LEWISTON – When Lewiston Middle School teacher Shayna Malyata took over the Civil Rights Team three years ago, 12 students were on the team.

As school ended last week, Malyata handed out student participation certificates to 80.

That growth is credited with helping make the school better. And it fetched Malyata a recent human rights award from the Maine Educational Association, the statewide teachers union.

The 32-year-old Bingham native, who lives in Portland, teaches English to eighth-graders as her full-time job. She leads the civil rights team as an extra. She came to the school with a background that readied her for a school with many Somali refugee students.

After college, she taught in Namibia, Africa, for four years, falling in love with the people and country. She also fell in love with a Namibian teacher, now her husband. After returning to the United States, she came to Lewiston to teach because of the city’s refugee student population.

She and her husband plan to eventually return to Namibia, where “people take time for family and neighbors,” she said. “They help take care of elderly. There’s a sense of community.” Building a community “is what I’m trying to do here with the civil rights team.” The team’s motto is “Breaking the walls, right here in our halls.”

Events this year and last show signs that’s happening, she and others say.

Tracey Blaisdell, whose two daughters have been on Malyata’s team, points to the school’s recent World Cafe night that sold out. “The turnout was tremendous.” The event invites students, parents and grandparents, to come and enjoy each others’ ethnic food and conversation.

By helping students understand each other, Malyata has helped “friendship building among students at the middle school,” Blaisdell said. “Wonderful things are happening there.”

Malyata smiles as she talked about the team. “We have done some really cool things.”

There’s been movie nights to learn about different cultures. They’ve learned about leadership. There’s been lunches where students paired up with another they normally wouldn’t. They learned the power of words, how words can hurt. They have role played what to do if one student is picking on another in the hall, the cafeteria or the bus.

“Bullies are intimidating,” she said. When someone’s being picked on, “it’s better to say something than say nothing at all, even if it’s just, ‘Hey, that’s not nice,'” or standing next to or sitting with the student being ostracized, Malyata said.

Some students are doing that on their own.

And last year when headlines appeared about one student being suspended after harassing Somali students at a lunch table with ham – food considered unpure by Muslims – the seriousness of what the civil rights group represents became real to students, she said.

“Without my saying anything, they immediately went to some of the Somali kids who had been victims of that incident and said, ‘I’m sorry this happened to you.'”

Last spring at the annual student civil rights conference in Augusta, the Lewiston students asked if they could make a speech in front of 1,400.

In their speech they explained what happened, said they stand by every student at their school, “and we don’t like that this happened,” Malyata said. The ham incident “mobilized my team to realize they can make a difference.”

There still are problems between students: disrespect, teasing, cyberbullying. But more have become interested in promoting respect.

Because of Malyata, “the civil rights group has grown into the largest student organization in the school” said teacher Mike Courchesne, one of two who nominated her for the human rights award. “She opens the eyes of her students to allow them to take charge and improve the school’s climate.”