School Bullying Council

It is to stop bullying its very bad and mean to bully

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A Nebraska school district wants a 3-year-old deaf boy to change the way he signs his name because they say the gesture makes his hands look like weapons, the boy’s family claims. 

The district, in Grand Island, about three hours west of Omaha, has a policy that forbids kids bringing to school “any instrument … that looks like a weapon,” local station KOLN reported.

According to the report, Hunter Spanjer signs his name by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then wagging his hands, which the school says is not appropriate.

“Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way,” his grandmother, Janet Logue, told KOLN.

NCN via YouTube

Brian Spanjer demonstrates how his son Hunter signs his name.

“It’s a symbol,” his father, Brian Spanjer, added. “It’s an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E.,” or Signing Exact English, a sign language system.

A school spokesman called the issue a “misunderstanding” and said it had  nothing to do with guns or weapons. 

The name gesture was “not an appropriate thing to do in school,” and administrators were asking Hunter to spell his name out, letter-by-letter, instead of using the sign, spokesman Jack Sheard told the Daily News.  

“We want to do what is best for every student in our district, and we care more about that than everything else,” Sheard said. “We are working with the parents to find the best solution we can.” 

Locals think the school should leave the tyke alone.

“It’s his name. It’s not like he’s going to bring a gun to school when he’s 3-years old,” Grand Islander Dana Schwieger fumed.

NCN via YouTube

Hunter Spanjer signing with family members. ‘”Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous,’ his grandmother said about the school’s concerns.

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Written by

Tony Smith

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Photo Gallery: See Something? Say Something? Slogan

Winston-Salem, NC – With school approaching, the 10 or 15 minute school bus ride can determine the rest of a child’s day.

“If its chaos…if they are afraid and if they are being picked on. And what about the child who says they are walking and doesn’t come to school,” said Rhonda fleming, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

Winston-Salem Forsyth county schools placing anti-bullying ads on their buses using the slogan, See something? Say Something?

Kids will be able to call the number on the ad to report bullying.
The anti-bullying stickers were purchased as apart of the bullying curriculum which is funded by the school district. This is a perfect time to remind you at home to slow down when buses are present. And when stop arm is extended to put on the brakes.

According to Forsyth School officials, our school district has had Bullying Awareness committee since 2010. It started when the district rolled out “Rachel’s Challenge” in an effort to educate students, parents and the community on what is bullying, its affects and what to do about it.

There is a national bullying curriculum for all school bus drivers and their slogan is “SEE SOMETHING. DO SOMETHING.” (See this link for more about the curriculum/training.)

The Winston/Forsyth County School District, held training for all school bus drivers last week on being aware of bullying and reporting it to school administration right away and general student management.

The district’s data indicated their are “hot spots” in every school system such as hallways, stairwells, playgrounds and buses. So, transportation officials decided to make available the number on the school bus to add to resources available to help us stop bullying.

The ads, would allow both the victim to report it and any witnesses.

“Sometimes children lack the confidence to stand up for themselves, we have to help them until they are able to help themselves. Other students can help us stop bullying by reporting it,” said Fleming.

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article/241936/57/See-Something-Say-Something-Anti-Bullying-Ads

newfags can’t triforce 4chan trolling. This is meant as a response to BG Kumbi’s story dealing with bullying/cyberbullying. I’m here to show my support for BG Kumbi because me and my son “Newfag’s can’t triforce kid” go through this every day online and offline. The biggest cyberbully has been Shane Dawson so far because he makes videos that involve making fun of people sometimes. please like this on reddit. It’s my second favorite site next to funnyjunk and 9gag.

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The high-profile documentary “Bully,” released in limited U.S. cities Friday, features Sioux City’s decade-long anti-bullying program and a Sioux City student who moved after being harassed repeatedly, especially on the school bus.

The Sioux City district plans to show the film at schools, incorporating a curriculum now under development, said spokeswoman Alison Benson. Other Iowa districts are weighing use of the film as a teaching tool.

The film follows the stories of five bullying victims. “Bully” shows Alex Libby, who has Asperger’s syndrome, a type of autism, when he was a seventh-grader at Sioux City East Middle School. The filmmakers recorded a student smashing Alex’s head into a bus seat in 2009.

The documentary shows Alex’s mother, Jackie Libby, telling school officials: “He is not safe on that bus.”

It also portrays Sioux City officials as downplaying the threat.

“I’ve been on that bus,” a school assistant principal responds. “They are just as good as gold.”

The Libby family has since moved to Oklahoma.

Benson said the Sioux City district has been a national leader in the fight against bullying. But, she added, “You cannot say bullying doesn’t exist in schools.”

“We knew something might come up,” Benson said of the production crews’ visits to three Sioux City schools. “But we thought it was more important to have the conversation nationally about bullying than to worry about what might be filmed.”

That’s why the district is looking to arrange viewings at schools.

“Children need to have a deep conversation,” Benson said. “It’s a community-based issue. Any school that shows this film should talk with the children about what they saw and what they can do.”

The movie, directed by Lee Hirsch, originally received an “R” rating for profanity, leading to petition drives and appeals by Hollywood stars. Now it’s unrated, but that means many chain movie theaters won’t show it.

The trailer says 13 million kids will be bullied in the United States this year.

“The problem is real,” the narrator says. “The problem is being ignored.”

The film shows parents in various school districts pleading for their children’s safety, and officials making assurances that all is OK.

“Kids will be kids. Boys will be boys. They are just cruel at this age,” an official says. A parent describes a student getting punched, strangled and sat on. The film shows some of this.

Benson has seen the documentary three times, but won’t comment on whether she considers it fair to Sioux City’s schools. A special screening there Nov. 1 drew 1,600 people.

No release planned in Iowa for a while

It was unclear Friday when the movie will next be shown in Iowa. Fleur Cinema general manager John Peterson said the Des Moines theater hopes to show the film if it’s offered.

“If I had to take a guess today, I would say Des Moines might get it in late April or early May,” Peterson said.

If the film’s box office results are huge this weekend, the Weinstein Co. may want to expand the film to 800 screens quickly, Peterson said. If not, it may hit only 20 theaters.

Peterson said the ratings controversy has spurred interest, and he has received quite a few phone calls and emails asking about the film.

The Varsity Theater in Des Moines also hopes to show the film, said owner Denise Mahon.

The Sioux City district worked with Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention in South Dakota for 12 years on anti-bullying efforts, receiving a prize from the institute recently.

As part of the effort, the district hosted Kirk and Laura Smalley, parents of 11-year-old Ty Field, another of the five bullying victims featured in the film. The Oklahoma boy shot himself after he was bullied. Two of the five students featured in the film killed themselves.

A boy had bullied Ty his entire sixth-grade year. As the school year wound down in 2010, the bully picked on Ty, who was sitting on bleachers with friends before school, according to media reports. Ty shoved back and got suspended.

His mother took him home and told him to do his chores and homework.

Instead, the boy took a .22-caliber pistol into his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head.

The grieving parents formed Stand for the Silent to battle bullying.

State law requires reports on bullying

The Iowa Legislature in 2007 passed a law that requires districts to report bullying and what action was taken.

Bryce Amos, Des Moines schools’ executive director for learning services and secondary schools, said the district has no plans to use the documentary, but thought its distribution could help.

“The more people are aware of what’s going on, and how it can hurt kids, the better for us,” he said.

The district investigates all allegations of bullying, he said. In extreme cases, bullies are suspended. In fewer than 10 cases in the past four years, bullies have been reassigned to a different school, he said.

Des Moines, which has a middle school and high school anti-bullying curriculum, has no plans to show the film, but officials hope students, parents and others will be able to see the film locally, said district spokesman Phil Roeder.

Students at Merrill Middle School in Des Moines last month produced their own short films and public service announcements on how to handle bullying, Roeder said.

West Des Moines schools don’t plan to show the documentary this year, but might next year after reviewing the content, said spokeswoman Lauri Pyatt.

Mom: Film’s director feared for son’s safety

Jackie Libby recalls that she and her husband, Philip, once found their son Alex passed out in the front yard of their Sioux City home.

“He said some boys were slamming his head into a seat on the bus,” Jackie said. “We thought he made it up.”

Then Lee Hirsch, director of the documentary “Bully,” showed them a few seconds of footage showing Alex being assaulted by other students. “He feared for Alex’s safety,” Jackie said.

They learned that Alex had interrupted a school bus ride to tell a fellow student he hoped to be friends. The classmate not only firmly declined the invitation but also told Alex he would kill him with a knife and assault him with a broom handle, Jackie said in an interview Friday.

“He was assaulted every day,” and the Sioux City district didn’t do enough to stop it, Libby said from the family’s new home in Edmond, Okla.

“Bully,” released on Friday, shows a student slamming Alex’s head into a bus seat. The family asked for the school district’s camera footage from the bus and were told the camera wasn’t working. But a camera installed by the producers of “Bully” caught the whole thing.

“When we looked back on it, we just made so many mistakes because we didn’t know what was going on,” Jackie said. “We thought he was coming into being a teenager. We thought he was being mouthy and secretive and rebellious, but really he was just trying to cover up what was happening in school because he was embarrassed.”

Alex’s grades fell from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s. He switched schools last fall in Sioux City, partway through his freshman year, and things were better, Jackie said. But the family still decided it was time to leave.

He has not faced abuse in Oklahoma, where school officials take a hard-line stance, she said, and his grades have skyrocketed.

At Sioux City, “We were treated like they wanted us to go away,” Jackie said. “They treated us like it wasn’t a problem. They wanted us to go somewhere else.”

Eventually, Alex told his parents the abuse had been going on since the beginning of sixth grade. His Asperger’s syndrome made it tough on him socially, his mother said.

Jackie said millions of children are being bullied, and their parents often don’t know. She hopes the documentary helps. “My son was assaulted every day,” Jackie said. “And we sent him into that. We felt horrible.”

Sioux City Superintendent Paul Gausman, who wasn’t available Friday, has shared statistics showing students in the district who witness bullying are now more likely to intervene.

“I am proud of our efforts,” he writes on the district’s website. “I am proud of our team’s willingness to do the work, and I welcome the conversation about where we have found success and where we can grow even stronger for each and every student.”

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120331/NEWS/303310024/1041/LIFE01/?odyssey=nav%7Chead

It didn’t take long once Gurbaksh Chahal’s family emigrated from India to San Jose, Calif., for bullies to target him. “Kindergarten was my first reality check that I looked physically different,” Chahal says. Kids started trying to hit the turban off his head when he was 5, and the bullying intensified through middle school and high school. “It got more personal with name-calling and more threatening, violent,” he recalls. “As time went on, it got rougher and rougher. A 5-year-old bully is very different from a 15-year-old bully.”

With no friends to hang out with, Chahal had the spare time to work side jobs and make thousands of dollars buying low and selling high — he’d buy refurbished printers from a local flea market for $50 and sell them on eBay for up to $200. He used that money to capitalize a startup, ClickAgents, at age 16, sold that business for $40 million. Then he started his second business, an online advertising company, BlueLithium, which he sold to Yahoo for $300 million in 2007. His latest business, RadiumOne, is an advertising network harnessing social interaction data. Accomplishing all this before age 30, Chahal proves sometimes bullied kids do get the last laugh.

How did your grandmother help you cope with being bullied?

The bullying got progressively worse through middle school to the point I had to make a choice, which is that I probably was not going to make friends. So I looked to my grandmother for moral support. We had a very close relationship, and when I’d come home with my turban in hand, she would comfort me and tell me things will get better, that I’m a great son and a good person. Some of those things I just needed to hear from her — it would give me strength to go to school the next day.

I realized I’m different — so what? I can go ahead and focus on real things, such as what I wanted to do with my life. Not having the distractions in my life that a normal 16-year-old would allowed me to mature a lot quicker and fall in love with business.

So starting a business also helped you get more confident?

I was definitely an introvert. I wouldn’t be the type of guy who could go in front of the class and give a speech, per se. But now I love to have an audience. When you’re confident in something, you start to become an extrovert. Through my experience as an entrepreneur, I’m a very different person now than I was as a 16-year-old. You have choices to make — one is to give up and be an introvert and let it eat you alive, or the other is to be confident knowing that you’re put on this earth for a reason. Bullying just gives you the strength to figure out what that reason is earlier in life, and that’s the biggest gift I’ve had — to figure that out at 16.

That’s when you quit high school?

There was a method and timing to that. It’s not like I just decided to drop out of high school because I was getting picked on. I spent hours in the library and computer lab, researching the Internet, and was fascinated with what was going on with the dot-com boom. I forgot I was 16, and basically said I want to be part of it, so I started a business from my bedroom. When my company hit $100,000 in sales, I asked my parents if I could quit high school. Had I not had a successul business in three months, I would have been in high school, gone to college, all the normal stuff. But I put myself out there. When you’re passionate about something, you figure out ways to make it successful. I had more money at 18 than I could dream of.

Why do you think selling your second company to Yahoo for $300 million meant so much to your father?

For my father, it was a sense of achievement the second time around. With my first company, you could say it was just luck, but when I did it twice, and the second one became an even bigger entity, he realized his son had achieved something: the American dream.

Did your experiences getting bullied help you deal with challenges in business?

I’m a very different person than who I was as a kid. I have the courage to overcome a lot both professionally and personally. I would go through all those struggles again, because it makes you a stronger human being.

What would you say kids who are getting bullied now?

Accept the fact that you’re different, and use your strength to figure out who you’re going to be in this world. Being the prom king or queen — all that stuff just fades. The broader purpose is what you do with your life. People like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs did so well in life not because they were the rock stars in their school, but because they were very different. Being different is cool. Being different actually gives you a canvas on which you can paint who you are and what you want to be vs. trying to fit in and be something you’re not.

Entrepreneur Spotlight

Name: Gurbaksh Chahal
Company: RadiumOne
Age: 29
Location: San Francisco
Founded: 2009
Employees: 150
2012 Projected Revenue: Undisclosed
Website: www.radiumone.com

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/29/gurbaksh-chahal-radiumone_n_1376013.html