Today is Pink Shirt Day

Pink shirt day in a school Photo by energeticcity, Flickr

A Pink shirt day in a school
Photo by energeticcity, Flickr

Adapted from CBC News by Nancy Carson
A pink shirt
Level 1

It is 2007.  A boy wakes up early.
It is his first day of school.
He is excited.
He puts on his new shirt.
It is pink.

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First day
The boy is happy to be in Grade 9.
He will have a new teacher.
He will make new friends.
Suddenly, some students begin to tease him.
They call him “gay”.
They say they will beat him up.
They say he must not wear a pink shirt.
These boys are bullies.
The boy does not understand.
He is very scared.

A sea of pink
Two Grade 12 students hear the news.
David Shepherd and Travis Price are upset.
They buy 50 pink shirts.
They say they will wear them to school the next day.
The two boys want a “sea of pink”.
Shepherd says later,
“I just figured enough was enough.”

Support from friends
Shepherd and Price e-mail all their friends.
The two boys say they have 48 shirts.
Who will help?
Many students say yes.
But hundreds of other students wear pink shirts, too.
Some wear pink pants and pink socks.

The next day, the boy in grade 9 sees pink everywhere.
The boy is so happy.
The bullies are silent.

Student artwork about bullying Photo by carmen^_^ (Carmen Tsang), Flickr

Student artwork about bullying
Photo by carmen^_^ (Carmen Tsang), Flickr

News travels
Price and Shepherd get calls from Alaska.
They get e-mails from all over the world.
In 2007, the news does not give the name
of the boy with the pink shirt.
But today we remember
the names of two boys, Shepherd and Price.
We remember they stopped some bullies.