Deerfield Beach, FL: Burn Victim Michael Brewer Speaks Out Against Bullying Boy Who Was Burned Calls Recovery 'Agony'

Cleveland, OH: Ohio school sued over suicide in bullying case

The Associated Press
Friday, August 20, 2010; 4:41 PM 

CLEVELAND -- The family of a 16-year-old girl who committed suicide is suing her Ohio school, accusing officials of failing to stop relentless bullying by classmates prior to her death.
The lawsuit says Sladjana Vidovic (sla-JANA' VID'-uh-vic) was verbally harassed and on one occasion pushed down a set of stairs at Mentor High School, about 20 miles northeast of Cleveland.
The family's attorney, Kenneth Myers, says Vidovic, whose parents are from Croatia, was teased about her heritage and accent. He said Vidovic became depressed over the bullying and hanged herself from her bedroom window on Oct. 2, 2008.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court seeks unspecified damages.
School superintendent Jacqueline Hoynes says the district will vigorously defend itself against the allegations.

Shreveport, LA: Mother: Teen was bullied for years

August 11, 2010

Police searching for Samuel 'Bubba' Anderson's killer
By Loresha Wilson
ljwilson@gannett.com

Gladys Walker saw police cars race up the street with flashing lights and sirens. Moments later, the phone rang and her husband asked "where is Bubba."

Walker's motherly instinct instantly told her something was wrong.

"I felt it," she said. "I didn't know what it was, but I just knew it. Eventually, I left home to see for myself, and I prayed all the way up Audrey Lane that nothing was wrong with my child."

About a mile away from Walker's north Shreveport residence, at the corner of Audrey Lane at Thomas E. Howard Drive, her son, Samuel "Bubba" Anderson, was lying in a vacant field, dead from multiple gunshot wounds. Police say a passer-by found the 16-year-old about 6:30 p.m. Aug. 1. He'd been there at least an hour.

For at least five years, the teen has been the subject of bullying, beatings and threats. Walker says she's made call after call to police seeking help for her child. In March, three carloads of teens pulled in front of the house looking for Anderson and nothing was done, the mother said.

"Samuel use to come home running every day saying 'Mama, they jumped me.' or "Mama, come pick me up. They trying to jump me,'" Walker said. "It had gotten so bad that I started telling him to try and stay close to home.

"I begged police for help. If they would have done it at first, my child wouldn't be dead."

Shreveport Police Chief Willie Shaw defends his department, saying policies and procedures are in place to delineate how officers respond to reported crimes. And he contends the officers act according to departmental guidelines.

"As I have said before, crimes like this are difficult to predict with any degree of accuracy; in other words, murders are not normally crimes that we can pattern by looking at emerging trends," Shaw said. "It is almost impossible to know when someone is going to pick up a gun or a knife and resolve a conflict, whether real or perceived, in a violent, criminal manner.

"However, we will continue our fight against violent crimes on several fronts, and our investigators will continue working tirelessly to determine who is responsible for the death of Samuel Anderson.

Shreveport police have responded to several calls for service at Walker's residence in the 2700 of Martin Luther King Drive. Authorities didn't release specifics on the calls but say they include reports of fights, shootings, harassing phone calls, juvenile complaints and warrant executions.

One report indicates that a juvenile, 16, punched his little brother in the mouth and in another report, one person who lives at the house, was arrested for illegal use of a weapon.

"Now those are the calls at her home," said Bill Goodin, spokesman for Shreveport police. "That does not mean she called and some of those are going to be self initiated calls where an officer got down at that location on a follow-up or a warrant execution."

Meanwhile, the investigation into Anderson's death continues. Detectives have interviewed numerous people and are still trying to identify the suspect or suspects involved.

Walker talked with investigators Monday and is confident they're doing what they can to find the person responsible for killing her child. She blames herself for not doing her part to protect him, but says this time she won't give up.

"Grant me, I'm not stopping," she said. "I'm not giving up until they catch the person who killed my baby."

School offered bully tracking

Friday, August 13, 2010

By FRED CONTRADA

fcontrada@repub.com

SOUTH HADLEY - A South Hadley High School alumnus is donating to his former school system a software program he designed to track bullying complaints.

Edward G. Wall, who graduated from the high school in 1988, said he formed Earshot Technologies and created the tracking software in response to the death of freshman Phoebe Prince and the subsequent turmoil over the school's handing of the situation.

Prince, 15, hanged herself in Jan. 14 following what investigators have said was several months of bullying and harassment by some classmates. Six former South Hadley High School students face criminal charges in connection with Prince.

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As Wall explained it, the software allows students, parents or anyone else to report bullying by accessing an on-line form. The schools can provide links to the system through the School Department website, the Internet social networking site, Facebook.com, or a number of other ways, Wall said.

Every teacher, guidance counselor and administrator who interacts with the student named on the form will immediately be texted and can add their own observations. The software will, thus, compile a comprehensive report that cites multiple sources.

"One of the big complaints (in the Prince situation) was the delay in time and who was notified and when," Wall said.

His application keeps track of those details so that school officials can say exactly when they learned of a certain situation and how they responded.

Critics of the school system contend that teachers and administrators failed to deal adequately with the situation in advance of Prince's suicide.

Following the deaths of Prince and Carl Walk-Hoover, an 11-year-old student at New Leadership Charter School in Springfield who hanged himself in 2009 after being bullied, the state Legislature passed a law mandating that every school system in Massachusetts come up with a plan for dealing with bullying.

South Hadley created an anti-bullying task force that met for several months. Among its areas of concern was creating a reporting system for bullying acts, preferably one that would allow people to remain anonymous. Along those lines, Wall came up with his Anti-Bullying Anonymous Incident Reporting and Management Application.

The cost of the software is $2,200, but Wall is donating it to South Hadley. He is also marketing the application to other school systems. Wall, who has been making his living as accountant and financial adviser, said he experienced bullying in school himself.

"I was able to handle it and move on," he said.

He hopes to create a fund with profits from his software to provide counseling for both victims and bullies whose families lack health insurance.

Charlottesville, VA: Did Depression or an Alleged Bully Boss Prompt Editor's Suicide?

Editor Made 18 Calls to University Before Committing Suicide

By RAY SANCHEZ

Aug. 19, 2010—

In the days before Kevin Morrissey committed suicide near the University of Virginia campus, at least two co-workers said they warned university officials about his growing despair over alleged workplace bullying at the award-winning Virginia Quarterly Review.
"I told them, 'I'm very concerned about Kevin; I'm afraid he might try to harm himself,'" said a colleague and friend of Morrissey, who asked not to be identified. "They asked me to clarify what I meant and I repeated that I was afraid he might harm himself. If someone had just done something."
On July 30, Morrissey, the review's 52-year-old managing editor, walked to the old coal tower near campus and shot himself in the head. Morrissey's death underscored the turmoil at the high-profile journal, according to co-workers.
Maria Morrissey said her brother's phone records showed that he placed at least 18 calls to university officials in the final two weeks of his life. The phone records, obtained by ABCNews.com, showed calls to the human resources department, the ombudsman, the faculty and employee assistance center, and the university president.
"Kevin was asking for help," said Maria Morrissey, who had been estranged from her brother in recent years, but has started looking into the circumstances of his death.
Morrissey's sister and co-workers acknowledged that he long suffered from depression. But they insisted that he took his life only after the university failed to respond to repeated complaints about alleged bullying by his boss, Ted Genoways. Other employees, they said, also complained about being bullied by the journal's top editor.
"Bullying seems to make it like some sort of schoolyard thing," said the colleague who asked not to be named. "It's really a much more subtle kind of erasure. 'I'm not going to talk to you. I'm going to come in the side office and shut the door. I will pretend you don't exist.' The university has these [human resources] people, but they don't do anything. After one of your colleagues has killed himself, it's beyond the point of mediation. They didn't protect us. We went again and again and again and they didn't protect us."
Genoways, who is highly regarded in literary circles, has denied the allegations of bullying. He said Morrissey's own depression prompted the suicide. "His long history of depression caused him trouble throughout his career, leading often to conflicts with his bosses," he said in a statement to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
In the statement, Genoways claimed that the university already "reviewed all the allegations being made against me and found them to be without grounds." A university spokeswoman said the investigation, including a financial audit of the magazine, was continuing.

A Suicide and Accusations of Workplace Bullying

On Aug. 1, two days after Morrissey's death, Genoways sent an e-mail informing friends and colleagues of the suicide and defending himself against the accusations of bullying.
Genoways said he had known Morrissey since 2000 and they had been close friends. When Genoways' son was born in 2002, the first flowers to arrive at the hospital were from Morrissey. He hired his friend as managing editor in 2004, Genoways wrote.
"But I never had any illusions about who Kevin was," he continued in the e-mail, which ABC News has obtained. "He was prickly, mercurial, often brooding."
Genoways said the two men basked in the small review's recent literary success, but that Morrissey had become withdrawn and "his mood darkened" in recent months, leading to strained relations with his boss.
Genoways wrote that Morrissey "felt less important to me professionally as our staff grew. I know that he came to feel trapped, paradoxically, by a job he considered too good to quit. As Kevin struggled through these issues, particularly in the last year, his work suffered and his demeanor, to my mind, was often unacceptable for the workplace. We feuded over this often, and the majority of the VQR staff sided with Kevin.
"That tension between my staff and me grew poisonous," he wrote.
"Kevin in particular had a history of disagreeing with his bosses, and now that I was the boss I should expect to be hated," Genoways wrote.
"I don't doubt that these conflicts fed Kevin's depression, but I cannot accept the final blame. ... I feel unspeakably saddened by Kevin's death, but I do not feel responsible," Genoways wrote.
Genoways' lawyer, Lloyd Snook, also defended his client, who he said was in contact with the human resources department regarding the work environment at the Virginia Quarterly Review.
"Any time there's a suicide, a lot of folks end up either looking in mirrors and saying to themselves, 'What could I have done differently?' or they end up looking for other people to blame," Snook told ABCNews.com. "There's a lot of that going around on both sides. It's obviously an intensely sad time."
Workplace bullying may be getting worse with the recession. In good times, abused workers simply walk out, said Gary Namie, a social psychologist and founder of the Washington-based Workplace Bullying Institute. But with high unemployment, many employees feel they must stay put.

The Issue of Workplace Bullying

"The story behind the story is the employer's failure to respond," Namie said. "They don't know what to do about it. We've come to realize that when the institution doesn't know what to do, by default it does nothing, and they worsen the problem."
Namie said University of Virginia officials contacted him about general bullying issues two years ago.
"They wanted a motivational speaker," he said, but the two sides were unable to agree on terms and Namie never spoke at the school. Wood could not confirm the school contacted Namie, but said a daylong university-wide workshop on workplace bullying was held in March 2009.
The university has launched an investigation into the allegations of bullying at the journal. In a statement, university spokeswoman Carolyn Wood declined to discuss "confidential personal matters" but added: "We can say unequivocally that before Mr. Morrissey's death, all Virginia Quarterly Review staff members had been working with human resources professionals to address issues within the VQR office."
"In the wake of Mr. Morrissey's death," the statement said, "the university continues to work with all members of the VQR staff to address and resolve these issues."
In Morrissey's case, co-workers said he appeared to become more despondent in recent months as his relationship with his boss and longtime close friend deteriorated with no solution in sight.
"I am convinced that the escalating events of the last two weeks of his life drove him to a point where he felt there was no relief available for him," the co-worker said.
Genoways had recently argued with Morrissey and another employee and banished the pair from the office for one week, ordering Morrissey to not communicate with any of his colleagues, according to co-workers.
At times, co-workers said, Genoways could be heard yelling at Morrissey behind closed doors. Other times, they said, the Genoways was openly dismissive of Morrissey.
Though the workplace tension at the journal had been mounting for years it seemed to escalate recently, even though Genoways was out of the office much of the time on a fellowship.
Genoways had his staff read and forward his e-mails, but about an hour before Morrissey killed himself, Genoways sent him an angry e-mail questioning his apparently tardy response to a Mexican journalist who was covering that country's drug wars who felt he was in mortal danger.
"But just so I'm clear: Why did it take you ten days to forward a message from someone asking our assistance with saving his life," Genoways demanded in his e-mail, of which ABC News has obtained a copy.
"Kevin had repeated meetings with people in human resources, the office of the university ombudsman and the president," the co-worker said. "Last spring, four staff members, including Kevin, went to the president's staff and told them that we were finding work conditions under Ted completely untenable. ...They sort of said, 'Oh, working with creative people is sometimes difficult.'"

Workplace Bullying Described as "Bullycide"

Experts acknowledge that it is nearly impossible to pinpoint what pushes a depressed person to the brink of suicide.
David Yamada, director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, studies workplace bullying. He said in the case of a suicide a confluence of factors -- including limited family support, isolation and work stress -- often contribute. He said experts call it "bullycide."
"Especially when someone takes their life, we don't know what may have pushed him over the top," he said. "One of the common scenarios in workplace bullying is that the offender often is very good at taking advantage of an individual's vulnerabilities to the point where their health is impaired. Thanks goodness it doesn't usually result in someone committing suicide."
Yamada said he was not familiar with the details of Morrissey's death, but said, "I would hope that we at least evaluate this tragedy in light of what we do know about workplace bullying, which does suggest that bullying-related suicide is at least a plausible scenario."
Maria Morrissey, who obtained her brother's phone records and checked his home computer after his death, said she suspected that her brother felt increasingly isolated in those final weeks. He made 18 calls to university officials, she said. He checked his home computer for extended-stay hotels in the area, she said. She said he repeatedly marked the pages of the book, "Working with the Self-Absorbed: How to Handle Narcissistic Personalities on the Job," by Nina Brown. "He was anxious about his job," she said. "He doesn't know why he's in trouble. He's got a condo that he's got a mortgage for. He got a new car that he's got a note for. He doesn't have a college degree and there aren't a whole lot of jobs for the managing editor of some literary journal. He's looking at having to uproot his entire life if he doesn't get help. He found himself utterly trapped."
According to his sister, Morrissey typed his suicide note on his home computer which read, "I'm sorry. I know she won't understand this, but I just couldn't bear it anymore." Maria Morrissey, who is thinking about suing the university, said the note referred to a longtime friend from Minnesota.
Morrissey called the police to report the shooting before actually taking his own life.

For victims, bullying is ‘living hell'

St. Mary's schools start prevention effort this year

Friday, Aug. 6, 2010

By JESSE YEATMAN

Staff writer

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by REID SILVERMAN Superintendent Michael Martirano makes a presentation Wednesday on a bullying prevention and community awareness initiative at the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center.  E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Jodee Blanco, author of the book "Stop Laughing at Me," speaks about some of the embarrassing moments during her school years.

Jodee Blanco says she was picked on mercilessly during her middle and high school years. She turned that experience into a book that has aided a national movement to prevent bullying in schools.

Blanco related her personal stories Wednesday to an audience of educators, parents and students at the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center in Leonardtown at the kickoff event of a new bullying prevention and community awareness initiative for the upcoming school year.

"I was the kid that nobody wanted to hang out with. I cried myself to sleep," Blanco said. "My adolescence was a living hell."

She candidly recalled incidents of her school years in suburban Chicago: A dissected piglet was thrown at her face. Students threw her down and stuffed snow in her throat. Countless times, she was bullied in the hallway or cafeteria.

At one point during those years, Blanco said she stopped eating and dropped to a dangerously low weight. She also stopped washing her hair and her face, thinking of herself as invisible to her peers and the rest of the world.

She said that these feelings stayed with her into her adulthood, even after becoming a successful celebrity publicist. But after the shooting in 1999 at Columbine High School in Denver, where two students killed 12 other students and a teacher before shooting themselves, Blanco realized she wanted to write about her hard times in school.

"I understand what could have drove those boys to that desperate place in their minds," she said, relating an incident where as a student Blanco's mother discovered a kitchen knife stowed away in her book bag one morning while she was getting ready to go to school.

She said she in no way condones violence, but that stopping bullying can help prevent violent retaliations in schools.

After publication of her memoir, "Please Stop Laughing at Me … One Woman's Inspirational Story," e-mails and letters began pouring in from students around the nation who faced bullying and, in some cases, were contemplating suicide, Blanco said.

She began touring to schools and working on ways to prevent bullying. She has since written a follow-up book, "Please Stop Laughing at Us."

Blanco will speak to all St. Mary's public school employees on a staff development day later this month, and will also make presentations at four of the county's middle schools and an evening parent presentation at 6 p.m. on Sept. 9 at Leonardtown High School.

"It's not just joking around. You are damaging each other for the rest of your lives," Blanco said. "I will never be whole inside because of how my classmates treated me."

For targets of bullying, "the hallways at school are terrifying because that's where everybody lets loose," she said. In class before a teacher arrives, student can torment others when adults aren't looking, she warned.

According to a St. Mary's survey last school year, about 18 percent of middle school students surveyed said they were bullied. Nearly 70 percent say they have witnessed others being bullied.

Bullying most frequently was reported in the hallways of schools, followed by in the cafeteria, gym and classrooms. The survey showed that more than half of students disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement: "Students respect other students perceived as different."

About half of the students say they intervene when they witness bullying; 80 percent say adults take action to stop bullying.

Often it is not the actual bully who can cause the most pain, Blanco said; it is the other students who sit by and watch it happen and laugh at another's misfortune. She called such people cowards.

"Coward is the worst thing you can be, because your whole life will be regret," she said.

Blanco urged children to reach out to students who don't fit in and offer them kind words, a place to sit or even friendship.

"Bullying isn't just the mean things you do, it's all the nice things you don't do," she said.

Blanco's story ended happily. She said she attended a high school reunion recently and accepted apologies from some of the primary bullies from her school years. She said she also has since married the school's heartthrob, on whom she had a crush throughout most of her school years.

But she remembers the pain. "It doesn't matter why you laugh at somebody. Being laughed at stinks," she said.

School Superintendent Michael Martirano and Michael Wyant, St. Mary's public schools director of safety and security, launched the bullying prevention initiative this school year to address "what's occurring not only in our schools, but our community, our homes, whether it be in person or by the computer," Wyant said.

To students in the room and elsewhere, school board chair Bill Mattingly said, "You're going to have to make some tough choices … reach out to someone and get some advice, get some help, because the bullying issue goes well beyond your high school years."

"The bully never remembers, but the outcasts never forget," Martirano said, quoting from Blanco's book.

Martirano said now more than ever bullying needs to be addressed because it spills out from schools and can reach children even in the relative safety of their own homes through the Internet.

"Young people should never suffer in silence," Martirano said.

jyeatman@somdnews.com

Expert Advice: Taking a Stand Against Bullying

By Debra Dibartolo Aug 5th 2010 11:29AM

A mother is suing a local school district for not protecting her special-needs son from being bullied on the school bus. The news article reports that students kicked and pushed the child, made threatening stabbing motions toward him with a pen, beat him and threw him to the floor, where he was hit in the head and shoulders. I wasn't there, but from what I have heard, this was much more than schoolyard bullying -- this was criminal. However, this sort of violence can be the result of unchecked bullying.

Adults must intervene before another school year starts and the victims of bullying suffer in silence, or we lose another child to suicide because he or she can no longer tolerate being bullied. Parents, educators, law enforcement and legislators should discuss the definition of bullying as well as the proper and effective types of intervention for both bullies and their victims.

It's important to note that teasing is different from bullying. When children tease each other, no one is emotionally, spiritually or physically hurt. All participants see it as playful and humorous. This is the normal behavior of children. 

Bullying, however, involves an imbalance of power. A child bullies another child to establish dominance over him or her. The bullied child isn't having fun -- this is not mutual playfulness. These cruel and hurtful acts require consistent and immediate adult intervention. Physical violence is one step beyond bullying. When a child assaults another child, as occurred on that school bus, I must wonder why no juvenile delinquency charges were reported or filed. Hitting and physically attacking another person is illegal. 

Bullying is an epidemic that can turn violent and has serious effects on those involved. Both the child who has been bullied and the bully can suffer significant, prolonged consequences. Victims may struggle with low self-esteem,depression, impaired academic performance, gastrointestinal distress, suicide and homicide. The bully suffers as well and needs help, too. Reports show that bullies suffer from conduct disorders and school delinquency. They often drop out, are unable to hold jobs and fail in personal relationships. 

Bullying must never be tolerated, ignored or mistaken for playful teasing. Adults must intervene when bullies victimize other children. As a parent or concerned citizen, you can make a difference. Let your school know your concerns, and make sure that they have a strong, effective plan that is ready to be implemented before the school year begins. That way, what happened on that school bus will not happen in your community.

 

Viral Cyberbullying: Who's to Blame for Jessi Slaughter's Online Infamy

July 22, 2010 11:56 PM

A young girl who goes by the screenname Jessi Slaughter has become part of the Internet zeitgeist through a series of viral videos in which she lashes out against bullies.

The  videos were originally created and posted, according to Jessi, as a response to online bullies who called her names and accused the 11-year-old girl of being raped by a friend. In them she uses profane language and gestures and makes violent threats against her so-called online "haters." 

These videos, which subsequently went viral with the aid of malicious message boards like 4chan, lead to a new flood of taunts and threats against Jessi and her family.  In one video, the girl  has a “virtual meltdown” appearing increasingly enraged and emotionally distraught -- her father even joins in an attempt to end the tormenting, promising “consequences” for those who continue to harass his daughter.

The viral videos have lead to hundreds of parodies, response videos, and even merchandise like t-shirts and mugs quoting the girl and her father.  Jokes aside, Jessi’s parents claim the family receives dozens of threatening calls and e-mails everyday and Florida police have began an investigation into whether this is a case of cyberstalking or cyberbullying. 

So tonight we ask, who do you think is responsible for the negative attention being thrust upon the 11-year-old? 

Op-Ed New York Times: There’s Only One Way to Stop a Bully

By SUSAN ENGEL and MARLENE SANDSTROM

Williamstown, Mass.

HERE in Massachusetts, teachers and administrators are spending their summers becoming familiar with the new state law that requires schools to institute an anti-bullying curriculum, investigate acts of bullying and report the most serious cases to law enforcement officers.

This new law was passed in April after a group of South Hadley, Mass., students were indicted in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl, Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide. To the extent that it underlines the importance of the problem and demands that schools figure out how to address it, it is a move in the right direction. But legislation alone can’t create kinder communities or teach children how to get along. That will take a much deeper rethinking of what schools should do for their students.

It’s important, first, to recognize that while cellphones and the Internet have made bullying more anonymous and unsupervised, there is little evidence that children are meaner than they used to be. Indeed, there is ample research — not to mention plenty of novels and memoirs — about how children have always victimized one another in large and small ways, how often they are oblivious to the rights and feelings of others and how rarely they defend a victim.

In a 1995 study in Canada, researchers placed video cameras in a school playground and discovered that overt acts of bullying occurred at an astonishing rate of 4.5 incidents per hour. Just as interesting, children typically stood idly by and watched the mistreatment of their classmates — apparently, the inclination and ability to protect one another and to enforce a culture of tolerance does not come naturally. These are values that must be taught.

Yet, in American curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as the primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others.

What’s more, the danger of anti-bullying laws, which have now been passed by all but six states, is that they may subtly encourage schools to address this complicated problem quickly and superficially. Many schools are buying expensive anti-bullying curriculum packages, big glossy binders that look reassuring on the bookshelf and technically place schools closer to compliance with the new laws.

But our research on child development makes it clear that there is only one way to truly combat bullying. As an essential part of the school curriculum, we have to teach children how to be good to one another, how to cooperate, how to defend someone who is being picked on and how to stand up for what is right.

To do this, teachers and administrators must first be trained to recognize just how complex children’s social interactions really are. Yes, some conflict is a normal part of growing up, and plenty of friendly, responsible children dabble in mean behavior. For these children, a little guidance can go a long way. That is why the noted teacher and author Vivian Paley once made a rule that her students couldn’t exclude anyone from their play. It took a lot of effort to make it work, but it had a powerful impact on everyone.

Other children bully because they have emotional and developmental problems, or because they come from abusive families. They require our help more than our punishment.

The kind of bullying, though, that presents the most difficulty in figuring out how and when to intervene falls between these two extremes: Sometimes children who aren’t normally bullies get caught up in a larger culture of aggression — say, a clique of preadolescent girls who form a club with the specific function of being mean to other girls. Teachers must learn the difference between various sorts of aggressive behaviors, as well as the approaches that work best for each.

Most important, educators need to make a profound commitment to turn schools into genuine communities. Children need to know that adults consider kindness and collaboration to be every bit as important as algebra and reading. In groups and one-on-one sessions, students and teachers should be having conversations about relationships every day. And, as obvious as it might sound, teachers can’t just preach kindness; they need to actually be nice to one another and to their students.

Teachers also need to structure learning activities in which children are interdependent and can learn to view individual differences as unique sources of strength. It’s vital that every student, not just the few who sign up for special projects or afterschool activities, be involved in endeavors that draw them together.

Look at Norway, where the prevention of such incidents became a major emphasis of the school system after three teenage victims of bullying committed suicide in 1983. There, everyone gets involved — teachers, janitors and bus drivers are all trained to identify instances of bullying, and taught how to intervene. Teachers regularly talk to one another about how their students interact. Children in every grade participate in weekly classroom discussions about friendship and conflict. Parents are involved in the process from the beginning.

Norway’s efforts have been tremendously effective. The incidence of bullying fell by half during the two-year period in which the programs were introduced. Stealing and cheating also declined. And the rate of bullying remains low today. Clearly, when a school and a community adopt values that are rooted in treating others with dignity and respect, children’s behavior can change.

Indeed, our analysis of successful bullying-prevention programs across the United States and abroad reveals that the key common factor is their breadth: both in terms of the people who participate and of the deep connection between specific policies and the larger social ethos of the school community.

Involving the legal system makes a strong statement that a society won’t tolerate bullying. But for laws like the one in Massachusetts to succeed, they have to be matched by an educational system that teaches children not only what’s wrong, but how to do what’s right.

Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the teaching program at Williams College, where Marlene Sandstrom is a professor of psychology.

Parents can help prevent bullying

Friday, July 16, 2010  02:52 AM

Bullying is a form of intimidation, and it's not limited to a specific demographic.

It's found among all groups, ages and both genders, regardless of family income.

There's almost always one common thread: disrespect for those considered to be different, unworthy and not deserving of rights and privileges of the "in group.

" Like all predators, bullies seek out the weakest among their classmates and neighbors. Taunts can leave lifelong emotional scars and can even be deadly.

Reports of school bullying vary by buildings and levels and appear to be highest between fourth and eighth grades - the middle-school years, where it has been known to affect nearly 80 percent of students.

Bullying is learned behavior, and, fortunately, it can be unlearned. It must be addressed in its early stages by those in authority: parents, teachers and, if necessary, juvenile courts.

Playground bullies may receive rough justice because others may be nastier. But there's a new type of bullying, cyber-bullying, and it involves cowardly behavior. While playground bullies often use physical aggression, cyber-bullies are more insidious with name-calling and malicious gossip.

Last January, Phoebe Prince, a high-school student in Massachusetts, hanged herself. She was a recent immigrant from Ireland and had no friends. Five students, two males and three females, were arrested on criminal charges because, prosecutors said, they harassed Phoebe through text messages, calling her vile names and driving her to suicide.

The district attorney accused Phoebe's teachers and school administrators of being derelict. But the parents weren't considered complicit. Thus, those who should have the most control over their youngsters weren't charged.

Thankfully, most victims of bullies don't end up dead. But children who have been bullied, both physically and emotionally, often can recall feelings of worthlessness years later. These memories can be painful and contribute to serious problems as adults.

Childhood bullies will become adult bullies unless they learn other, socially acceptable ways to satisfy their need for power and attention. Some authorities find those who bully and are bullied are at risk of loneliness, troubled friendships, poor school work and problem behaviors such as smoking and drinking. Thus, both the bullied and the bullies can be victims.

Parents bear some responsibility when cyber-bullying originates from school sites.

School personnel are responsible for informing students and parents of policies regarding behavior at school. They're obligated to enforce rules and provide instruction to students on preventing bullying and to teach bullies alternate behaviors and attitudes.

But parents have major responsibility for their children. They can show them, by their words and deeds, respect for all people. Powerful learning occurs through observing and practicing behavior - good and bad.

How to help potential bullies and their victims? Teach youngsters to respect others and how to cope with bullies through group counseling in elementary and middle schools. Parents need to listen to and observe their children for signs that they are fearful and feel intimidated or are too aggressive. And seek help early. The Ohio Department of Education's website provides bullying-prevention help in the Learning Supports section under Safe and Supportive Learning.

Bullying always will exist to some degree. Antidotes include showing respect for others and helping those who may be followers to gain the self-confidence to do the right thing. Acceptable behavior starts with adults because children imitate what we do and say. Adults' examples help our young form the foundation for good and bad behavior in school and in life.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.

etstephens@copper.net