TO MATTER MATTERS
Project helps London middle schoolers realize their self-worth
LONDON — Adam Haman knows that some of his students don’t have anyone at home who praises their hard work.
He knows that some of them dislike the skin they’re in, that people say hurtful things to them, that others don’t always appreciate their budding individuality or newfound confidence.
In fact, as a middle school teacher, Haman knows that the kids themselves — floating somewhere in that no-man’s land of no longer children, but not quite adults — often don’t even appreciate their own special gifts.
So when he saw a news story last year about a Michigan school that started a #Whyyoumatter campaign to spread positivity and celebrate self-worth, he knew he needed to bring the program to his own London Middle School.
“If no one is telling these kids they matter, it isn’t as if they’re thinking about it on their own,” said Haman, who teaches health and physical education in the Madison County district.
“We wanted them to selfreflect. And the physical act of writing it out — writing why they matter — it cements for them that they are important. It was very powerful.”
Teachers and counselors worked with each of the 502 students in the fall to create an “I matter because (fill in the blank)” statement. Every school employee came up with one, too.
Then, on picture day in October, Peters Photography in London took regular yearbook photos, but also took a second one of every student and employee holding a statement whiteboard on which they filled in that blank.
The photography studio printed 8-inch by 10-inch, black-and-white photos of the statement. Over the holiday break in December and January, staff taped them up to line the concrete hallway walls.
There, for everyone to see every day, are simple messages — some funny, some basic, many poignant and all heartfelt.
I matter because I am biracial. I matter because my family needs me.
I matter because I’m a good brother.
I matter because I will win Olympic gold.
And then there is the photo hanging in the eighth-grade hallway of Riley Colestock.
When the 13-year-old’s teacher first explained the project, Riley thought it was a stupid idea.
After all, she said, she had homework she needed to get done and didn’t really want to spend the whole period on a lesson about self-esteem or self-love or any of that blahblah-blah kind of stuff.
But then a video that Haman made explaining the #Whyyoumatter project was shown in the classrooms. Riley watched and listened. She took its message to heart.
Riley already had some very real bumps in her road, and mental health is something she pays attention to.
“I’m in recovery from anxiety,” she said. “And right when we started this project, I was trying to be the best version of myself.”
So she gave her statement a lot of thought. And she said when staff hung the photos up over holiday break, and everyone returned to school in January, it was simply perfect timing.
A sixth-grader — a classmate of Riley’s younger sister, Bailey — had killed herself in November. She was 12.
“‘Why You matter’ shows that other people are special,” Riley said. “It kind of opened a new chapter for us; people being nicer. When I’m having a rough day, I like to read the signs.”
And that, Principal Michael
Belmont said, was the idea.
“Middle school is tough. These kids? They’re trying to figure out who they are, wondering, ‘Where do I fit in?’ It gets very convoluted,” he said. “So this is us reminding them, ‘You do matter. We do care about you.’”
Riley took that to heart. Her panic attacks and self-harming days are behind her. She takes time now to read what the other students wrote on their own photos. Sometimes, she asks kids she doesn’t know why they wrote what they did, to learn their story.
“It’s actually very cool, and it will help a lot of people,” she said.
And on her school photo that hangs in the eighthgrade hallway, the one where she’s smiling so brightly? She clutches a white board on which she wrote, “I matter because I overcame my inner demons.”
Turns out, she said, it wasn’t such a stupid assignment after all.