EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE: A bully’s story

January 11, 2016

Daniel Seamans,

BOLIVIA, NC (WWAY) — A Brunswick County teacher is focusing on physical health. Sometimes his class is in a gym, sometimes a room and sometimes out on the street.

****For update on TWO free color runs, see links at end of article****

Nick Westfall knows how to make a memory, and when it comes to teaching kids that being a bully just isn’t acceptable, that memory becomes Extraordinary.

“Sometimes I hate me because of other people hating me,” says the girl in the anti-bully video “Change.”

The words are tough. The song is tender.

“I heard the song when I was overseas, and I absolutely loved the band and that song,” Westfall said. “I was like, I have to get the rights to it (so it could legally be used in the video). So we did.”

It’s a very real problem in today’s world as kids grow into their own. It’s the focus of this student project.

“I wanted to do a story about a bully becoming a bully,” Westfall said. “So we had the kids working in all aspects of the film.”

Westfall is a teacher in Brunswick County. He’s a filmmaker, too. So with the help of 30 students at Virginia Williamson Elementary School, he, or rather they, created “Change” in the spring of 2015.

“I think these are the kinds of experiences they take with them the rest of their lives. I know certainly I will,” Westfall said.

This is the second film he has put together with his students. It’s a message within a lesson, where the students can become the teachers.

“Even literarywise, we wanted to get all the expository information out of there, so when the main character is picking up the sign, we’re not really telling the audience why she is doing it and why the other ones are doing it as well,” Westfall said. “So they get to use some inferencing skills as well.”

To watch the entire video, click here.

Westfall says he is giving away 500 dollars to the school that brings the most students and teachers to each of two health runs he is organizing for February and March. He says the school can spend the money however they please.

For details on the Leland color run in February, click here

For details on the Holden beach color run in March, click here

“We can fight childhood obesity for FREE,” Westfall said, “so the race is FREE!”