Hayward Jean is spreading the power of positive speaking.

A Speak Life Day pep rally held at Edisto Elementary School last month gave Jean the chance to encourage students to encourage each other.

“It is what should be happening at every school in the world, in the country, and if nothing else, at least in our state and county,” Jean said.

“We have students speaking life to each other in the middle of an assembly, teachers speaking life to students, students speaking like this to teachers, motivational people coming from the community. It was just, it was amazing. It was like Christmas with words as gifts,” Jean said.

Speak Life Day was created by Hayward, Orangeburg County School District’s director of student services, and his wife Starlette Jean. The objective of the day, held on Sept. 23, is to encourage people and students in particular to say positive words of affirmation to one another.

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Edisto Elementary School Assistant Principals Melvin Wright said, “It needs to spread across the nation, all across the world.

“Everybody needs to hear that. I love when they said, ‘We turn every negative into a positive.’ I teach my teachers to say everyone negative: Think about positives. With that way, you can’t go wrong.”

The assembly was one of many that took place to celebrate Speak Life Day.

The event marked the third Speak Life Day and the first time the day was celebrated at a school.

“This event at Edisto Elementary school was historic,” Hayward Jean said.

“I watched students open up. I saw their eyes become wide open as if they became new people,” Jean said.

Wright said, “Hopefully it’s not just students, hopefully our teachers hear it and want to speak life every day and even put it into the kids. You can speak life within your teachers and they return to speak life,” Wright said.

For Wright, the assembly provided a lesson in being positive to people and treating others nicely.

“We should see more positivity and less negativity. We should see everybody speaking more life and if you can’t say nothing good, then you’re probably not thinking hard enough,” Wright said.

“We ask that everybody speak life,” Wright said.

Jean said the more people speak positively, the less negativity they’re going to want to speak.

“You could become addicted to speaking positive words, the more you do it,” Jean said.

Terry Benjamin II, a Claflin University mass communications senior, is reporting for The Times and Democrat as a Lee Enterprises-sponsored news-sports intern.

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