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Dodgeball banned as ‘human target’ game

March 31, 2013 by

Due to concerns about bullying, dodgeball and other “human-target games” are now banned in Windham, New Hampshire schools, reports the Eagle-Tribune.

“We spend a lot of time making sure our kids are violence free,” Windham superintendent Dr. Henry LaBranche said. “Here we have games where we use children as targets. That seems to be counter to what we are trying to accomplish with our anti-bullying campaign.”

The banned “human target” games include prison ball, slaughter, bombardment and others.

Dodgeball is “an elimination game,” said Andrew Mead, program manager of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. “Games like dodgeball and tag don’t keep kids involved and physically active. They objectify slower students who don’t catch as well.”

I always hated dodgeball (though I was OK with bombardment). But don’t all games objectify students who are slow, clumsy, etc.?

Two school board members said some human-target games have inappropriate names, reports Ed Week. They probably were thinking of  ”slaughter,” which was popular at Windham Middle School.

Filed Under: Bullying, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Bullying books

March 31, 2013 by

Publishers are “flooding the market” with books on bullying, reports the New York Times.

The books are aimed at all age groups — from “Bully,” a picture book for elementary-grade students, to the “The Bully Book,” for middle school children, about an average kid who suddenly becomes everyone’s favorite victim, to Sticks and Stones by Emily Bazelon, a recent release for adults that includes both stories and analysis.

. . . Two young-adult authors, Megan Kelley Hall and Carrie Jones, assembled an anthology of personal essays, called Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories, (HarperTeen 2011) by prominent writers like R. L. Stine, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity.

I don’t remember much bullying from my school days. I never was a victim.

Anyhow, here’s a review of Sticks and Stones.

Filed Under: Books, Bullying Tagged With: , , ,

Mickey Mouse, bane of bullies

March 19, 2013 by

Mickey Mouse was conceived as a little guy who’d stand up to bullies, reports PJ Lifestyle, which is printing excerpts from Leonard Mosley’s Disney’s World.

Filed Under: Bullying Tagged With: ,

Girl, 9, wins courage award — but the bullies win

March 16, 2013 by

When a group of fifth-grade boys were beating an autistic student at a Maui school, nine-year-old Eileen Parkman told them to stop. They cursed her, pushed her to the ground and stepped on her. A local autism center honored Eileen for her courage, reports the Maui News.

“It isn’t the right thing to beat up people. It’s the right thing to help people,” Eileen said in explaining her bravery in coming to the defense of a helpless student during a lunch recess at Kamali’i Elementary School.

. . . “Yes, I was very scared,” Eileen said.

The bullies made sure she stayed scared. After standing up to the older boys, the second grader became a target for bullying, said her father, Sean Parkman. He and his mother offered to volunteer as recess monitors, but were rejected, he said.

Parkman said school officials told him that if he pulled Eileen from the school, then officials would report him to Child Protective Services because he could be violating school attendance policies. So, he held off.

But after taking Eileen to doctors several times after getting beaten, doctors warned Parkman that Eileen was not safe. He then removed her from the school.

Eileen is being tutored at home. Apparently, the autistic boy still attends the elementary school.

Filed Under: Bullying, Disability Tagged With: , ,

Standing up to bullies

February 28, 2013 by

In The Bully Effect, Anderson Cooper follows up on children and parents in Lee Hirsch’s documentary, Bully. The show will premiere on CNN tonight at 10 pm ET.  February 28.

When Alex Libby was a 12 year old in Sioux City, Iowa, the slurs, curses and threats would begin even before he boarded the school bus.

. . . Today Alex has become an anti-bullying rock star with appearances on national television and a visit to the White House. He also regularly delivers speeches to capacity crowds as an activist, and considers himself a spokesman for the bullied.

Kelby Johnson, who came out as a lesbian in middle school, feels empowered, but still encounters hostility in her small Oklahoma town.

Kirk Smalley’s 11-year-old son TY committed suicide after he was suspended from school for fighting back against a bully.  ”I will fight bullying forever because my son will be 11 forever,” says Smalley.

Filed Under: Bullying Tagged With: , , ,

A (anatomical) boy in the girl’s restroom

February 23, 2013 by

A boy who identifies as a girl has the right to use the girls’ restroom and play on girls’ sports teams, the Massachusetts Department of Education has told schools. Transgender girls have the right to use boys’ restrooms and play on boys’ teams.

The guidance said some students may feel uncomfortable sharing those facilities with a transgender student but this ‘‘discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.’’

Students who “consistently and intentionally refuse to refer to a transgendered student by the name or sex” they choose should face discipline for bullying, the guidance advised.

Filed Under: Bullying, Education, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Middle school bullies are the cool kids

January 31, 2013 by

Bullies who pick fights or spread nasty rumors are the “cool” kids in middle school, according to psychologists who surveyed seventh and eighth graders in Los Angeles, reports Live Science.

“The ones who are cool bully more, and the ones who bully more are seen as cool,” study researcher Jaana Juvonen, a UCLA professor of psychology, said in a statement.

The study is published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Anti-bullying campaigns should focus on persuading bystanders to show they disapprove of bullying, advised Juvenon.

Bullies often target unpopular children who are less likely to be defended by onlookers, notes Live Science.

Via Education News.

Filed Under: Bullying, Safety Tagged With: , , , , ,

California teacher ‘talks down’ shooter

January 11, 2013 by

Thanks to a heroic teacher who “talked down” a 16-year-old with a shotgun, nobody was killed at a rural California high school yesterday.  One Taft High School student was critically wounded, but is now in stable condition. Wounded in the forehead by a shotgun pellet, science teacher Ryan Heber talked to the shooter, letting 28 students flee the room. With help from a campus supervisor, Kim Lee Fields, who’d heard the shots fired, he got the boy to surrender to police. RyanHeber_1357858333303.jpg

About half of California’s high schools, 16 percent of its middle schools, and 5 percent of its elementary schools have police or resource officers on campus, and 83 percent of the officers at high schools are armed, according  an EdSource survey, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

Taft High’s armed resource officer wasn’t at school because he was snowed in. However, police reportedly were at the school within 60 seconds of a 911 call from a neighbor, who saw the boy enter a side door with the shotgun.

The Kern County Sheriff’s office is investigating reports the suspect threatened students last year, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Angela Hayden, whose 16-year-old daughter attends Taft, said the suspected shooter allegedly threatened to kill her daughter and other students last year while they were on a school bus during a field trip to Universal Studios.

“He was telling everyone that he had a list of people who messed with him over the years and that he was going to kill them,” Hayden told The Times.  She said the boy allegedly said his brother would be the first victim.

Hayden said her daughter complained about the incident to a vice principal and that the boy was expelled for several days. After the boy returned, Hayden said, she called the principal wanting to know why he was not permanently barred from campus. The principal declined to discuss the punishment, citing privacy concerns, according to Hayden.

“Everybody knew about this kid,” Hayden said.

The shooter used his older brother’s shotgun, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said. He had extra ammunition in his pocket.

In response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the White House is now considering federal funding for schools that want to hire police officers and increase surveillance, California Sen. Barbara Boxer told NBC. The NRA, derided for proposing armed guards at schools, isn’t going to go along if it’s part of a bill also calling for a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips.

Filed Under: Bullying, Violence Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

When cruel is cool

January 11, 2013 by

As an eighth grader in 1986, John Cook urged a girl to commit suicide in the underground newspaper he briefly published with two friends. He accused another of promiscuity. He attacked black teachers and classmates with racial slurs. In Confessions of a Teenage Word-Bully, Cook tries to understand why he did it and the effect on his victims.

Ramming Speed was filled with gutter racism, written by me, that turns my stomach to think of today. It directed at two young girls the same sort of highly public, humiliating sexual slander and innuendo that helped drive 15-year-old Phoebe Prince to kill herself in 2010 in Massachusetts, and it literally called on one of those girls to commit suicide. As much as it was an act of defiance against a school administration we perceived as wanting, it was an act of brutal and indefensible bullying against children we knew to be vulnerable. It was wanton adolescent cruelty of the sort that routinely makes headlines today.

The girl urged to commit suicide by “Ramming Speed” did attempt suicide.

Cook was trying to impress the “cool kids,”  writes Emily Bazelon on Slate. The most promising strategies to prevent bullying rely on shifting the social norms, “figuring out how to make meanness socially costly, as opposed to power-enhancing,” she writes.

Bazelon links to a story on “slut shaming” on WNYC’s Radio Rookies. Reporter Temitayo Fagbenle, 16, interviews a friend who boasts of ruining a girl’s reputation by posting sexual photos of her online. He’s reveling in the “coolness points he scored,” writes Bazelon.

Filed Under: Bullying Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Safety first: Schools where kids can learn

January 10, 2013 by

Student learning requires a positive school climate and effective discipline policies, concludes Ed Week‘s Quality Counts 2013.

National initiatives to improve schools tend to focus heavily on curriculum, testing, and personnel. But a growing consensus also recognizes that the elements that make up school climate—including peer relationships, students’ sense of safety and security, and the disciplinary policies and practices they confront each day—play a crucial part in laying the groundwork for academic success.

I agree that a safe, orderly school environment is the first step to learning — though not the whole journey.

Ed Week looks at ”zero tolerance” discipline policies, now mercifully falling out of favor, and “promising alternative models that seek to reduce conflict and ensure schoolhouse safety without resorting to expulsion or out-of-school suspension.”

In the classroom arena, they document ways in which educators are working to bolster students’ ability to cope with academic and personal pressures that can interfere with learning and lead to peer conflict and bullying.

. . . Finally, this package examines factors often left out of the school climate discussion: the role of parents and community groups—and even of a school’s physical design and layout—in the learning environment.

In addition, there’s a survey of teachers’ and administrators’ views on school climate, safety and discipline. 

Filed Under: Bullying, Education, Safety, Zero Tolerance Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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