Zaine Williams and his friends wouldn’t let anyone else sit at their lunch or art tables during fifth and sixth grades.

But after Williams went off to Central Junior High School and his friends went to a different junior high, he learned that snubbing others for years does not pay off.

“I was alone,” said Williams, now a Lawrence High School senior. “I didn’t have my clique anymore.”

Williams and seven other Lawrence High and Free State High School students spoke Tuesday to fourth-graders at Schwegler School as part of Red Ribbon Week.

Students from almost all the district’s schools are marking the week with activities that promote healthy choices and drug avoidance.

On Tuesday at Schwegler, a prevention specialist for the district and two groups of high school students discussed teasing, popularity and bullying with two classes of fourth-graders.

Prisca Kendagor told the class that when she was their age, others teased her for wearing glasses and stuttering.

“When you make fun of somebody, five years from now, chances are you won’t remember them, but they’ll remember you,” the LHS senior said.

Prevention specialist Cindy Trarbach encouraged the fourth-graders to say, “You hurt my feelings” when teasing goes too far.

Children in the class told Trarbach and the teens that people get teased for being fat, for being old or for refusing to smoke. One boy said his sister’s boyfriend gets called “wetback” and “bean burrito.”

“I’ve heard a lot of dumb blonde jokes — it doesn’t make me dumb,” Trarbach, who is blonde, told the fourth-graders. “Just because someone says something about you doesn’t make it true.”

Across town at Langston Hughes School, some students wore their clothes backwards to indicate they had “turned their backs on drugs.”

Construction-paper stars with drug-free pledges written in markers or pencils lined the entrance to the room where the students eat lunch.

The pledges included: “When I get bigger, I will only have caffen (sic). No drugs.”

“I will never do drugs for my whole life if I do I will confess and god have shame on me.”

Another child promised to avoid drugs and “never to let my hand become stained with carelessness.”

Hannah Lusk, 11, had written a simple pledge on her star, promising to be drug-free. She wore her jean jacket backwards Tuesday, which she said was uncomfortable.

Drug use “can make you crazy and kill you and make other people not want to talk to you,” the sixth-grader said.

Activities the rest of the week include South Junior High School students wearing masks or sunglasses to “shade out drugs” and Quail Run School students eating lunch with other students they don’t usually sit with.