Meet this Week’s Whiz Kid: Samantha Deane

Name: Samantha Deane

Age: 18

School: Senior at York High School

Achievement: Samantha recently earned her Girl Scout Gold Award, the equivalent to the Boy Scout Eagle Award.

Key to Awesomeness: While her family was living in Germany during her years as an eighth- and ninth-grader, Samantha attended an international school and became fluent in German. While there, she attended an anti-bullying program with her Girl Scout Troop that inspired her to begin her own curriculum once she returned to the States. Over the past four years, Samantha has developed The Bully-Free Zone, a program she devised for elementary age students. Just last week, she fulfilled all the requirements to receive the Girl Scout Gold Award, completing 30 hours of leadership requirements and 40 hours of career work. 

In her program, Samantha teaches the three R’s of bullying: Recognize, Refuse and Report. Using fun and engaging games and activities, she helps students realize the power a bully can have over his or her victim, and discusses the ramifications. In one activity, students receive apples that are various colors, shapes and sizes. Some are bruised and scratched; others are smooth and polished.

“Then we cut them all longways and see that they’re all identical on the inside,” she said. “Then of course, we eat them. With caramel, preferably!”

Creating a bully-free zone, Samantha said, includes responsibility of the bystander, who often doesn’t stand up for the person being bullied.

“One of the main reasons bullying is so successful is that other people see it going on and don’t do anything,” she said. “They say, ‘Well, it’s not me.’ ”

She has presented the program at Conrad Fisher, Emerson, Lincoln, Hawthorne and Edison Elementary’s after-school Rec Stations, as well as for several local Girl Scout troops. When the young participants come up to her afterwards and ask questions, she knows the message is getting through.

“[The kids ask,] ‘Can a bully be a sibling?’ and stuff like that,” she said. “I definitely feel like it at least gets them thinking.”

Samantha plans to go into linguistics and become an international school teacher. 

“I obviously wouldn’t tolerate [bullying] in my classroom,” she said.

When that time comes, her Bully-Free Zone curriculum will be in the capable hands of other young leaders since she feels the program is strongest when it is taught by a peer. 

“I put a kit together with all the worksheets and everything I used in the program and I’m donating it to my local Girl Scout Council,” she said. “Other people can rent out the kit and run the program if they want.”

Samantha is a National Merit Scholarship Commended Student and is ranked in the top 4 percent of her graduating class. She has studied German at Concordia College Language Village in Minnesota and will be taking the German AP exam in May.

At York, Samantha was co-captain of the bowling team this year, an ambassador, a freshman mentor and treasurer of the Empower Club.