Stand Up! Speak Out!
Bias Awareness & Ally-Building for Safer Schools
Interactive Multimedia Assembly Programs featuring Live Music 

Stand Up! Speak Out! is a multi-media presentation that celebrates diversity and calls out the bias behind bullying, to make school safer and more inclusive for all. Through live music, compelling lyrics, powerful images and personal stories, students learn about the bias we all have, how it manifests itself, and what we can do about it.  All distinctly different assemblies for elementary, middle and high school audiences feature interactive original songs and improvised solos on tenor and soprano saxophones and flute. Lyric videos projected on a big screen invite enthusiastic participation and generate a lot of energy while students are learning about prejudice, unconscious bias, stereotypes, bystanders, and what it mean to be an Ally. The musical component provides balance and helps create a space in which minds and hearts are more open to these very challenging concepts. Students learn that, even though we all have unconscious bias, we CAN de-bias ourselves if we are willing to    P   A   U   S   E    and    P  R  A  C  T  I  C  E  :
Above: Even very young children have a strong sense of justice, of what's fair. Students sing, "Please get to know me before you decide what I'm like inside."

Self-Observation
  • question snap judgments, ​often rooted in bias
Moral Courage:                                                                                
  • do the right thing, even if no one else is
​Compassion
  • ​imagine what it's like to stand in someone else's shoes
Above: "Don't stand by-- Stand up! Don't be shy-- Speak out! Bystanders watching, your silence is a weapon in the hands of the perpetrator."
Hear more songs for elementary, middle school and high school students.
Above: Compasión is written in English and Spanish and asks, "Do you feel me?" Hear more songs for elementary, middle and high school students.