Published by The Mexia News
May 29, 2014
Article by Roxanne McKnight
Lizzie Sider, center right, a teen country singer, performs for Mexia’s A.B. McBay Elementary and R.Q. Sims Intermediate schools’ students in a special anti-bullying program, held Friday, May 16, in the high school auditorium. Shown here, she invites students to join her on stage to play maracas, sticks and other hand musical instruments.
Students at Mexia’s A.B. McBay Elementary and R.Q. Sims Intermediate schools met together Friday to be part of a bully-prevention assembly and were moved by the message of Lizzie Sider, a 15-year-old budding country singer.
Sider made Mexia one of her stops at 70 school districts across Texas to encourage young people to resist the urge to bully others and to intervene if they see bullying happening to someone else.
The theme of the morning was “Nobody has the power to ruin your day,” which she said was something her father told her when Sider was struggling emotionally with being bullied.
Her hit song “Butterfly,” which the kids had practiced and sang along with her, was the thread that tied together the program. Many classes had made their own colorful butterflies in art class and raised them above their heads in the nearly full high school auditorium where the concert was held.
Some of the lyrics to “Butterfly” are, “They’d always put me down, yeah, I let ’em keep me down, but look at me now, look at me now, finally comin’ out and I’m wantin’ to fly.”
“When I was you age,” Sider told the students, “when I was in elementary school, I was teased by other kids in my grade. They would exclude me from games at recess; they wouldn’t let me sit with them at lunch. They’d call me names; they’d laugh at me.”
To read more, pick up a copy of Thursday’s The Mexia News, or subscribe to our e-edition. http://www.mexiadailynews.com/articles/2014/05/28/mexia-kids-vow-put-stop-bullying