Colonial School District schools maintain No Place for Hate designations

All Colonial School District schools have once again received the official No Place for Hate®! Designation from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). 

To maintain designations, schools must take part in three school-wide, discussion-based activities each year that are designed to encourage everyone to reflect on biased behavior and learn new ways to challenge bias and bullying. Some examples of these school-wide activities over the past year included:

• A “Name Allies” exercise at Colonial Middle School where students were taught about the importance of correct name pronunciation and helped to create a school-wide database showing the phonetic spelling of their names.

• An African-American Read-In event at Whitemarsh Elementary School, where students read “Tiara’s Hat Parade” and then decorated hats to wear in a “Hat of Many Dreams” parade.

• An assembly at Colonial Elementary School led by high school students that prompted fourth- and fifth-graders to think about how they might address instances of bullying.

• Anti-Defamation League Peer Mentors led lessons for ninth-graders throughout the school year to reinforce ideas of inclusion and belonging. One such lesson occurred in December, where mentors took students from their homeroom class into the hall, and the remaining students were tasked with excluding this group from an activity when they returned. This led to discussion about how it feels to be excluded and how students can be more inclusive in real-world situations.

Colonial School District has a long affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League and its No Place for Hate®!  designation. Plymouth Whitemarsh High School was one of the first schools in the state to achieve the designation back in 2006. Colonial Middle School and Colonial Elementary School soon followed. Plymouth, Whitemarsh, Ridge Park and Conshohocken elementaries attained their No Place for Hate®! designations more recently.