Greetings and Salivations

A 6 second joke about another girl’s appearance. Two teens making out in the hallway between classes. One male student’s sexuality under fire by 400 others. Cat-calls and wolf whistles. This is the school community. Where is the respect?

This is the program for communities that refuse to throw up their hands at pop culture-influenced teen behavior. Schools host “Greetings” to reestablish an environment where kids feel valued, rather than degraded. Our students currently socialize in the world of “HotorNot.com” and The Family Guy where respect and healthy interactions are secondary to superficiality and entertainment. Students are challenged to critically analyze this world and ultimately embrace a solution from within their own community.

Current movie clips, fashion ads, television shows, and other forms of teenage pop culture are used to demonstrate the creation and reinforcement of gender roles. This exercise forces students to turn a critical eye toward the camera lens in order to analyze their own consumption of gendered culture, as well as their reinforcement of gender roles with harassment and bullying.

The emphasis is on how school communities need to be environments of respect and trust. Each student leaves with something, whether the difficult self-examination of prior actions or the empowerment to stand up against harassment.

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