Fort Lee High School Collage a Reminder of Respect

’s peer mediators, the Peer Outreach Service Team (POST), recently went into every English class to conduct workshops on respect.

“They had discussions with the students; they had the students make a body outline where they filled out all the things that promote respect and all of the barriers to respect—all of the obstacles that we have to respect,” said school psychologist and POST sponsor Reina Sandouk.

The POST kids also had their peers write journal entries and write on or decorate individual squares of paper to convey their idea of respect.

The result is a giant collage now on display in the high school’s hallway that spells out “Fort Lee High School Cares.”

C.A.R.E.S. stands for “Creating an Atmosphere of Respect and Environment for Success,” Sandouk explained, and the collage project was part of the “Week of Respect” in October, during which students engaged in activities celebrating the diversity of the student body, promoting the unity of the school community and raising awareness of the potentially devastating effects of put downs, with ethnic, homophobic, racist and sexist remarks a major focus.

“So now, with each little voice, when we put them all together, they make one big, meaningful message,” Sandouk said this week of the collage.

POST is a group of nearly 30 students who go through a two-week training in the summer to learn active listening and peer mediation and how to be “empathic, emotionally aware members of the school community,” according to Sandouk, who has called them in the past, “just the most friendly and emotionally aware kids I’ve ever met.”