School Bullying Council

Seventh grade students at Lincoln Community School spent their school year tackling bullying issues and solutions by writing original plays and performing them for their younger peers, parents, guardians, and the community, with the help from playwright Dominique Cieri.

“The students wrote and prepared all these plays,” Principal Dr. Dennis Degnan told Bayonne Weekly. “This really promoted focus in literacy, creative writing, and exposure to the theatrical and performing arts.”

The Artists-in-Education Program is carried out through a partnership between the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and a consortium made up of Arts Horizons and Young Audiences New Jersey, Laura Bassett, the program coordinator explained.

“This program provides New Jersey schools with long-term artist residencies. The program is made possible through state appropriations to the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation,” Bassett said.

The seventh graders spent one hour every Friday since September doing a variety of activities that helped them prepare for their end-of-year program where they performed their original plays. Activities included developing original ideas for their plays, understanding the technique and literacy requirements of playwriting, and preparing to perform their pieces on stage.

The focus of the project was on taking the ideas and themes of bullying in schools and incorporating student experiences in their plays.

Some of the themes the students came up with included bullying during sports, rumors and gossip, jealousy over what other people have, and being different.

“The students got to portray the victim, the bully and even the bystander,” Degnan said. “This was a great way for them to understand that bullying should not be tolerated.”

http://www.nj.com/jjournal-weeklies/index.ssf/2012/06/bullying_program_in_bayonne_en.html

Brandon DeMarco is an average teenager in an ordinary High School that becomes the target of relentless harassment and vindictive cyberbullying. His story’s been seen by thousands of students all over the globe.

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Bit.ly – Click to Subscribe! Facebook.com – Become a Fan! Twitter.com – Follow Us! Disney Channel has teamed up with Common Sense Media to help raise awareness about bullying. In a new PSA, 16 year-old Billy Unger of the Disney XD series “Lab Rats,” provides a personal account of being bullied while he was in the fourth grade and how, through the guidance of his parents and school administrators, he managed to navigate it. To learn how you can get involved, visit

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Scott Shaw, The Plain DealerAn interview with Nate Mueller, who was grazed by a bullet fired from just a few feet away, gave editors the certainty they needed to identify T.J. Lane as the shooter.

When a huge, wide-ranging story breaks, a newspaper immediately runs up against two urgent yet conflicting instincts:

1. Get the news online and into print as quickly as possible.

2. Don’t do it before you’re sure you’ve got the facts right.

So it was with the shooting tragedy at Chardon High School that dominated the news last week.

The first part is not very complicated — empty the newsroom, come up with a coverage plan on the fly, send back a cellphone photo and the first bare facts for online as soon as you get there, follow the story, talk to everyone in sight . . . in short, do what news folks do.

The second is trickier.

Naturally, the obvious first question on Monday was: Who fired the shots? One name was on everyone’s lips. But we were dealing with a minor, and The Plain Dealer has a long-standing policy of not naming kids who are in trouble until they are charged as adults — and then, only after authorities have confirmed their names.

On a story like this, though, you can’t follow the rules blindly. So at 12:17 p.m. — long before T.J. Lane was charged but when editors had absolutely no doubt that the 17-year-old was the person who fired the deadly shots — they posted the name on cleveland.com. That brought a few questions from readers who, reasonably, wanted to know why we had published his name before police officially announced it.

The tipping point was an interview reporter Patrick O’Donnell had with Nate Mueller, a 17-year-old junior who was nicked in the ear by one of the shots, saw the flash from the gun and watched his former friend shoot three students he’d been sitting with just moments before. That is about as solid as information gets.

“It was the heinousness of the crime,” said Chris Quinn, the assistant managing editor who directs the paper’s news operation. “Our policy of not naming a child until he is charged as an adult is there so that the mistakes of youth don’t stay with a kid. The permanence of the Internet means that anything we write stays with you forever. But we were sure of our facts, and that policy isn’t going to save someone’s reputation in the case of a mass shooting.”

But when three photos purporting to be the shooter began circulating on blogs and email in the late morning, things weren’t quite as simple.

The photos, one of which showed a slight young man brandishing two handguns, seemed to be legitimate and immediately began popping up on television news coverage, sometimes with the face blurred, sometimes not.

“The Internet Age is terrible for that sort of thing,” said Quinn. “I couldn’t believe the things I was hearing and seeing on TV — unfiltered ru mors just going right on the news. Naturally, you want to post news right away, but we weren’t going to do it before we were sure. So we sent the photos to our reporters on the scene, and they took it to school officials, who said that it wasn’t T.J. Lane.”

The photos never appeared in The Plain Dealer or on cleveland.com. (There’s a reason the newspaper is usually the go-to place for people in search of news they can trust. For the record, cleveland.com had nearly a million unique users on Monday, by far its highest total for a single day.)

Right around the corner

The Plain Dealer had a total of 10 journalists in Chardon covering the story, but two were on the scene right away: Reporter John Horton and photographer Thomas Ondrey each lives within a long stone’s throw of the high school.

Plain Dealer photographer Thomas Ondrey didn’t have to leave home to capture this photo of a Geauga County Park District ranger stands watch a half-mile from the high school.

Proximity to the story was a double-edged sword for Horton, who grew up in Chardon and went to high school there. He was making breakfast for his two young sons when he got a call from the newsroom and then heard the sirens. His daughter had already left for the middle school, where she is an eighth-grader.

He sent his sons to stay with a neighbor and rushed to the school on foot.

“It’s an odd spot to find yourself in,” he said. “You want to cover the story and let people know what went on, but when I heard all those sirens, my heart just dropped. I know a ton of kids in that building, I know their parents. I knew my daughter was safe, but she was in lockdown in the middle school. You’re trying to assess the situation and do your job, but your heart’s just breaking because you know somebody’s kid is in trouble in there.”

Horton has strong connections to the town and the school. He was a classmate of Nate Mueller’s father. His kids are friends with neighbors of the victims. He once took one of Lane’s cousins trick-or-treating with his children.

He wrote a personal story about the experience for the Wednesday paper, leading with the line of parents he saw filing past the school superintendent, checking on their children’s well-being.

“It was the most chilling thing I’ve ever seen,” Horton said. “People were tossing out a name and just hoping he wouldn’t say, ‘You need to come with me.’ ”

Ondrey was sleeping in on his day off, and first began to suspect that something was wrong when he heard his dog barking, looked out the window and saw a park ranger with a rifle at the end of his driveway.

He pulled his clothes on over his pajamas, went outside to make that photo (which ran on cleveland.com), then jumped in his car and followed the sirens, getting to the school not long after the shootings. It was his photo of a mother and daughter that ran on our Page One — and in many newspapers around the country — on Tuesday.

He hasn’t been in Chardon as long as Horton, but still was stunned at the transformation of his quiet little town. “I’ve never seen such a mass of media and police,” he said. “Trucks, sirens, satellite trucks, cameras, helicopters . . . .”

Like everyone else, though, Ondrey attended to business, staying on the scene until late that afternoon. Still wearing his pajamas under his clothes.

http://www.cleveland.com/readers/index.ssf/2012/03/covering_chardon_high_school_s.html

The long-term effects of bullying can be extreme.
Source: Supplied

I WAS bullied at school. This was the 1960s and it was seen then as part of growing up.

You didn’t dob or you’d be hammered behind the shelter sheds. You didn’t tell your parents as they would simply say it was part of learning to be a man.

To be a man, I joined the school cadets. It was here that I understood what institutionalised bullying was all about. If you wore a peaked cap and had pips on your shoulder epaulets, that sanctioned you to do exactly what you liked.

I was humiliated and beaten. I lasted a year. I still have an aversion to seeing army uniforms.

It was some comfort that when I left school and began training as a teacher that I realised that there was a raft of literature devoted to bullying. I was not alone. I read of Australia’s legendary ballet dancer Robert Helpmann and how he was bullied unmercifully at school because he could dance.

And I read with gut-turning revulsion the frank admission of the historian Manning Clark, how when he was a student at Melbourne Grammar, the terrors of the notorious long dorm were visited on him and he was subjected to what he described as the “theatre of cruelty”.

When I became a teacher I entered the classroom feeling for the broken and bereft, the small, the timid, the socially outcast, the dull, the nerdy kids and the students who were gay.

The daily terror that gay boys felt of being discovered or even suspected is a lingering reality. It still continues today. If you are called a “fag”, you will be a school leper.

This is why the campaign against bullying of all kinds is long overdue.

When I began teaching, computers were not commonplace. Cyber bullying was unknown, not to mention texting or sexting. It is hard to imagine a more pernicious and devastatingly insistent form of harassment. It only takes one word, one image.

When I taught girls and boys, I was stunned by the savagery of girls. This was not physical beating, common with boys and my own direct experience, but in the subtle word said in a whisper at the back of the classroom. Then there were the looks.

It took the merest glance, shared among a group of girls to communicate eloquently, an

opinion of a singled-out girl ready for pecking until she broke. It was calculated, sinister and utterly effective.

When you talk to people about school life, those who loved school were generally not bullied. Those who didn’t often were subject to the kind of insidious drip, drip of a daily torture that frequently caused the victim to underachieve. The unfairness of this is obvious.

In every school children are bullied. It is not good enough to say that it comes with the territory of growing up, or if you can’t cope then you are not strong enough, manly enough or – in the case of girls – smart enough, stylish enough or strong enough to know how to deal with it.

Even schools with well established bullying policies are not immune from the wind-up in the corridor, not by the muscled thug or the peer group-leading little Miss, but the student who gets a kick out of watching someone suffer.

I have seen this in English schools and in Australia. Bullying reduces individuals. It demeans the spirit and makes them less than what they can be, often for life. For this reason alone, we all should take the pledge.

Christopher Bantick is a Melbourne writer and a senior literature teacher at Trinity Grammar School, Kew

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/the-effects-of-bullying-last-forever/story-e6frfhqf-1226245799979

By
Sarah Harris

Last updated at 3:56 PM on 19th November 2011

Speaking out: Dr Helen Wright

The X Factor is damaging children by glamorising bullying and arrogant behaviour, according to a leading headmistress.

The talent show encourages an ethos of ‘nastiness’ and ‘dog eat dog’ which is harmful to youngsters, warns Dr Helen Wright.

The explosion of such reality TV shows and the ‘easy celebrity’ culture they promote ‘strikes at the heart of the way we should be bringing our children up’, she will tell teachers and parents.

Dr Wright, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, singled out ITV’s The X Factor for the way it ‘encourages an ethos of nastiness and negativity’.

Her remarks were echoed by another education expert who claims that the examples set in the show have made disciplining pupils more difficult.

In a speech to the GSA conference in Bristol on Monday, Dr Wright, headmistress of St Mary’s Calne in Wiltshire, will warn that reality shows including The Only Way is Essex promote amoral messages and are ‘selling young people short’.

‘Bullying and arrogance are glamorised and become synonyms for ambition,’ she will say.

‘In The X Factor contestants are encouraged to be at each other’s throats – seemingly more so this year than ever.’

Her comments were backed by Alice Robinson, president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, who claims controlling discipline in schools is now harder due to the poor role models seen on The X Factor.

Speaking of the judges’ decision twice to spare contestant Misha B from being booted off despite accusations of backstage bullying, she said: ‘Pupils see poor behaviour rewarded or overlooked. Perhaps the judges should be doing a greater service by saying “your behaviour was unacceptable and we’re going to vote you off”.

Spared despite bullying: The X Factor’s Misha B

‘It just makes teaching and managing behaviour all that more difficult. That directly impacts on learning.’

On last Saturday’s show, 17-year-old Janet Devlin was left in tears when judge Gary Barlow savaged her performance. Dr Wright said it promoted the message ‘you can be mean and nasty and that’s kind of okay’.

‘It’s going to have an impact at a subliminal level,’ she said. ‘To be happy, you need to develop good relationships. That’s not what you see on X Factor.’

The Only Way is Essex, also on ITV, is characterised by drink-fuelled nights out and catfights between the women stars.

Overt bitchery: X Factor judges Louis Walsh, Tulisa, Kelly Rowland and Gary Barlow have come in for criticism

Dr Wright said: ‘It is not just the banal and mind-numbing nature of these copycat shows which is so undesirable – or the easy celebrity reality stars have achieved which can be attractive to children – but the amorality.’

Dr Aric Sigman, associate fellow of the British Psychological Society and author of The Spoilt Generation, echoed the criticisms, saying ‘overt bitchery’ between glamorous female judges sets a bad example to young girls, comparing it to ‘a bad car accident you can’t stop watching’.

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<!–enpproperty http://www.china.org.cn/world/2011-10/31/content_23772800.htmwww.china.org.cnThe officials of the Obama administration met with hundreds of local parents, teachers, students and community leaders at a bullying prevention summit Saturday to address the safety of Asian American, Pacific Islander and Muslim American students.2011-10-31 11:25:10.0White House battles bullying at UES summitAmerican,US,Asian,students,Muslim,bullyingWhite House battles bullying at UES summitWhite House battles bullying at UES summit10077075229Top News/enpproperty–>

The officials of the Obama administration met with hundreds of local parents, teachers, students and community leaders at a bullying prevention summit Saturday to address the safety of Asian American, Pacific Islander and Muslim American students.

Racial bullying [Photo: Hispanically Speaking News] 

These students are more likely to be targets of bullying than some of their counterparts, the DNAinfo.com reported.

White House officials said that nearly one-third of all school-aged children are bullied each year, or about 13 million students.

“Post 9/11, bias-based bullying toward religious and immigrant communities has been a consistent issue, and it continues to be under reported,” Thomas Mariadason, an attorney at the Manhattan-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said in a statement.

The day-long summit included a panel with representatives from Facebook, MTV and Common Sense Media, who discussed online bullying and how to stay safe on the Internet.

“We’ve seen the egregious effects bias-based harassment has on students when there is a failure to intervene, from the violence at South Philadelphia High School in 2009 to reports we received in years past from the former Lafayette High School in Brooklyn,” Mariadason said.

“The problem persists, and it is a critical time for the White House to address these issues” he said.

The event aims to raise awareness about harassment of Asian and Muslim Americans, encourage students, parents and advocates to report such incidents and discuss possible solutions, according to federal officials.

The city’s teachers union recently unveiled a new anti-bullying hotline for kids.

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2011-10/31/content_23772800.htm

Kelly Karius describes the No Such Thing as a Bully Program. This innovative, inexpensive and self-implemented program provides lesson plans for adults and handouts for students to strengthen communication skills in order to bullyproof our children. Moving away from using labels, the program addresses bully actions and victim responses, and provides a new definition for diagnosing bullying.

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At Orange High School in Pepper Pike, Ohio, students are mapping their school to locate the spaces where bullying takes place. After identifying the “bully hotspots,” including the cafeteria, media lab, and locker rooms, students created a flash freeze demonstration to raise awareness about bullying, and opened the conversation about how to create a safer school. To learn more about standing up to bullying visit Related links Orange High School: Faci

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The Children studying in the schools located in Massachusetts have been facing major bullying problems. In a new study, it has been confirmed that more than one-fourth of the total middle school children and around 16% of the children in the High School are regularly bullied.

The federal report has caused major concerns for the authorities, parents and children. During the study, the health authorities in Massachusetts for the first time ever included questions regarding the problems faced by children because of bullying. The main conclusion of the study was that there are behavioral and health damages done to the child. The violence at home and constant bullying makes the child more violent and destructive.

The Governor, Deval Patrick has introduced a law. According to the law, the bullying in schools has to be reported and investigated. The schools will be required to follow strict procedures to stop the bullying in their premises.

The authorities at the schools in the Massachusetts have assured that they will make sure that the bullying in the schools is immediately stopped. They also confirmed that they will work with the government officials to invent new preventive procedures for bullying. Hopefully the changes in the law will provide the required relief from bullying for the children, parents and authorities.

http://topnews.us/content/238957-bullying-schools-causes-concern

By
Fay Schlesinger and Hannah Roberts
Last updated at 11:53 AM on 4th April 2011

All smiles: Kate Middleton on her final day at St Andrew’s prep school in Pangbourne

Kate Middleton may have been forced to leave a leading public school by ‘insidious’ girls who wrote her off as skinny and meek, it has emerged.

The 29-year-old spent only two terms at Downe House before leaving in April 1996 for Marlborough College.

As a day girl, not a boarder, she was in the minority in the cliquey environment of a girls’ school, it is understood. And former pupils say her reticent manner and gangly appearance made her a sitting duck for more assertive classmates.

The revelations come ahead of a book which claims to lift the lid on why Miss Middleton’s parents withdrew her from Downe House, where fees are £10,000 a term.

But more lurid claims that female tormentors smeared the 13-year-old’s bed with excrement as part of a targeted hate campaign were last night denied by close friends of Prince William’s fianc

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ée.

Jessica Hay, who shared a dormitory with Miss Middleton after she moved to Marlborough at 14, is reported to have made the allegations when interviewed for the new biography.

Last night, she insisted that Miss Middleton confided in her about cruelty at Downe House during late-night heart-to-hearts.

‘She said that there was a group of girls that called her names and they stole her books and stuff – little things like that. They rounded up on her a bit because she was quite a soft and nice person…

‘When she used to go to lunch she would sit down with people and they all used to get up and sit on another table.’

But Miss Hay contradicted her reported claims about faeces when told that Miss Middleton normally made the journey home to Bucklebury in Berkshire each day – and was unlikely to have regularly used a bed at Downe House.

Lurid claims: Kate Middleton with Jessica Hay, right, who was interviewed for a book about Miss Middleton’s school days

Miss Hay, who has left her job  at a law firm to concentrate on selling her story, claimed she had been misquoted in a News Of The World story previewing the book, called Kate, which is due to be published by best-selling author Sean Smith on May 2.

She said: ‘I found it quite unfair. I didn’t even get any payment for it. My friends are going to be thinking, “She’s sold herself out”.’

Last month, the Mail revealed the significance of Miss Middleton’s decision to select an anti-bullying charity as a cause that ‘resonates’ with her and Prince William.

The inclusion of London-based Beatbullying in the couple’s new charitable foundation was understood to be a subtle admission that she, like two out of three pupils, suffered at the hands of bullies. One 29-year-old, who was in Miss Middleton’s year at Downe House, said this week: ‘Tall and shy – those were her most memorable attributes.

‘You didn’t get much impression of a personality really. She was unrecognisable as the person she is now.’ 

Another schoolmate said: ‘She was fairly quiet and very nice… She didn’t enjoy it because she was a day girl in a school that was 90 per cent boarders.’

And a third said she appeared to suffer from eczema, which is known to flare up when sufferers are stressed. This claim is thought to be backed up in the new book.

At the weekend Miss Middleton’s former headmistress insisted there was no ‘serious’ harassment, but described the ‘catty’ atmosphere and classroom pranks that could have left her feeling ‘like a fish out of water’.

Susan Cameron, who was in charge of Downe House for seven years, told The Mail On Sunday: ‘Yes, there would be teasing.

‘It’s all part of the normal competition of growing up, of establishing a pecking order.

‘I think it’s fair to say Kate was unsettled and not particularly happy’

Susan Cameron, former Downe House mistress

‘Girls are cliquey by nature and they can be rather cruel…They can sense those who are slightly weaker, or who haven’t shown their strengths yet, and it’s those girls who are likely to end up being picked on or teased.

‘Boys will have a bit of a spat and knock someone over but girls will be more insidious and catty. They know where it hurts. I’ve seen my fair share of that. Any school that says they don’t have any bullying at all is probably lying. It depends how you define it.’

‘I think it’s fair to say she was unsettled and not particularly happy. Maybe in Kate’s case she just kind of went quiet and didn’t say anything.’ 

Teenage kicks: Miss Middleton went on to much happier years at Marlborough. Here she is pictured at a house party with friends from the school in 2000

Miss Middleton had been content and popular as a boarder at St Andrew’s private school in Pangbourne until she was 13, before moving to Downe House in Cold Ash, Thatcham, near her parents’ home, in September 1995.

One source told Mr Smith: ‘In our peer group she was regarded as a nonentity. All the social-climbing girls – and there were lots of them at Downe House – thought she was not worth bothering with.’

Royal sources are furious that Miss Hay has made a series of dubious allegations. It was she who said that Miss Middleton had a poster of Prince William on her wall at school – which Miss Middleton denied in an interview last year.

A close friend of Miss Middleton’s said of Miss Hay last night: ‘She is not and never has been a friend. Many claims are just fantasies.’

St James’s Palace declined to comment.

MIDDLETONS REBRAND AMID CLAIMS THEY’RE ‘CASHING IN’

A number of seemingly wedding-related products have been removed from the Party Pieces website of Kate Middleton’s parents and rebranded.

Carole and Mike Middleton, pictured, have dropped products including royal-themed scratchcards and crowned corgi cupcake decorations.

They have also renamed the remaining ‘British Street Party’ products as the ‘Best of British Party’ range, in an apparent attempt to distance the products from the celebrations surrounding their daughter’s wedding.

British Street Party products went on sale only six weeks before the date of Miss Middleton’s upcoming marriage to Prince William.

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Kate Middleton reveals that she was a victim of bullying as a young teen. Middleton has a pet project, and that is to stop bullying because of her own experience. When she was thirteen-years-old, a group of girls bullied her so much that she was forced to leave school.

Bullying is such a problem, and it has not gone away. The soon- to-be Princess Catherine is telling how she suffered from bullies. She was a nice, sweet, pretty girl, and some girls at her school simply hated her for those qualities.

Kate Middleton has certainly come out on top of that situation. Just imagine those bullies on April 29TH as Kate marries Prince William and becomes Princess Catherine. This is a lesson for all teens and children who are being bullied. Remind them of this story of the little girl who became a princess, and bullies never win. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Photo: Wikimedia

http://celebs.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979184545

About one-third of elementary through high school students are affected by bullying at school. And more than half of students have been victims of cyber bullying, according to bullystatistics.org.

Some Murrieta students are well aware of the problem — because most can be counted among these percentages.

On Thursday night, the advanced drama class at Thompson Middle School presented “Bully Proof,” a 15-scene play they wrote and directed based on their experiences to help those in the community understand the many forms bullying can take.

Themes in the play included stereotyping, name calling and cyber bullying, as well as discrimination based on culture and sexual orientation.

Language arts and drama teacher Barbara Everett said she wanted to produce “a typical middle school play,” but the drama students were motivated to create an open dialogue about bullying among students, parents and the community after seeing the positive impact an anti-drug assembly had on students in November.

The success of that program “made the students gain confidence to tackle the bully issue,” Everett said. “The advanced drama students are a very creative, unique group of young people who are not afraid to speak out for what’s right, and most all of them have been teased and bullied at school.”

To prepare for the play, students spent two days in the library doing research before embarking on a five-week writing, producing and practicing schedule.

“The students are very serious and passionate about getting rid of bullying,” Everett said. “They are tired of seeing friends hurt or being hurt. Some even deleted their Facebook to stop ‘mean girl’ talk,” Everett said.

Eighth-grader Kiley Staufenbeil, who helped pen the scenes dealing with cyber bullying and bullying based on sexual orientation, feels the pain of those affected by bullying.

“I’m personally impacted by it so heavily because I see what it does to me and my friends,” Kiley said. “Bullying can lead to suicide. It’s gotten so much worse and it needs to be addressed now.”

Fellow eighth-grader Garrett Spejcher added to Kiley’s thoughts.

“Bullying is a major issue that’s addressed less than drug abuse and it shouldn’t be,” Garrett said. “It’s not funny and it needs to end. Bullying affects the victim, the community and even the bully, whether or not they realize it.”

Though Monique Suraci’s 13-year-old son, Anthony, was not in the play, she still felt it important to attend.

“Bullying just shouldn’t be happening, and I’m glad that the school is addressing it for all students to see,” Suraci said.

Eighth-grader Shad Church hoped the production would open parents’ eyes about the degree to which bullying affects youngsters.

“A lot of parents just don’t know what we go through,” Shad said. “They tell us to tell our teachers, but that’s not enough sometimes. Hopefully this play will help everyone see what it’s really like and stop kids from being bullied.”

Chad’s mother, Starla Church, agreed with her son.

“Hopefully this play will get out the message that it’s not OK to bully,” Church said. “Children shouldn’t feel threatened in what’s supposed to be a safe environment.”

Tiffany Austin-Suniga is a Press-Enterprise correspondent. Reach her at tiffany.austin@rocketmail.com

http://www.pe.com/localnews/murrieta/stories/PE_News_Local_S_sbully27.2249017.html

An Anti-Bullying song

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