WATCH: Toms River School's Video Drives Home Anti-Bullying Message

How do you drive home a message aimed to combat bullying?

Turn it into a song and put it to a tune everyone loves.

The staff at North Dover Elementary School took this approach last year and the anti-bullying video, based on Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” has been well-received, getting more than 44,000 hits on YouTube.

So this year, the staff decided to do it again. Filmed on Oct. 5, the video “Bully Free Song,” to the tune of Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” again involved the whole school and has been posted on YouTube, where it has nearly 4,000 views.

With the students clapping, singing, and dancing along, culminating in a pep rally, the 5-minute video -- which includes North Dover’s lyrics at the end -- stresses the point that words can cut more deeply than any knife, and should be used for positive things rather than negatives.

“The coolest moment of the pep rally was when students and teachers swayed to our song ‘Bully Free Song,’ sung beautifully by North Dover’s orchestra teacher Miss (Tina) Kovacofsky,” said Matthew DeRiggi, a fifth-grade teacher at the school. “It was a moment that united the school and helped spread the word that our school strives to forever be bully free.”

Since the pep rally, the entire school has worked hard to make the video special and impactful, school officials said. Everyone has played an important role in the making of the music video, especially Dinean Batchelder, Tina Kovacofsky, and Denise Rodgers.

North Dover’s School Improvement Committee, students, and teachers collaborated and came up with ideas for the making of the project, and each grade level added its own spin on the message for the video, which was filmed in various parts of the school.

Two Toms River high school students contributed significantly to the project.

Corey Batchelder, a former North Dover student who is now a freshman at Toms River South, helped create the lyrics and message presented in the song. Tommy Rodgers, a talented cinematographer who is a senior at Toms River East, did the filming and editing.

“Both of their contributions are truly appreciated from the entire faculty,” Principal Colleen McGrath said.

“The hard work is all but done and now the students and staff of North Dover can take pride in themselves and their school for the positive message that they have created,” McGrath said. “Bully Free is a motto that we follow each day at North Dover, and hopefully we can inspire others to feel the same.”