56.0°,
Fog/Mist Girls see their inner beauty
“Beautiful Me…The Emma, Alyson and Katie Project” works to promote self-esteem among young girls in honor of Jackie and Warren Hance’s three daughters. The Hance parents faced an awful tragedy on July 26, 2009, when Warren’s sister, who was believed to be drunk and high at the time, killed their three daughters, herself and her own daughter in a wrong-way crash on the Taconic Parkway. The crash also killed three men in an oncoming vehicle.
The days following the accident were horrific for the Hance family, and the parents eventually created the Hance Family Foundation to reach out to other children. They wanted to use their community’s donations as a way to spread their daughters’ wonderful examples and to prioritize safe, happy and healthy children.
Beautiful Me is a program funded by the foundation and modeled after Emma’s example, Alyson’s art and Katie’s kindness. It began in Floral Park, the Hances’ hometown, and has since reached more than 3,000 girls across New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Elementary schools in District 13 — Howell Road, Wheeler Avenue and Willow Road — have all hosted the program, which consists of three hour-long sessions conducted by leaders from the foundation. It ensures that its participants know about the accident, but also focuses on continuing the daughters’ legacy. Girls are taught to be aware of their own unique qualities.
On June 4, Howell Road had its last session. Carrie Schozer, the district’s coordinator of curriculum and assessment, said that Beautiful Me “is a wonderful program that came out of a horrific tragedy.” She explained that each session incorporates a message relating to one of the daughters.
The first lesson works on inner and outer beauty, the second involves creating dolls that reflect what the girls like about themselves and the third focuses on conflict resolution. “It’s just really about sharing and being able to talk without being judged,” Schozer said. “I don’t think I could rate one [activity] higher than the other, because I think each girl takes away something else.”
Peggy Schlechter and Sue Murphy were in charge at Howell and each led a group of about 10 fifth- and sixth-grade girls. Along the way, they trained 49 volunteer teachers who helped with and participated in each session. Next year, these teachers will lead the program, which will be opened up to fifth-graders.
Schlechter stressed communication and repeatedly told the girls, “there’s no perfect answer.” In the last session, there were questions about what they would do if they heard that their best friends had been saying mean things about them, or if they wore a pair of shoes they loved to school, but heard a few girls making fun of them.
The leader called on girls individually and heard responses, such as, “I would talk to my friend first, because sometimes people say things that aren’t true,” “Why does it matter what someone else thinks?” or “At the end of the day, they’re my shoes, not theirs.”
The last activity was compliment boxes which prompted everyone’s participation. Schlechter demonstrated how deflecting or rejecting compliments is rude, but that girls often do it because they feel uncomfortable. She taught how to give a genuine compliment and properly thank someone for it.
To start, the girls wrote themselves a compliment at the bottom of small, cardboard boxes; then, they wrote one to every other girl and teacher in the group and put them in that person’s box. “A good compliment is like a gift,” Schlechter told them. Each girl read one compliment aloud with a smile on her face before the activity concluded.
At the end of the program, each girl received a small package from the Hance Family Foundation. It contained a heartfelt letter from the Hances, and a necklace that symbolized the three daughters in a unique way. Schlechter told the girls that Jackie Hance gave birth to her fourth daughter, Kasey Rose, on Oct. 11, 2011.
