Geoffrey SamueIs: He Eases the Teasing

Geoffrey Samuels of New Orleans, Louisiana, clutched the receiver and listened to the sixth-grade boy describe his hopeless situation in school.

“I-I-I don’t know what to do anymore,” the boy stammered. “A lot of my friends tease me. I want them to stop.”

Geoffrey realized that the young caller had nobody else to turn to. He drew a deep breath and encouraged the sobbing boy to act.

“Talk to them,” Geoffrey advised. “Let them know that their teasing hurts you. Ask them why they’re doing it. Tell them to stop. If they continue, speak to a teacher at school.”

Geoffrey’s advice worked, within a week, the teasing stopped.

When Geoffrey enrolled in New Orleans Jewish Day School’s peer facilitator program, he and nine other eighth-graders became big brothers and sisters for students in sixth grade. He also teamed up with fourth-graders to discuss issues such as bullying, conflict resolution, and identifying feelings.

Besides helping younger kids, Geoffrey, now 15 and in high school, learned about handling his own relationships. Ultimately, the experience helped him identify with the Torah ideal v’ahavta l’reiakha kamokha (love your neighbor as yourself), which appears in Vayikra 19:18.

Friendship, Geoffrey discovered, requires sharing, compromise, and empathy.

Before the program, Geoffrey would squabble with his friends and family about trivial matters. “I used to get into arguments all the time with my brother, my dad, and my little sister,” he remembers. “After just a couple of weeks with the program, things changed around here. I learned to be a lot calmer. I learned how to deal with things in a better way.”

For example: “If I see my little sister in my room, I’m not offended,” he explains. “I realize that she just wants to be with me. Or if we get into a petty argument, I realize that we don’t need to argue about it. I learned how to find the actual problem, and how to deescalate it.”

Most significantly, Geoffrey has become a better friend. “If I was teasing others before,” he notes, “the program influenced me not to. I realized how much it hurts people.”