STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 Totten Intermediate School (I.S. 34) in Tottenville was among many schools on Friday celebrating \u201cNo One Eats Alone Day,\u201d a national event in which students take the lead in promoting inclusivity. <\/p>\n
The day encourages students in grades 5-8 to make the cafeteria a more welcoming place by connecting with classmates they might not usually sit with. Teachers and staff support this effort to help reduce loneliness and bullying at lunchtime every day.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the day before Valentine\u2019s Day and the end of \u201cRespect for All\u201d week, students dressed in red and pink. <\/p>\n
The goal was to help students feel included and valued, as Principal John Boyle and guidance counselor Theresa Russo, with her team, got 6th graders up and dancing during lunch. <\/p>\n
Boyle said the school makes inclusivity a daily priority. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are always on the lookout for anyone sitting alone,\u201d he said. \u201cWe give the students the ability to sit wherever they want. So if they have a friend in another class, they can always jump over and sit with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russo said, \u201cThere are always deans, administrators, school aides, guidance counselors down here, kind of just observing to make sure, if we do notice that anyone might be a little bit by themselves at any point during the year, we then encourage them to join a social group, or we encourage and empower other students who are more outgoing, to kind of bring those kids in and make it a more inclusive lunch period for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo One Eats Alone Day\u201d began in 2012 and has since grown to include more than 2,500 schools nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. \u2014 Totten Intermediate School (I.S. 34) in Tottenville was among many schools on Friday celebrating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":{"0":"post-132755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-staten-island","12":"tag-staten-island-headlines","13":"tag-staten-island-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}