haven't heard much from you y'all tell me what you think. Cliques are things like like the sporty people hang together and the people that like art hang together and it's groups of friends that maybe you feel like you can't join because you're not a part of their group or you're scared of them or you think they might judge you just like our lessons about the whole judgment thing so do you think that there are cliques in our school? Yes. Do you think that we would be better at school and we would feel more comfortable if we could eliminate these yeah of course. You can't always depend on them to participate. They may have a bad day. They may not have had a fantastic morning so you have to really relate to them. You have to get inside their heads. You have to know what they like. What part of your day is that you look forward to at school? Lunch. Lunch at the gym if we have a gym. Lunch at the gym. During my lunch you sit with a lot of your friends most of the time and in the gym you have a lot of your friends there so it's my point towards the sense of the trends. I have a student in Paws that is new to our school. She got thrown into my Paws group with this group of kids that have been together since they were in kindergarten. She didn't know anyone. She came into Paws. She wasn't sharing. She wasn't participating. Paws led other students to kind of adopt her into their group. She sits with them at lunch now. They make sure that she has someone to walk with in the hallway. I know our education is important but socially and middle school if kids don't feel accepted and they don't feel like they fit in somewhere they're not going to succeed period no matter how smart they are. So this child has grown in a very short time from being somebody that just felt like an outcast and somebody that was not important to being part of a group. And that's super important in her life.