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Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley stood in front of a room full of Urbana Middle School students and administrators looking doubtfully at a script in his hands, placed there just minutes before.

Seventh-grader Elena Takas brushed up against the governor as she briskly walked past.

"Hey there you ugly pig," she said dismissively.

"Hey you ugly pig!" O'Malley (D) said. "Meet me across the street at 4 p.m. this afternoon. If you're not there, you'll be very sorry."

O'Malley wasn't picking a fight with a middle-schooler; instead he was part of a skit with the school's Safe School Ambassador Program, an anti-bullying group at the school.

His visit May 26 coincided with Bullying Awareness and Prevention Week in Maryland, a week in response to recent cases of bullying and harassment in schools nationwide.

O'Malley spoke to a media center full of student ambassadors in hot pink T-shirts and school officials about theirs and the state's effort to trump bullying, what he called "an epidemic."

"There's a lot you have to be proud of here," he said. "Do you know you are a model program to push back against bullying?"

The students paused. "No," they said collectively.

"Well, it's true," he said. "Sometimes we're the last ones to recognize when we're doing something that's pretty cool and pretty leading and pretty transformative."

O'Malley said he visited the school because Urbana Middle had created one of the top anti-bullying initiatives in the entire country.

"At times like this it's important that schools step up. Most important is each and every one of you," he said. "We are counting on you, we need you...without you we don't have much of a future."

Urbana Middle School is wrapping up its first year of The Safe School Ambassador Program.

The program, led by school counselor Dana Lippy and language arts teacher Leslie Pearre, has already procured a grant for the program next year.

The initial $6,000 grant bought Safe School Ambassador curriculum through a nonprofit, Community Matters.

The grant is funded by the Center for Dispute Resolution at the University of Maryland School of Law.

The year's smaller upcoming grant will fund supplemental materials to keep the program energized.

"We don't want to use the same activities," Pearre said. "We want to make sure we get some new material."

The Safe Schools Ambassadors Program has been in more than 850 schools through the U.S. and Canada.

The anti-bullying and violence-prevention program designed for students fourth through twelfth grades teaches students to halt bullying through distraction, balancing, active listening, reasoning, supporting and other strategies.

They used those skills in the two skits on Thursday that highlighted two of the main problems with bullying that the school has: name calling and exclusion.

"It does have an impact on our school, it really does. It's a lot different than last year even" said eighth-grader and Safe Schools Ambassador Cassidy Hageman, 14, of the new program. "Some people are just so heartless, but it [the program] works sometimes."

Fellow ambassadors and eighth grade students Joey Mejia, 14, and Cody Wilcox, 14, agreed, all saying they had put what they learned into practice.

The three were part of the handpicked club that meets once a week and kicked off the year with a two-day training.

"I think it's really good to be just bigger than us. While we help people we also make bigger friendships and those will go on later into life" Cody said. "Kids have better choices. Instead of starting a fight, choose one of those skills, walk away a bigger person than the other."

Joey said he had heard many national stories of people getting bullied online and even killing themselves.

"Kids hear everything, kids know what's going on, we can prevent it," he said. "Safe school ambassadors... just want to stop all this nonsense of [students] being hurt and harassed."

"All of your contact and communication online, it's not something you can leave at home anymore," O'Malley said. "In every person there is a human being and we're all different ...the greatest thing we really have with people is really our diversity and our individuality."

After speaking at the middle school, O'Malley also stopped by Urbana High School to surprise National Teacher of the Year Michelle Shearer to recognize her achievement.

The governor presented Shearer with a gift and citation.