Have you ever felt excluded or left out? Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Look no further!! The Bethel Park community is introducing a new program called #AllbelonginBP!! Dr. Meunch, along with students and faculty involved with STAND, started this campaign. 

“The way this idea originated was basically to find a way for the STAND sponsors and students involved in STAND, as well as your everyday staff to put out there the good news happening in schools where we are celebrating our uniqueness and community building for all of our students and staff,” Dr. Meunch explained. “We wanted to use this Twitter hashtag to cultivate all the many things done to help build that community.”

The point of this new campaign is to build excitement and enthusiasm for including others. This new idea also brings attention to trying something new in the classroom. All in all, the main focus of #AllbelonginBP is to help others understand the various types of people that we have in the community.

At the moment, there is a large group of passionate teachers at the elementary school running themed months featuring inclusive literature and projects that educate them about diversity. Students in grades 5-12 are presented with student group activities where they highlight diversity and how it makes our world such a great place.

Muench adds: “One of my favorite recent ones was a student at Franklin who was explaining to his class about the Indian holiday Holi.  The student prepared a PowerPoint and spoke to the class about what makes that holiday important.  So it is really a chance to highlight these great assets we have in our immediate community and in the larger context of the global community who our students will only increasingly come in contact with.” 

Bethel Park started this campaign to encourage students to promote kindness and diversity. Hopefully, other schools will recognize the phenomenal impact this has made on the district. The Twitter feed @AllbelonginBP is where most of this news is being sent out. It is very important that we continue to show the uniqueness that makes our district a wonderful place. Everyone wants to be loved, respected and cared about, but we cannot make that happen unless we ALL make an effort. That is something we can all connect on.

“How we demonstrate those things may look different, but the basic human connection built on these fundamental needs we have are the same….” Meunch adds.

#AllbelonginBP T-shirts are being sold through the NAMS STAND organization to help SHIM and the Best Buddies Club. They are on sale through March 24 and cost $10. The information for this was advertised on Twitter https://twitter.com/AllbelonginBP/status/1631378613453856782?s=20