City of Calgary Declares Bullying Awareness Week

Bill Belsey, President of Bullying.org sent me the proclamation that the city of Calgary, CANADA made formally recognizing Bullying Awareness Week. Congratulations Bill for having  your hard work pay off. Also, I salute Calgary for taking this stand. Hopefully more cities will follow suit.

City of Calgary Formally Recognizes Bullying Awareness Week

November 13, 2009

Proclamation

Bullying is a conscious, willful, deliberate, hostile and repeated

behaviour by one or more people, which tries to hurt or control another

person in a harmful way. Bullying happens in many forms, it can be

physical, verbal nonverbal, malicious gossiping, racial and sexual

harassment, cyberbullying and exclusion. Bullying Awareness Week is an

opportunity for people at the grassroots level in communities to get

involved and to prevent bullying through education and awareness.

Whereas: Approximately 85 per cent of bullying episodes occur in the

context of a peer group;

Whereas: Bullying is a universal problem that affects people directly or

indirectly, regardless of their age, gender, culture, religion or

nationality;

Whereas: By age 24, 60 per cent of people who were childhood bullies

have at least one criminal conviction.

On behalf of City Council and the citizens of Calgary, I hereby proclaim

the week of November 15 – 21, 2009 as: ”Bullying Awareness Week”

Dave Bronconnier

Mayor

City of Calgary

Cyberbullying Origin: The Telephone

As happens quite often with this little blog I started, stories come back to me at the strangest times. I was doing some research on cyberbullying issues and it struck me that, by definition, cyberbullying started back in my day with the telephone.

I recall just about 6th or 7th grade that the telephone became a central component to my teen communication. This was well before the advent of email, IM, and the cell phone. This was the good ole’ hard plugged telephone in the house. My friends would call and we’d talk for hours on the telephone. We only had one line and no way to leave a message when someone was on the phone, so this usually did not please my parents very much.

Back around 5th or 6th grade I became a latch key kid, having to come home by myself while both my parents worked. This seemed OK to me, because I got to watch TV most of the afternoon. One day, I recall, the phone rang and I picked it up and said “Hello”.

Heavy breathing was all I heard on the other end of the phone. I said “hello” again and then “again”. Just more heavy breathing. Then ‘CLICK’ and the phone hung up. Admittedly, this was not all that untypical of a prank call. I didn’t sweat it too much, but then the phone rang again. Heavy breathing. Hung up. Then the phone rang again. Heavy breathing. Hung up. Then again, this time, heavy breathing and someone said with a low voice “you are dead”. Then they hung up.

All by myself in the house, I was scared. No doubt. That was the end for that day, but then it would happen again. Sometimes the things said would be more drawn out. Sometimes just heavy breathing. Given the fact that it was anonymous and using technology to bully, this, to me, is the original cyberbullying. I knew it was someone who knew me, but would never know who did it. It was scary and every time the phone rang for the next several years, I hoped and prayed it wasn’t another one of these calls.

I can’t say they happened that often. But when it started, it would go on for a week or so. Now, kids use computers, set up fake identities and bully. Most kids don’t even know it’s happening to them until much later and after they have disclosed person information. It’s hard enough growing up, no doubt. Living in fear from anonymous bullies that you can’t even face is even tougher.

Take the Jaylens Challenge

Through my friends at Bullybust, I came across a brave young man’s website and his challenge to solve bullying.

Jaylen's Challenge

His cause and story is one close to my heart. Jaylen is a young man who suffers from Tourette Syndrome and consequently suffers with bullying at school. He bravely has started a website to try to stop bullying in schools by distributing information and educating schools and children.

I sympathize with his story, because one of my son suffers from very mild Tourettes. Although it has not affected him socially, it was a worry for us when he was young and his ticks were more pronounced.  Jaylen’s mission statement says he wants to end childhood bullying. Certainly a lofty goal and one I support for him fully.

You can read all about Jaylen Arnold’s Challenge and maybe help him meet his goal by checking out his website at his website at www.jaylenschallenge.org. Certainly all of us are on the same mission and I wish him great success.

ABC News Has Excellent Bullying Article

This story missed my radar the first time it was published in March, but it’s an excellent story about how one school in Ely, Nevada dealt with their bullying problem. It had gotten so bad at the school, kids were actually leaving to go to other schools. The school worked directly with the kids who were identified as the bullies:

Fed up with the bullying, Hansen (the principal of the school) scoured the Internet for information and spoke with school officials across the state to come up with an innovative plan.

He started by conducting a “bully survey.” Every student in the school was asked to write down the names of the bullies. Reading through the surveys, Hansen noticed the same eight names kept popping up.

Instead of outing the bullies, Hansen used the surveys to identify the problem kids and meet with them individually. During the meetings, he worked on solving their problems individually, which often stemmed from trouble at home.

He also got the bullies involved in extracurricular activities as a reward for good behavior.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be effective to bully the bullies, so we used it as a teaching moment,” Hansen said.

Hansen also set up student groups to intervene if they saw a problem. The group organized a role-playing game in which students can act out their problems, instead of acting out in school. Students and staff alike say the school has been transformed.

You can read the rest of the story and see the video at the ABC News Site. There’s also an excellent ABC News video on this story here.

I give credit to the school and principle for taking a proactive approach to the problem. I hope they remember that every year the bullies will change and they’ll have to take on the challenge again to identify and work with them. It’s amazing that only 8 kids from this school caused the issue that sent other kids away. But some innovative thinking on the principle’s part helped to solve the issue at that school.

Bullying Laws Do Little

Yesterday in USA Today, there was an excellent article about school bullying laws and the little protection they offer. The article discusses the case of Jaheem Jaheem, who at 11 committed suicide at home. The issue of the laws and punishments offer came up clearly in this case. The article says:

Forty-four states expressly ban bullying, a legislative legacy of a rash of school shootings in the late ’90s, yet few if any of those measures have identified children who excessively pick on their peers, an Associated Press review has found. And few offer any method for ensuring the policies are enforced, according to data compiled by the National Council of State Legislatures.

The issue came to a head in April when Jaheem Jaheem, 11, committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn’t a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.

Regardless, Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the nation, still would not have applied: It only applies to students in grades six to 12. Jaheem was a fifth-grader…

Only six states — Montana, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, North Dakota and South Dakota — and the District of Columbia lack specific laws targeting school bullying, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Most states require school districts to adopt open-ended policies to prohibit bullying and harassment.

You can read the rest of the article in USA Today by clicking here. It is still disturbing that the laws are not protecting the children as they should. It’s a good article and should hopefully be a case to start more focused conversations on improving the laws.

CSEE’s BullyBust 2009 Campaign

The Center for  Social and Emotional Education (CSEE) is hosting BullyBust 2009, a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the issues of bullying. The campaign kicks off in New York City and Los Angeles, California this month!

The face of our campaign, teen actress, Sammi Hanratty will be there as well as clothing designer Boy Meets Girl. You’ll be able to buy an exclusive Boy Meets Girl BullyBust T-shirt and have Sammi sign it. A portion of the proceeds will go to helping schools-in-need receive resources to help prevent violence and bullying. We will be giving away a bunch of information on how you too can take a stand against bullying in your school.

These events are open to anyone who is committed to raising awareness about the need to eliminate bullying and violence in our schools nationwide!

So please spread the word on your blog and pass it on to others! It only takes a mintue and you will be helping us give resources to kids who may need your help!

For New York City our BullyBust 2009 campaign party will be held on Friday September 11th from 4:00pm-6:00pm at the Bloomingdales on 59th and Lexington (8th floor).

For Los Angeles our BullyBust 2009 campaign party will be held on Saturday September 19th from 1:00pm-4:00pm at the Bloomingdales in the Century City Shopping Center.

For more information on our campaign to stop bullying in schools please go to our website and pass it along!

http://www.bullybust.org

And don’t forget to joing our Facebook group and fan page!

Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86897796933#/group.php?gid=86897796933

Page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86897796933#/pages/BullyBust-2009/133642481058

Sammi Hanratty

Teen actress, Sammi Hanratty will be there to host the event as well as clothing designer Boy Meets Girl. You’ll be able to buy an exclusive Boy Meets Girl BullyBust T-shirt and have Sammi sign it. A portion of the proceeds will go to helping schools-in-need receive resources to help prevent violence and bullying. Also CSEE will be giving away a bunch of information on how you too can personally take a stand against bullying in your school.

These events are open to anyone who is committed to raising awareness about the need to eliminate bullying and violence in our schools nationwide!  So if you are in the New York or Los Angeles area, please try to go to the event and support solutions to the bullying issues we  face!

For New York City the BullyBust 2009 campaign party will be held on Friday September 11th from 4:00pm-6:00pm at the Bloomingdales on 59th and Lexington (8th floor).

For Los Angeles the BullyBust 2009 campaign party will be held on Saturday September 19th from 1:00pm-4:00pm at the Bloomingdales in the Century City Shopping Center.

For more information on the campaign to stop bullying in schools please go to the BullyBust website at http://www.bullybust.org.

You can also join the CSEE Facebook group and fan page!

Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86897796933#/group.php?gid=86897796933

Page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=86897796933#/pages/BullyBust-2009/133642481058

I wish CSEE good luck with the event and hope that we continue to see positive change on the bullying issue in 2009-2010.

Another School Year, Another Bullying Story

School has just started and already a story is starting to make national attention. On one of the first days of school in Yazoo, Mississippi a girl brandished a gun at a bus full of students, saying to them that it was due to being picked on. According to WAPT television:

A 14-year-old girl brought the gun onto a Yazoo County school bus Sept. 1 because she had been picked on, the sheriff said. 

The girl walked up and down the aisle of the bus with the loaded gun, threatening students, according to video taken from a surveillance camera mounted on the bus.

Relatives of the 14-year-old girl said she was bullied by children on the bus — specifically, her family said, by Kaleb Eulls and his younger sisters. Eulls wrestled the gun from the girl and has gained national attention as a hero. 

“I feel like if you are in school to get your education, you shouldn’t be bullied,” the girl’s cousin Royquita Dixon said. “There are two sides to every story.” A 14-year-old girl brought the gun onto a Yazoo County school bus Sept. 1 because she had been picked on, the sheriff said. 

The girl walked up and down the aisle of the bus with the loaded gun, threatening students, according to video taken from a surveillance camera mounted on the bus.

Here’s the video of the incident:

One of the football players stopped the situation and was made a hero by the town and school. But the girl’s parents have a different feeling on the situation. WAPT goes on to talk about their response to what their daughter did:

Relatives of the 14-year-old girl said she was bullied by children on the bus — specifically, her family said, by Kaleb Eulls and his younger sisters. Eulls wrestled the gun from the girl and has gained national attention as a hero.

“I feel like if you are in school to get your education, you shouldn’t be bullied,” the girl’s cousin Royquita Dixon said. “There are two sides to every story.”

Is this another case of a child who was bullied breaking, feeling alone and taking matters into their own hands? Why would a 14 year old girl do this? Certainly a disturbing case and the factor of bullying being the excuse for the gun is one that we’ll have to follow as the young lady goes to trial.

A Forgotten Story – The Sewer (1974)

I have mentioned before how our brains have a tendancy to put certain memories in the far backs of our heads. They are forgotten there, until sometimes a trigger can bring them forward.

Pretty much all of my stories I have told on this blog are from my days in Lexington, MA. But, something triggered me to remember the earliest incident I can recall the other day. I’ll call this the Sewer Incident. It’s more of a minor story, but still was an early bullying in my life. I don’t know why I had forgotten it, because when I recalled it, I realized how scary it was when I was only 6 years old in 1974.

We were living in Bowie, MD at the time. I was in 1st grade and took a long bus ride to school. I recall only fleeting memories of what happened, but my older sister was with me to help me recall more.

The bus stop was at a sewer. I was a pretty small kid and, of course, there were kindergarten to 6th grade kids at the bus. One of the older kids had taken the sewer cap off the sewer. Of course these were very heavy metal things.

For some reason they chose me that day. They put me down in the sewer. I can’t recall if it was a bet or just a forced concept, but they made me climb down there. Then they put the lid back on it.

It was dark. I yelled for them to let me up. Instead they sat on it and taunted me from below. I recall just crying and being quite scared. Years later, the author Stephen King made me realize I was not alone in my fears of the dark sewer in his book “IT”.

My sister was yelling for them to stop and let me up. When they didn’t, she started running home and told them she was going to get my parents to come down. Once they heard that, they changed their minds and let me out.

OK, not the worst story and probably more of a joke to them than true bullying, but still something that scared a small 6 year old. I recall years later being offered the chance to go down the sewers at my college for what was billed as a fun night of sewer running by my college friends. I respectfully declined the invitation.

Vanessa Van Petten and Radical Parenting

Sometimes you find something out that you wish you had known about earlier. Such is the case with my finding out about Vanessa Van Petten. If you are asking “who is she?”, that is exactly what I was saying. But I hope, after you read this blog entry, you will check out her site as well. I am very impressed at her concept and that she has continued to keep it alive.

What Vanessa did was write a book called “You’re Grounded!”.  What’s more interesting is that she wrote it when she was a teenager during a time when she was grounded and stuck at home. She took her anger at her situation and sat down and wrote a teen perspective book about parenting. Pretty smart, I’d say. She also posted several videos to YOUTUBE as well on various parenting subjects. I came across this one on Cyberbullying she had done:

I recently received a comment from one of her teen writers of what is now her website called Radical Parenting. I checked it out and really enjoyed how it’s put together. Vanessa has a staff of teen and tween writers that offer advice to parents from the teen/tween perspective. Hmmmm, somewhat similar to an adult offering bullying advice from an adult perspective.

Anyway, if you think that sounds interesting, check out her website, Radical Parenting, by clicking here. I think you will find it both interesting and also find some good articles about bullying issues there.

Answering the Why Question

Lately several people ask me why I continue to blog about the bullying issue and, particularly my mother, wants to know when I’ll “get over it”. It’s always funny for me to hear these things, because I am over it. I’m not doing this for me, but, at least in my mind, to help others and present a history of bullying from the perspective of an adult who can look back to see both the negative effect, as well as some positive effects.

Have I taken it on the chin some? I would say YES. There are certainly some who see my telling of these stories and doing this website as some sort of psychological weakness and they chose to try to exploit it. See kids, bullying doesn’t end when you grow up all the time. It just changes some (but sometimes not).

I consider myself pretty lucky in that I have surrounded myself with people who I respect and who share that back. I have wonderful friends and a great family. Others both good and bad have come and gone over the years, but those that are left, well, I couldn’t ask for better people. Of course that wasn’t the case during the bullying years. Sure, I felt alone at times and seeing the future wasn’t a likely reality. But life is a series of peaks and valleys. Getting through the valley periods are work and that is no lie.

Recently I was faced, as many others have been, with a valley period when I had to find new employment. It’s at these critical times when you find out who your friends are. People who helped me network for my new job. Everyone I talked to was so helpful. It turned what could have been a very blue and negative period into a positive moment.

2009 has been a rough year, not just for me, but for many of my friends and for many people with the downturn in the economy. Recently one friend of mine, my best friend, my friend who I have had since I was 15 and who lives 6 houses away from me on my street, was faced with not one, not two, but three different cancers in his body. He had to have three operations to have them all removed. Luckily for him, they were all treatable.

What I will never forget was the opportunity that I saw presented to him. When the first diagnosis happened, the word got out to not just his current friends, but now with Facebook and Web 2.0, to all his old friends as well. They all came back to him to see if they could help. Friends from High School, College, and old work friends all called to him. In one morbid conversation, I shared with him that, in some way he was lucky. That most of us let life get behind us and don’t have the opportunity to know how many friends we truly have until they are at our funeral. I know, it’s morbid, but in some ways true. We forget about all the people that care about us and that we have met that we affected somehow. We mean to call on them and they mean to also, but time has a way of getting by us.

So why am I talking about this on the bullying blog? I think it’s important to remember, and to share with our children that life has peaks and valleys. Sometimes being bullied is one of those valleys. But even then, we should try to surround ourselves with people that we care about and that care about us. Over time those people will be there again and again. And then the peaks come and we can see over the summit again. It can get better. It does get better. That’s what I hope you remember when you walk in the valley.