It's not your typical sport, but Frisbee champion Rob McLeod was hoping to use that to his advantage to inspire local students. Last week, the Guiness World Record holder and 10-time Frisbee world champion made his rounds to area schools.
It's not your typical sport, but Frisbee champion Rob McLeod was hoping to use that to his advantage to inspire local students.
Last week, the Guiness World Record holder and 10-time Frisbee world champion made his rounds to area schools. While he may hold the Canadian distance record for longest Frisbee toss, McLeod's presentations were focused on more than just Frisbees as he touched on bullying and healthy living.
On Wednesday, Feb. 22 he was at Glendon School to coincide with Pink Shirt Day for anti-bullying awareness.
"Rob actually approached the school saying that he is invested in this and he has a passion for it; his background is as a figure skater," explained Glendon School principal Janice Muench.
While at the school, McLeod held Frisbee workshops with the students, along with some presentations about digital citizenship and resiliency assembly.
Digital citizenship addressed how to properly act online, including the issue of piracy and other illegal acts on the internet.
"The whole idea is to talk about being nice and being kind. A lot of people focus on technology as how to use it, but its more about the character of the people behind it. If we can build their character then we don't have to worry about how they are using technology," explained McLeod. "There is no way to teach how to use all the apps. There are millions of apps and it's impossible, so we need to focus on teaching how to behave online."
Although they weren't the traditional anti-bullying material, McLeod noted that this is actually the more effective way to get through to the student - one of the reasons Muench was so interested in having the presentation at her school.
"One of the issues with bullying, if you focus on bullying it increases the bullying. If you talk to kids who aren't being bullied they don't care. Instead of focusing on the idea of bullying we have to focus on the things that will not let kids do that in the first place," he said.
McLeod's visit was also geared towards promoting healthy active living. Glendon School is a designated 'Apple School,' so they look at ways to promote physical activity other than traditional sports.
"We want to bring up our non-athletic kids as well to understand that there are sports that anyone can do. You don't have to be necessarily good at the traditional, volleyball, basketball, you can also be good at Frisbee golf," explained Muench.
To further celebrate Pink Shirt Day, throughout the day Glendon students also wore custom-made pink shirts, and had fun in photo booths with pink props, among other activities.
In addition to Glendon School, McLeod also took his presentation to H.E. Bourgoin and Ardmore School last week.
