After sharing her story via an internet video, Amanda Todd committed suicide.
Bullying has been in the media so much lately that it’s starting to become “old news”. This is something that worries me… That we’ll go back to the way things were… Sweeping it under the rug.
Clearly, bullying is still a very real problem with very real consequences. (more…)
We’ve talked about cyber-bullying extensively on this blog. One of our more popular posts discusses how there are 5 million kids under the age of ten on Facebook.
Bullying isn’t confined to Facebook. New research reveals that there are 15,000 bullying related tweets sent daily on Twitter. [Source] (more…)
In a recent interview with Oprah Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas said that being bullied almost made her give up gymnastics!
One of the most common effects of bullying is that victims will give up on what they love. This is an example of that. What’s amazing though is how she was able to overcome being bullied to do something incredible. (more…)
Surprised? Don’t be.
This info comes from an article published late last year in Educational Leadership (citation below). From the article…
Educators can easily get the false impression that bullying is not a problem in their school. That’s because teachers and administrators typically see only about 4 percent of bullying incidents.
The bullying problem is a lot bigger than we realize. Why is so little of it observed? Why don’t we see it happening? (more…)
A while back we did a post on why we take a different approach to anti-bullying assemblies.
Most presentations try to “scare the kids straight”. They hammer on the harmful effects of bullying and try to create change by making everyone feel miserable.
We’ve been skeptical of this approach from day one. We believe it makes a bad situation worse.
Turns out we’re right. There’s academic research to back it up. “Preaching” at the kids and following up with severe punishments doesn’t work.
There was a peer reviewed article published on this back in October 2011. It’s cited at the end of this post. Here are a few crucial bits that I feel are relevant. (more…)
What do you think of when you imagine a bully?
Usually it’s a kid who’s an outcast. Nobody likes them. They’re either a loner or they hang out with other bullies. They bully either because they don’t know how to control themselves or because they want to gain social status.
That’s definitely one kind of bully, but there’s also a second who’s more subtle and more dangerous. (more…)
If you’re reading this there’s a good chance you already know about our school assembly programs
There’s a lot of people out there who offer assemblies. Many of them are incredible. A lot of them could probably use some improvement.
When I speak with schools on the phone one thing I always ask is about previous assemblies they’ve had. I get a variety of responses. (more…)