GRANBY — It’s not easy to hold a teenager’s attention for an hour.
At Granby Junior Senior High School on Tuesday, YouTube performer Josh Drean pulled it off. He beatboxed and told jokes while sneaking in a bit of real-world advice along the way.
“This is technically an anti-bullying assembly,” Drean told a cafeteria full of seventh-, eighth- and ninth-graders. “Here’s the thing: You guys aren’t kids anymore. You’ve heard it.”
He said his performance would be upbeat.
“There are too many programs out there that focus on the negatives,” he said. “They talk about the violence, they talk about the suicide. Well, research shows those programs aren’t actually working.”
His speech centered on three points:
Resiliency: “You don’t get to choose what happens to you. You do get to choose how you respond to it.”
Empathy: “Walking in someone else’s shoes. Feeling what someone else is feeling.”
Potential: “Understanding the potential you have to stand up and make a difference.”
Soon after explaining his approach to motivational speaking, Drean pulled four students on stage for a mascot competition. Drean, a Brigham Young University graduate, served a stint as Cosmo the Cougar, the Utah school’s mascot.
Students in the audience whooped and cheered while the students on stage swallowed their pride and danced in costume. Drean parlayed the mascot anecdote into life lessons.
ESPN’s “College Gameday” came to BYU one Saturday in October in 2009 for the team’s football tilt against the TCU Horned Frogs. The set of “Gameday” was in front of a crowd of students.
Drean, dressed as Cosmo, marched on stage, ripped up a piece of paper and marched off. It was a textbook security breach, Drean said.
“I jump off that stage, everyone starts cheering, ‘Cosmo! Cosmo! Cosmo!’” Drean said. “I was on live national TV. I was a hero. And then the security guards found me. Before I knew it I was in front of a ESPN ‘Game Day’ director, and she was livid.”
He said he was just trying to be funny. It was national television, after all.
“She said, ‘no, the job of a mascot is to represent your school,’” Drean said. “I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time.”
He said he didn’t realize the impact the choice he made could have on others, or his own life.
“I got in trouble because I was being selfish,” Drean said. “It was all about me. I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be on TV.”
The 29-year-old Harvard student also touched on bullying and the stresses of social media.
He said his younger brother was a male cheerleader growing up. His brother was bullied online for it.
“Everyone loved their Facebook notifications,” Drean said. “He was afraid of his. There was a group of students anonymously posting every day on his account.
Little stuff at first. “It just got progressively worse, and worse and worse. Until all of a sudden people started saying stuff like, ‘wow, you’re a cheerleader, that’s so gay. Why don’t you go kill yourself?’”
Drean said some students have seen stuff like that on social media.
“I challenge you today to get up and say something about it,” Drean said. “Before you post something that’s a little mean on Snapchat, before you say something that you know is going to hurt someone’s feelings, before you do something that is disrespectful, stop and think: What is that person going through?
“If you knew their whole story, I doubt you would say the same things,” he said.
Afterward, students interviewed said they were impressed.
“I thought it was pretty interesting,” said 13-year-old Gabriel Godard. “I think it’ll help us a lot.”
Some students said bullying wasn’t a big problem. Others disagreed.
“I feel like it was necessary because a lot of people get bullied at our school,” said 14-year-old Bella Bonavita, a ninth-grader. “Most of it’s probably texting and Snapchat.”
When 12-year-old Marshall Winseck walked into the cafeteria beforehand, he wondered what the big deal was.
Afterward, he thought, “He’s just a cool guy. He’s probably an inspiration to a lot of people.”
Justice Delaney, 14, was recognized with a free pair of shoes with five other students for being a particularly positive influence.
With a smile on her face, she said Drean was “funny” and “kind.”
“I’m a pretty positive person,” she said.
School social worker Charlene Korza grinned throughout the assembly. She said she’s skeptical of these types of things.
“The way to reach kids with tough topics like bullying and social media — you have to have an ‘in,’” she said. “Kids that are normally really hard to engage. I felt he really had their attention. That’s all I need.”
Jack Suntrup can be reached at jsuntrup@gazettenet.com.