Stuart Mason - Head Teacher, Aireville School, Skipton, UK.
Aireville Meets The Scary Guy

A fully tattooed giant, named The Scary Guy, challenged our students at Aireville School on Thursday 13 December to look at themselves and follow a path to eliminate prejudice and hatred. The Scary Guy is a former tattoo artist from America who legally changed his name in 1998 when someone ran a full page advert asking “Are you tired of dealing with scary guys with war paint facial tattoos?”

Scary decided to draw something positive from his scary exterior and has since visited schools, police forces, churches, mosques, and other organisations across America, Britain and the world. His mission is to rid the world of hate, violence and prejudice and he uses his striking appearance to challenge the stereotypes people use to label him.

“I decided to change my behaviour and do something about the name-calling, put-downs and negative words I had used for a full 43 years.” Scary told us. “A bully is a professional victim who has been picked on their whole life. They justify their behaviour based on their own experiences. I don’t label anybody as bad. I treat everybody the same, with love and respect.”

Our students listened and participated in a 90-minute presentation by Scary, which focused on his life story, ideas and commitment to live without saying anything negative about other people or using hurtful names or words. A group of 100 students then worked with him on how to deal with and process other peoples’ and their own negative emotions and words. After a staff training session, an audience of over 100 of our local community listened to Scary explain how they, as a community, also needed to embrace the values he was describing. The audience included parents, governors, representatives of agencies working with young people, and local district councillors.

Students, staff and community members were put on Scary’s Seven Day Seven Night Challenge for one week. Participants are challenged not to say one negative word about another person or call anyone by any name, other than their own. Students have been emailing Scary Guy through his website and his social network to tell him how they are getting on with the challenge, and all get a personal response from him.

I invited The Scary Guy to Aireville after I met him two years ago at a training session following his visit to a Scarborough school. Like all schools, we unfortunately do have some name-calling, bullying and racism, and we wanted to challenge our students with a very different approach. Students have responded and been excited by Scary’s message and many of us have contacted him to tell him of our efforts on The Seven Day Seven Night Challenge. We have also had an outbreak of hugging and there is a much more caring and supportive feel about the school.

We want to build on the initial momentum created by Scary’s visit. This could be a really important project for our school and community cohesion across Skipton.

Students were quick to use the language that gives Scary such credibility. “He Rocked our World!” was a frequently heard description. “A cool dude who made us look at ourselves and deal with the negative words of others.”