Once-bullied teen creates app Sit With Us so students don't eat alone at school

Pre discussion questions

Is bullying a problem in your country?

How can we solve the bullying problem in schools?

Natalie spent most of her 7th and 8th grade school years eating lunch alone.

She was a new girl at an all-girls private school in Los Angeles. The other girls would not invite her to parties, said unkind things to her, and hit her and said they would kill her. They told her she was ugly and would never have any friends.

Natalie was scared of telling the school about the problem. Natalie had loved going to school, but now dreaded it. She stopped eating; she couldn't sleep. She became so worried that she had to spend some time in hospital. Her mom calls it "the darkest time of our lives."

Natalie changed schools for high school. She chose a school that seemed to work hard to make the students feel like they were part of a community. Now a 16-year-old junior, she's happy there. She has close friends and interesting activities after school. But she's never forgotten those two dark years when she was bullied and isolated by other students.

And she hates that others kids can experience what she did.

So Natalie came up with an idea that would allow students to find a safe way to find lunch friends without the fear of being rejected. She developed an app called "Sit With Us," In this app students can sign up as "ambassadors" and post that there are open seats at their lunch table. A student who doesn't have a place to sit can look at the app and find an ambassador's table and know they are invited to join it.

When signing up as an ambassador, the student takes a pledge that they'll be kind and welcoming to whoever comes to sit with them.

"Lunch might seem really small, but I think these are the small changes that make a school more inclusive," she said. She said it doesn't seem like you're asking that much, but once you get people in this way of thinking, it starts to change the way students think about each other. It makes a huge difference in how they act towards each other.

There is research that supports this. In January, professors from Rutgers, Princeton and Yale universities found that when students fight bullying, and not teachers or administrators, it has a better result.

Bullying is such a serious problem among children and teens that even the White House has made a way to do something to help. One statistic shows that 1 in 4 students say they've been bullied.  And that 64 percent of them don't report it.

These days Natalie is active in the school yearbook, theater and dance, community service and wants to study psychology and neuroscience in college. She introduced her app on Monday at an assembly in front of her entire school. She's been interviewed on national radio and local television. She's been invited to attend a "Girls Can Do" meeting in Washington in November to give a presentation about her experience.

"It's nice to see how resilient she is," said Natalie’s mother who said t was such a bad time in our lives but Natalie has made something bad into something very good.

When Natalie first started in her new high school, she made friends easily. And this was  the way she was before middle school, her mom said. Yet even as a new student, when she saw other students sitting alone, she asked them to join her.

Natalie said she feels she is "… extremely lucky I got the chance to get out and share my story with other people.”[1]

Try to guess the meaning of the words in bold and match them with their closest meaning from the choices in the right. Some of the answers are very close and have similar meaning. The meaning of these words is how they are used in the reading. Some of these words have different meanings in the dictionary depending on how they are used.

 The answers are below the table.

A=4, B=1, C=8, D=2, E=6, F=7, G=5, H=3

Some example sentences using the new words or phrases from the meaning of how they are used in the reading to help you understand better.

1.      Students in Korea dread the University Entrance Exam.

2.      If you live alone on an island you would feel isolated.

3.      We need to come up with a new party idea.

4.      When you fail, it feels bad to know you have been rejected.

5.      I pledged that I would give $10,000 to their charity.

6.      The different  political groups are having discussions that are inclusive of all people.

7.      The people who live in Alaska seem to be resilient to the winter cold.

8.      If you live in the middle of Australia, you are an extremely long way from the ocean.

Some questions using the new words/phrases. Try to use the words/phrases in your answer.

1.      What do you think of the idea that Natalie came up with?

2.      Did you dread anything about going to school? What would someone dread about going to school?

3.      How can we make students who feel isolated feel included?

4.      If you are rejected, how do you make yourself feel better?

5.      Do you think schools should pledge to fight against bullying? How can they fight the problem?

6.      Not all students are resilient like Natalie? How can we make shy students feel included?

7.      What is the most extreme problem in schools these days?