Give Angela Troppa a sheet of paper and she’ll change the culture of a classroom. It’s this power of creativity that this year earned Troppa, a counselor at Fairview Elementary School, the Lions Clubs International’s first Lions Quest Educator Award.
Lions Quest is an educational program developed by Lions Clubs International that teaches skills for resisting drugs, peer pressure and violence. It also aims to build self-esteem, peer relations, decision-making and problem-solving skills.
LCI says that Troppa, addressing an uptick in bullying in one of the upper grades, was able to enhance the Lions Quest curriculum by using her creativity.
The organization cites one of her presentations in which she tried to instill the message that the damage of bullying can’t be undone. With a piece of paper representing a student’s self esteem, she crumpled it a little bit more with each example of bullying students threw at her. Uncrumpling the paper, students realized it would never return to its
original state.
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2010.
