WATCH: Toms River Students Fight Bullying With A Music Video

How do you drive home a message that aims to combat bullying?

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

In the month since North Dover Elementary School posted its “Bully Free Song” on YouTube, the video has gotten nearly 14,000 hits and has been picked up by other media outlets -- which is exactly what the staff and students hoped for.

Filmed on Oct. 5, the video “Bully Free Song,” to the tune of Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song,” 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.

It is the second anti-bullying video produced by the school. Last year the North Dover students and staff produced an anti-bullying video based on Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” that has gotten more than 45,000 hits on YouTube.

“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.”

“Bully Free is a motto that we follow each day at North Dover, and hopefully we can inspire others to feel the same,” Principal Colleen McGrath said.