"MARCHING FOURTH"
- PIONEER STUDENTS WALK IN HONOR OF HUMAN DIGNITY

GLENDALE, Ariz. - Monday, March 4, fourth-grade students from Pioneer Elementary School will participate in a national march called Go FOURTH (For One United Respect Throughout Humanity), a culmination to a program designed to encourage children to treat everyone with respect. The students will begin their walk at 10 a.m. by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance under the flagpole on the Pioneer campus, 6315 W. Port au Prince Lane in Glendale. They will proceed around the outside of the playground, down 63rd Avenue to Greenway Road before returning the same route to the school.

Janet Disotell, fourth-grade teacher, decided to get her students involved with the program five months ago after discovering it on the People to People International Web Site. She began corresponding with Mary Wright, the teacher from Rocky Hill School in Rhode Island who started the program. Since then, Disotell has facilitated discussion between her students and students from other schools across the country about the importance of respectful behavior toward others. She says that a 9-year-old boy from Rocky Hill most poignantly summed up the hope of the program: "Maybe we can stop having wars when we are adults."
Disotell says that one of her primary goals from the first day students step foot in her classroom is to teach tolerance and respect. This program served as a perfect enhancement of what she was already incorporating into her daily lessons. She says she knows the students are responding because they translate the messages they have learned in the classroom into their real-world interactions with others. "This has really had an impact on them personally," she said.