Bully Prevention Awareness Week

October 6-10 our school did a Bully Awareness Week that I implemented through the computer lab. I started this program last year. Bullying is a big problem and with all the technology we have today it can be done in so many forms. There is verbal, physical, and mental bullying. Statistics show that 77% of students are bullied in some form. That is a horrible percentage! Here is a link to a video that caught my eye. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wcx2qM5C4g. Kids just don't understand what effects bullying can have on others. I know! Sam was bullied mentally by girls who deemed themselves better than her. At first she was so strong about it, but the girls would not quit! It finally got to her. She went into such a deep depression and for so long I wondered where my beautiful happy go lucky girl went! It was so hard. She is doing better now, Jr. High has done wonders for her where she doesn't have to be in the same class with the same people all day, but because of their actions towards her, she is now dealing with things that may affect her all her life. We are working through it, but it still breaks my heart. I'm sorry, I didn't want to ramble on about Sam, I really wanted to post about the program at school.....so back to that. We had Officer Morgan come and speak with the kids grade 4-6 about how his job is to arrest adult bullies. He talked about how bullies start in school and how it is illegal to send threatening emails or text messages. Boy did that get alot of girls in the class with concerned looks. He did a great job talking with them. We also had the kids trace and cut out their hand and write their name on it and by me hanging them o the wall, that was their promise to "TAKE A STAND, LEND A HAND" That was the theme this year. The hands all over the wall look awesome. We also started the program off with an assembly from Net Smartz Kids. Here is a link if you are interested in it. http://www.netsmartzkids.org/indexFL.htm. We tied in Internet safety and cyber bullying with this program. The kids loved it! It was a neat assembly. We also played computer games in the lab called "BEAT THE BULLY"http://www.netsmartzkids.org/indexFL.htm, and we did "SURF SWELL ISLAND" http://disney.go.com/surfswell/index2.html. K-3 got a quick over view of the bully program. And all grades watched three PSA (public service announcements) that were really good. I believe it was a great program this year. I just wish I could do more! But we as parents need to be aware of it rather our kids are being bullied or are the bullies and do our part to help.