When President Obama addressed our nation’s children from Wakefield High School in Virginia on Tuesday morning, he emphasized a number of key messages for helping them succeed not just in school but far into the future: the importance of hard work, of setting clear goals, and of not letting challenging circumstances in the present limit their potential for success later in life. One particular point the President made, however, touched on a critical issue that is the centerpiece of the work we do here at CSEE. Underscoring the importance of setting focused educational goals, the President encouraged students all across the country to:
“Stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.”
Today, it is more apparent than ever that bullying is not something we can thoughtlessly dismiss as “kids just being kids.” As more and more of our students struggle with the harmful effects of bullying behavior, it is clear that we must all take responsibility for cultivating an environment – both at home and in school – where students feel safe and where they learn how to become upstanders against toxic harassment when it occurs. This is the reason why CSEE launched BullyBust 2009, a nationwide awareness campaign that provides students and adults with the essential tools they need to stand up to bullying – whether they are the bully, a victim of bullying, or a bystander to this harmful behavior.
As you may already know, National Bullying Prevention Awareness Week is on October 4-10, 2009. While still a month away, CSEE’s BullyBust 2009 campaign is starting the momentum a little early with our official campaign kickoff party this Friday, September 11th. So if you’re in the NYC area please join us! Here’s where we’ll be:
BullyBust Kick-off and Signing
4:00pm-6:00pm
Bloomingdales (8 Floor)
1000 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Come and show your support and you will be able to pick up some free resources on how you can help raise awareness on this great cause to eliminate bullying in our schools nationwide.
Among the guest list to the event is teen actress and bully awareness advocate Sammi Hanratty. Sammi is the star of the American Girl movie, An American Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong, which deals with themes of “not fitting in” and “standing strong in the face of bullying.” Here’s a video from Sammi talking about the event:
Sammi will be signing the exclusive Boy Meets Girl BullyBust T-Shirt, which you will be able to purchase at the event. A portion of the proceeds goes to helping schools-in-need receive resources to help prevent violence and bullying.
Please come to the event and help support this crucial cause! If you’re on Facebook, click here for more information.
We’ve also recently added a bunch of resources to www.bullybust.org for students, educators, and parents. To take advantage of these go to http://www.bullybust.org and click the Resources button on the orange toolbar.
Lindsay Rush is a new member of the BullyBust team! In addition to being one of today’s most celebrated and talked about up-and-coming singer-songwriters, Lindsay is also a passionate bully prevention awareness advocate. As she hops from gig to gig this year, she will be sharing resources with friends and fans, and encouraging them to pledge their commitment to be upstanders (as opposed to passive bystanders) in the face of bullying. Here’s her story:
My name is Lindsay Rush. I’m a singer-songwriter-guitarist and national Bully Prevention spokesperson. I have traveled all over the country performing sharing my experiences and advice about Bully Prevention with students and educators. I’m so excited to be working with the Center for Social & Emotional Education on the BullyBust campaign. Here’s my story about why I wanted to get involved.
When I was fifteen years old, I moved from Philadelphia to a small town about an hour North. At my old school, I would have graduated with a class of about 1400 students. When I moved, my class was drastically smaller – 78 kids.
I had always been really shy. However, I had never really had a lot of problems socializing if I was feeling comfortable. Just a couple of years before I moved, I was elected Vice President of my middle school Student Council and I had a pretty big group of friends. When I moved, it was a completely different story. Everyone at the new school seemed to have all the friends they needed, and no one talked to “the new girl.” In class on a couple of occasions, I had overheard some girls talking about me, just a lab table away, as if I couldn’t hear them.
Some days, I would go to the library during Lunch to “do homework,” but the real reason was that I felt completely ignored and left out when I sat in the cafeteria with everybody else. At night, I would talk on the phone with my best friend from my old school, and cried. She cried too, and asked me repeatedly, “Why won’t they talk to you?” I really didn’t know.
I desperately needed an outlet for my frustration and for the words that I so badly wanted to say to my new classmates, if any of them would’ve been willing to listen. So I started writing music. I wrote songs on blank pages of my notebooks and on the backs tests that I had failed because I had been so distracted by the silence, to really pay attention. Pretty soon, I began to play the guitar, which ended up serving as a tool to write better and better. Shortly after, I started playing Open Mic Nights near my house, and I was finally able to say what I needed to say.
In this recent article Tim Murphy discusses some of the newest research and information on childhood bullying and its lasting effects into adulthood. Murphy evaluates the relevance of a breakthrough study in today’s growing culture of bully prevention. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England, followed almost 6,500 children from birth until age 13 to examine the causal relationship between bullying and the emergence of psychotic tendencies, such as hallucinations and delusions. The results showed that children bullied between the ages of 8 and 10 were twice as likely to show signs of psychosis by adolescence, and those severely bullied were more than four times as likely. The results found no difference between direct bullying, such as physical and verbal abuse, and indirect bullying, such as social exclusion. Although the research does not claim that bullying alone causes psychotic diseases such as schizophrenia, it does support the significance of these social factors in children’s lives.
This is indeed an interesting and important study, one in a growing series that has underscored the essential importance of comprehensive school improvement efforts. Over the last forty years, our bully prevention efforts initially focused on the bully, then the target or victim and then, for many years the bully and the victim. All of these efforts had limited success in reducing bully-victim behavior.
Please take a moment to read and sign the Stand Up to Bullying PLEDGE on bullybust.org. The awareness campaign doesn’t begin until later this summer, but when you sign the pledge now, you’ll have an opportunity to become a Bully Bust Ambassador (more info to come). Leading the charge is Sammi Hanratty, teen actress and the face behind American Girl’s anti-bullying doll, Chrissa. Hit play on the video below to watch a message from Sammi: