WESTMINSTER, Colo. — A group of teenagers saved the day after hearing a sixth grader had nobody to sign his yearbook.
Brody Ridder, who is in the sixth grade at The Academy of Charter Schools, said that nobody wanted to sign his yearbook when the books were handed out, KDVR reported.
“I went up to people and I asked them, ‘Can you sign my yearbook?’ and some of them were like, ‘no,’” Brody told the station.
Only two classmates and two teachers signed his yearbook, so Brody signed it himself, saying “Hope you make some more friends. — Brody Ridder,” The Washington Post reported.
When Ridder’s mother saw the empty yearbook with her son’s message, she took action.
“It honestly broke my heart,” Cassandra Ridder told KDVR. “And that was really hard to see and read as a mom.”
Cassandra told The Washington Post that Brody has been struggling with bullies, who have pushed him and called him names, and that he had switched to his current school before fifth grade.
Cassandra told KDVR she took a photo of the nearly blank yearbook page and posted it to a Facebook group for parents of students at the school. She told The Washington Post that her goal in posting the photo was to raise awareness about bullying.
Instead, several older students in high school, who didn’t know Brody, saw the post.
Joanna Cooper, 17, told The Washington Post that she received a screenshot of the post from her mother, and immediately decided, “I’m going to get people and we’re going to sign his yearbook. No kid deserves to feel like that.”
Another student, Logan South, said that his family spent hours discussing the issue and how to help, before he told another friend and they began planning to go sign Brody’s yearbook, KDVR reported. The teenagers rallied as many classmates as they could, and went to Brody’s class.
“We walked in and we were like, ‘Where’s Brody at? Is Brody Ridder in here?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s in the back.’ And we’re like, ‘Brody! We’re here to sign your yearbook, bud,’” Simone Lightfoot, one of the students, told KDVR. “I wrote, ‘Hey Brody, we don’t know you but we think you’re super cool and I’ll be your senior friend.’”
Brody told The Washington Post that he was shy at first, but “it made me feel better.” He collected more than 100 signatures, along with phone numbers and a gift bag.
“Just seeing him light up, it felt really good,” Cooper told The Washington Post. Cooper told the outlet she is hoping to start an initiative at the school for yearbook signing so this never happens to a student again.
“It made me feel like there’s hope for the school, there’s hope for humanity and there’s a lot of good kids in this world,” Cassandra told KDVR.