Facebook Rolls Out Anti-bullying Tools with White House Support - Facebook announced two new safety features Thursday in conjunction with a White House summit on bullying. A new reporting tool will let users, including teens and younger users, to privately report troubling content not just to the site itself but to parents, teachers and others in their support system. And an improved Safety Center, due out in the next few weeks, will provide educational videos, articles and other content created by bullying experts to help adults address the problem.

 

A 'Watershed' Case in School Bullying? - At first, it seemed like a morality play: school officials stand by as an innocent high school freshman, new in town, is harassed into suicide by a pack of older teens. A week after criminal charges were filed, the case of Phoebe Prince seems more cloudy and complicated, much like the insidious national problem that may have helped kill her: school bullying.

 

'Square Peg' Students More Often Targets of Bullies - Studies show students with learning disorders or attention problems are especially vulnerable to bullying. These are the students who, when bullies "shop around" for their targets, provide that satisfying reaction to make the aggressors keep coming back for more, experts say. And while their more street-wise aggressors may be adept at flying under the school staff's radar, those with learning differences never quite figure it out. It may be what leads some teachers to tell targeted students that their own behavior has led to the bullying. "It sounds extreme, I know, but it's like when a woman is raped and they say she asked for it.”

 

Ten Actions ALL Parents Can Take to Help Eliminate Bullying - An excellent list of interventions parents can take to help eliminate bullying and its destructive effects on the victim, the bully and the witnesses.

 

Bullying at School and Online - Up-to-date research and practical tips on bullying and cyberbullying including warning signs, how to help a child, how to spot victims and bullies, parents and schools working together and preventing bullying at your school.
 

Social Form of Bullying Linked to Depression, Anxiety in Adults - Spreading rumors and gossiping may not cause bruises or black eyes, but the psychological consequences of this social type of bullying could linger into early adulthood, a new University of Florida study shows.

 

MI AFAM Trades on Anti-Homosexual Sentiment to Oppose Anti-Bullying Legislation - The American Family Association of Michigan (AFAM) is crowing that two GOP senators have yanked their sponsorship of anti-bullying legislation, issuing joint press releases with Sens. Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) and Valde Garcia (R-Howell). HB 4162 and HB 4091 passed the lower chamber last year (2007) and have been sitting in the Senate Education Committee ever since, but a Capitol rally last week brought the bills back to the forefront. There's also SB 0107 sponsored by Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland), but proponents say they're focused on the House bills.
 

Meaner Bullying is Leading Schools to Find New Tactics - Gizelle Studevent, 17, a top-ranked basketball player being recruited by colleges such as Duke and Stanford, transferred from La Jolla Country Day School after facing years of bullying there. Today, parents are filing lawsuits against students and schools for failing to protect their children, administrators are taking stronger disciplinary action against perpetrators, and a virtual industry of antibullying programs has sprung up.
 

Bullying and Tragedy - This week, thirty-two people died at the hands of a disturbed student at Virginia Tech. Thirty-three people, when you also count his suicide.

 

Playground Heroes: How Can We Teach Kids to Stick Up For Peers Who are Bullied? - Research has not only documented the great prevalence of bullying at schools; it's also shown that quite often, children serve as passive bystanders. They neither join in the bullying nor try to stop it, but just watch it from the sidelines. Yet when these observers do intervene, more often than not they're successful in stopping the bullying. So why don't they intervene -- and perhaps more importantly, how can parents and teachers effectively encourage them to intervene when it's appropriate for them to do so?
 

The ABCs of Bullying Prevention - Cyberbullying -- a new and growing form of bullying that has emerged with the advent of technology -- is a problem today's schools increasingly must deal with. In this, the first of a 8-part series on bullying, Dr. Ken Shore explains what cyberbullying is and how schools can best deal with it.
 

Coming to Grips with Harassment & Bullying (PDF) - Parents and advocacy groups are delivering a loud message to school officials and other policymakers that children should not have to endure ugly bullying at school as an inevitable rite of passage. School boards have gotten the message and have been busily tweaking codes of student conduct, adopting or revising board policies, and approving new initiatives.

 

Crime Prevention Group Tracks Cyberbullying - School police officers keep their ears and eyes open for threats and bullying among students - through the rumor mill, scrawls on bathroom walls, and now, the Internet.
 

Class Bully May Not be a Student - Bullying may seem like the province of angry adolescents, but a new study suggests teachers are just as susceptible finding a pattern of bully-victim relationships not unlike those in domestic abuse. Teachers bullied in their youth were more likely to become teachers who bully students. Bullying was defined as punishing, manipulating or disparaging students beyond what would be considered normal disciplinary action. The researchers found that bullying by teachers took two forms: "sadistic" bullies who picked on and humiliated students and hurt their feelings; and "victim bullies" who tended to allow unruly behavior by students, then lost their tempers.
 

Researchers Say That Middle-school Bullying Could be Curbed by Showing that it's not Normal - In anonymous surveys at several large middle schools, the vast majority of students reported that they had not hit, teased, threatened, excluded, or gossiped maliciously about classmates in the past 30 days. But a majority were also convinced that their own nonbully status was an exception to the norm. To reduce the amount of bullying that does exist, that misperception needs to change, argues sociology professor H. Wesley Perkins. "What we've seen consistently is that risk behaviors [and] problem behaviors are overestimated which [means] much of the bullying or violence or substance abuse can continue because the people engaged in that think everybody else is doing it."

 

A Unique Simple Solution to the Bullying Problem - Sam wears glasses and gets called four-eyes all day long. He believes he is being called four-eyes because he wears glasses. But Sam is wrong. Maybe he wears glasses, but that's not the reason he gets teased. Bullies2Buddies.com has a complete, free online manual, How to Stop Being Teased and Bullied without Really Trying. Most kids can learn how to stop being victimized by simply reading the manual. The website also has a free manual for parents and teachers, A Revolutionary Guide to Reducing Aggression between Children. This manual teaches adults how to dramatically reduce bullying between kids with almost no effort, while increasing students' emotional maturity and independence. It  enables teachers to go back to being teachers instead of policemen and judges.

 

Ten Tips for Creating a Caring School - Even simple actions that cost little or no money can positively affect the school climate and create that all-important sense of belonging and safety that many researchers say makes the difference between thriving and floundering at school. Diane Curtis outlines ten strategies for fostering healthy and caring environments for learning.
 

When Fear is Part of School - Violence and harassment keep students at home, or trying to transfer out. Fear of going to school because of violence and harassment touches students across the country in urban, suburban and rural districts. Nationally, 6 percent of 14,000 high school students said they missed at least one day of school in the previous month because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school, according to a survey released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is up from 5.4 percent in the last survey in 2003.

 

Helping a Bullied Child - I have attended special education due process hearings and watched the school system attorneys hired to save taxpayer dollars politely eviscerate the parents seeking more services or a payment for private school. Often the parents are more or less defenseless against a competent lawyer, since they often cannot afford to hire their own attorney. A whole sector of the bar, lucrative to many of the private specialists, is devoted to what seems to me, at least in part, the science of intimidating, humiliating and defeating parents in these cases.

 

Practice Scenes For the Tough Choices of Adolescence - Role playing helps students engage in class and show less aggression, a study shows.

 

MA Internet Bullying Hits Home For Teen - Life threw Molly Reddington a few curveballs this school year, but she didn't expect a dose of cyberworld cruelty to go with it. While she was on a school trip to Costa Rica in April, a handful of Reddington's so-called friends at Milton High School went to a popular Internet website and created sexually explicit journal entries in her name, making it appear as if she were having immodest exploits while overseas.
 

MA Mass. AG Unveils Guidelines to Help Fight Bullying in Schools - Seeking to cut down on bullying and bigotry-based crimes in the state's schools, Attorney General Tom Reilly has unveiled a plan to give students, parents and teachers new tools and guidelines to deal with schoolhouse harassment.

 

Parent Q&A: Child Must Understand That Bullying Is Never OK - I recently heard my 10-year-old daughter talking about how mean she and her friends are to a girl that rides the bus with them to school. They call her "four eyes" because of her thick glasses and say she's "weird" and "ugly." They seemed proud of themselves.

 

MI Parents to Patrol For School Bullies - Two Lansing men are the first in the area to go on the prowl for meanies, in a new volunteer brigade called Parents on Patrol, or POPs. Their assignment: watch middle and elementary school kids and report bullying. The last week of school before summer break will be a test run for the POPs.

 

Power and Control Drive School Bullies - But silent majority can stop torment, experts say. Frank Williams is a self-confessed former bully who remembers feeling a rush of power when he humiliated other kids. "It could be anything. I'd see someone walking down the hall and say, 'Uh, that looks so stupid,' " said the 18-year-old senior at Walled Lake Western High.

 

Schoolyard Bullies Get Nastier Online - When Joanne had a row with a longtime friend last year, she had no idea it would spill into cyberspace. But what started as a spat at a teenage sleepover swiftly escalated into a three-month harangue of threatening e-mails and defacement of her weblog.

 

MI U of M Sorority, Fraternities Punished for Hazings - Three fraternities and one sorority at the University of Michigan have been disciplined for hazing pledges, incidents which included underage drinking, blindfolding and dressing in humiliating costumes.

 

How to Help Your Kid From Being Bullied - In another excerpt from her book ‘Laying Down the Law,’ Dr. Ruth Peters offers tactics to deal with bullies, at home and in school. Who are the bullies? Who are the victims? And what can you do if you have one, or both, living under your roof? Plenty — from teaching bully-coping skills to encouraging social competence in your own kids. This is one area where children really can’t do it alone. They need your help and involvement to keep them safe, happy, and with positive memories of childhood.

 

Advocates Say Educators Too Reluctant to Tackle Bullying of Gays, Lesbians - Last month, 5,500 educators from 36 states signed up as participants in the second annual No Name Calling Week, an anti-bullying program addressing verbal harassment of students, including gay and lesbian students, in middle and high schools.

 

MI Zero Tolerance Report & Discussion Meeting Notice - The Student Advocacy Center and the All Kids In School Coalition cordially invites you to attend a special convening to discuss the report, "Nowhere to Go," a disturbing and vivid portrait of children directly affected by Michigan's zero tolerance policies. A special convening to discuss this report has been scheduled for Thursday, March 3, 2005 from 7-9 p.m. in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

 

OH Guidelines To Target Bullying - Bullies: Beware. The Akron Public Schools no longer will tolerate your taunting, teasing and generally mean behavior. School board members approved an anti-bullying policy this week aimed at addressing problems with students being picked on. The policy requires teachers and principals to report "aggressive behavior" and calls on the district to investigate.

 

MI Special Day Helps Shatter Stereotypes - Lake Orion students will break away from their friends at lunch to meet new kids. Although football player and Lake Orion junior Brad Hood says it's not a clique, he hangs out with other athletes, especially at lunchtime in the school's cafeteria. On Tuesday, he will be strongly encouraged to break those boundaries and sit with students he has never spoken to.

 

Evaluating School Climate and School Culture (PDF) - When do trends in student behaviors demand school-wide policies and plans? What tools are best suited to assessing how students and teachers view their school's climate or context for learning?

 

MI Parents Use Courts to Battle Bullies - The bullying escalated so much that Christine DeLorme wouldn't let her 10-year-old son walk to a friend's house without a walkie-talkie in hand -- her voice echoing through the speaker, "Are you there yet?"

 

Waging Peace In Our Schools - Based On the Work of the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program. From the largest and most successful school initiatives in social and emotional learning in the country–the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, now active in more that 350 schools nationwide–comes a powerful, practical guide for teaching young people to empathize, mediate, negotiate, and create peace. The authors address everything from minor schoolyard conflicts to violent outbursts, and offer educators and parents proven strategies for enhancing children’s emotional, social, and conflict resolution skills. [$16.00 from The Peace Company]

 

D.C. Audit of D.C. District Shows Parents Kept in the Dark - The D.C. public school system routinely fails to notify parents and guardians when students get caught with drugs or become violent in school. The Inspector General's Office reviewed more than 100 "serious security incidents" involving students last year, finding that in more than half of the cases there was no evidence that officials notified parents.

 

Challenge Day: Challenging You to BE the Change - "What an incredible program Challenge Day is! I have seen a tremendous change in behavior of the students who attended Challenge Day when presented for Buchholz High School. Students are reaching out to each other, making sure no one eats alone or is bullied or teased. I know of three students who felt confident enough after realizing that they were not alone in some of their feelings (as shown through the "step over the line" activity), to seek help for some repressed suicidal tendencies. these students were counseled and referred for additional professional help. Challenge Day not only touches lives, it saves lives!!!" Betty Merrill, English Teacher, Buchholz HS, Alachua County, FL. Read the latest Challenge Day Newsletter at http://www.challengeday.org/newsletter/200409.pdf or visit the website at http://www.challengeday.org.

 

Cyberbullies' Torments Have Much Wider Reach - In the wireless age, who needs fists when you've got instant messaging? Today's young cyberbullies don't bother with face-to-face intimidation. Children everywhere have figured out that they can be far more vicious bullying through the Internet, cellphones and other high-tech mediums. And they are less likely to get caught. The extreme cyberbullying cases that make headlines overshadow the minor ones that occur more often, such as forwarding private e-mails without the writer's permission or spreading rumors on message boards.

 

CA Recess Gets Regulated - Concerned about safety and injuries and worried about bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits, school officials have clamped down on the traditional games from years past. Gone from many blacktops are tag, dodgeball and any game involving bodily contact. In are organized relay races and adult-supervised activities.

 

Creating Safe And Drug-Free Schools - Girls: The Third Wave Of Youth Violence - Currently, America is experiencing an increase in violence among girls, a group that was formerly considered a relatively nonviolent population. This "third wave" of youth violence merits close attention by schools, mental health professionals, and others concerned with the health and safety of young people who may be able to prevent the growth of violence among girls before it becomes even more widespread.

  

Teaming Up On Bullies - When I was little, playing with some neighborhood kids, I let them roll me up in a rug. Or I rolled myself up, I can’t remember. I do remember the feeling of being totally helpless. Someone sat on me and didn’t let me unroll for an eternity of probably a minute or so. I struggled, realizing that no matter what I did, I couldn’t free myself. I was absolutely at the other kids’ mercy until they let me go.

 

NC North Carolina Stands up to School Bullies - School bullies across North Carolina could soon lose some of their swagger thanks to a tough new campus adversary: the State Board of Education. The board is likely to approve a new anti-harassment policy as soon as next week that would crack down on the kind of teasing and taunting that past generations accepted as just a part of growing up.

 

Schoolyard Bullies and Their Victims - Five years after social outcasts made tragic history at Colorado's Columbine High School, experts say bullying remains a schoolyard constant--and may even be growing. Amid the offensive against heckling and hallway anarchy, with measures from anti-bullying assemblies to armed guards at schoolhouse doors, there are growing questions about whether such tactics really prevent bullying or ease students' fear. Those doubts, along with a rising awareness of school violence, are stoking a national debate over how deeply adults should get involved in playground politics.

  

IN Bullying: Mother wants to leave SMSD - The mother says her 13-year-old daughter comes home two to three days a week with ketchup on her clothing and pieces of food caught in her hair. Her children's bus driver called the police on the ride home last month because another student attacked her 14-year-old son. Her son was left with a visible legacy of the attack - a shoe print on his face.

 

OH Educators Can Feed Violence Problem - Sometimes teachers and administrators contribute to and escalate school violence.

 

Bullying Surrounds Fat Teens, Study Finds - Overweight adolescents are more likely than normal-weight children to be victims and perpetrators of bullying, a study found, bolstering evidence that being fat endangers emotional as well as physical health.

 

Featured Website: The Hamilton Fish Institute on School & Community Violence - Provides information, research, and support to make schools safer for high achievement.

  

Using a Discipline System to Promote Learning - On returning to the classroom after 24 years, Marvin Marshall struggled to maintain discipline. In Part 1 of this article, he describes how his frustration led him to develop a system -- incorporating the ideas and strategies of Stephen Covey, William Glasser, Abraham Maslow, and others -- that would promote responsible behavior by internally motivating students. In Part 2, Kerry Weisner describes the positive changes in her students' behavior and learning after she implemented Mr. Marshall's program in her classroom.

 

Featured Website: The Ophelia Project - The Ophelia Project® is dedicated to creating a culture that is emotionally, physically, and socially safe, where girls are respected and nurtured. Through awareness, education, and advocacy, The Ophelia Project® promotes positive change in families, schools, and communities. By supporting a network of friends, mentors, and professionals, we encourage all children to become confident and healthy.

 

NY Best Buddies Help Find Special Friendships - They say good friends are hard to find, and as you grow older, you realize that's true.

 

MA Too Close For Comfort - For all their virtues, small towns are hard on misfits. The social forces that push misfit boys over the edge are still alive in isolated communities where most school shootings occur.

 

Books Related to Bullying: Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. By Rosalind Wiseman; Best Friends, Worst Enemies. By Michael Thompson; and Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. By Rachel Simmons.

 

VA A Rude Awakening - Program teaches students in Virginia to resist bullying and violence.

 

New Bullying Curriculum Addresses Disabilities - PACER Center's new innovative curriculum, "Is Your Child a Target of Bullying? Intervention Strategies for Parents of Children with Disabilities," addresses these and other types of bullying. An engaging and superbly produced resource, the curriculum is meant for professionals and parent leaders to present to parents at meetings, workshops, trainings, and myriad other occasions.

 

Are You a Bully? - A Connecticut school administrator, commenting on his district’s decision to include teacher behavior in its anti-bullying policy, complained that it would be difficult to distinguish between bullying behavior and classroom management strategies. What about you? Can you tell the difference between behavior management and bullying?
 

MI Commentary: Michigan Needs a Law Banning Hazing Incidents - A 12-year-old Northville boy and a 16-year-old Detroit teen say they were seriously injured after being hazed. All the teen wanted was to be part of his band’s fraternity. The 12-year-old wanted to be part of the football team. The parents of the Detroit youngster are suing the Detroit Public Schools for $5 million, but the mental and physical abuse that accompanies hazing ought to be outlawed. It is too dangerous to be tolerated — and utterly unnecessary.

 

The Blame Game: Are Learning & Behavior Problems the Kids' Fault? - Parents of special ed kids often say that they are intimidated and patronized by staff at their children’s school. Are parents too sensitive? Do they misperceive and misunderstand what happens in their contacts with educators? Or are parents just over-protective of their children, as many educators claim? If school staff believe that you or your child are responsible for your child’s problems, how can you work with them to ensure that your child gets a good quality education?

 

Michigan State Board of Education Statewide Safe School Choice Policy (PDF) under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Act): "Students from persistently dangerous schools or who are victims of a violent crime at school have the right to transfer to another school."
 

CA Cash-Strapped School Districts Opt to Trim or Disband Police Forces - Systems in California and across the nation are choosing to cut spending on security in academic programs. In the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine school shooting, school districts around the country beefed up their campus police and security forces, hiring extra officers with the help of state and federal funds. But that trend is starting to reverse in some cash-strapped districts that are trimming the size of their school security corps rather than cutting academic programs further.

 

Competition: The Fear That Makes Girls Feud? - Why girls fight. It's a topic that many find uncomfortable. But Lyn Mikel Brown refuses to shrug it off. The professor at Maine's Colby College has long been fascinated with how popular culture influences girls. Of particular fascination: what she calls "girlfighting."

 

Easing the Teasing Strategies - Children can learn the strategies listed below that will empower them and reduce feelings of helplessness. When children realize that there are effective strategies they can use in teasing situations, their coping skills are strengthened.

 

U.S. U.S. Frames Bullying as Health Issue - The federal government is planning a $3.4 million campaign to combat bullying, drawing support from more than 70 education, law enforcement, civic and religious groups. With an expected start next year, the effort will frame bullying as a public health concern, targeting kids and the adults who influence them.

 

L.E.A.N On Us: The Law Enforcement Awareness Network - It is the mission of L.E.A.N. On Us to provide first responders with information and resources that will allow them to better serve individuals within their communities affected by hidden disabilities and mental illness. The Law Enforcement Awareness Network is currently assisting in the development of training programs by identifying needed services. In doing so we feel we will be able to assist in fulfilling the need for such valuable training for First Responder Personnel within all of our communities.

 

PA Students' First Lesson: Getting Along in Peace - At Penn Valley Elementary School in Levittown, lessons don't begin until students finish their morning meeting - where they learn to make eye contact, greet one another by name, and often discover something interesting about a classmate. [Source]

 

CA System Keeps Schools in Touch With Parents - After a gun battle erupted near Stevenson Ranch Elementary School in Santa Clarita two years ago and left two people dead, administrators evacuated the school and scrambled to contact parents to pick up their children. They relied on word of mouth, handmade signs and a phone tree to reach parents. [Source]

 

OR Good Manners Matter in Oregon School - Politeness keeps classes running smoothly, critical in crammed classrooms. [Source: PEN]

 

Disability Bias - A recent outing to a pizza buffet restaurant created an opportunity for Tolerance.org's parenting columnist to discuss the stigma and bias surrounding disabilities with her son.

 

Effects of Developmental Assets on Academic Success - Data collected from several communities revealed that middle and high school students who experienced more positive relationships, opportunities and personal strengths-or "developmental assets"-were more likely to have high GPAs, regardless of their family income, family composition or race-ethnicity. This relationship is supported by both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. To view the summary or complete report at no charge, go to http://www.search-institute.org/research/insights.

 

Featured Website: OPERATION RESPECT: Don't Laugh at Me - Dedicated to creating safe, caring and respectful environments for children.

 

Featured Website: Crisis Prevention Institute, Inc. - For more than 20 years, the Crisis Prevention Institute has supported the work of professionals who work with challenging or potentially violent individuals by providing a relevant, practical behavior management program. More than 4.5 million professionals have participated in this program to learn how to resolve conflict at the earliest possible stage.

  

The U.S. Department of Education in partnership with the U.S. Secret Service published Threat Assessment in Schools: A Guide to Managing Threatening Situations and to Creating Safe School Climates, which outlines research findings on student-instigated school violence. To access the guide and the final report, visit http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osdfs/resources.html or http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac.shtml or call 1-877-4ED-PUBS.

 

GA New Web Site to Offer Disability Sensitivity Training - A new web site is now available to provide Disability Sensitivity Training.

 

FL Six Schools Plan to Rid Their Halls of Bullies - It was the soundtrack to Jane Hershman's seventh grade: a relentless chorus of verbal abuse from a male classmate, in gym, at lunch, in the halls, most of it unprintable.

 

NY Suicidal Kid With Dyslexia Sues School - A dyslexic boy from Brooklyn and his mother plan to sue the city Department of Education because they claim the teen attempted suicide after school officials told him he was so dumb, he wouldn't graduate until he was 21.

 

WA Teasing Suit Moves to Appeals Court - The mother of an autistic boy says hearing him called "stupid" and "crazy" by his kindergarten classmates was only part of the problem, according to court records.

 

U.K. School's shock at 'bullied' pupil's death - School staff say they are devastated at the death of a 16 year old whose parents believe he killed himself because of bullying.

 

bridges4kids Exclusive: Speaking Up - Every day parents and advocates of children with special needs reach out to each other and offer, through the magic of e-mail and Listservs, online information, advice, and support. Today "karatemom" told this story and we want to share it, in the hope that it will inspire others.

 

MI Kids get help conquering bullies - Metro Detroit schools develop programs to prevent abuse and boost self-esteem.  Like other kids her age, Jamie Artman was bullied in middle school for no reason. One day, a group of boys picked her out of a crowd because she was wearing a necklace with a star pendant.

 

WI 3 Green Bay teens get jail time for beating classmate - Three Green Bay teens were convicted Monday of beating up a 15-year-old disabled classmate in October.

 

The Bridge to Civility: Empathy, Ethics and Service - Developing a social consciousness in the young means engaging them in meaningful activity.

 

Zero-tolerance Adds Up To Lots of Friction - While few question a school's right - and responsibility - to punish students who violate rules aimed at keeping schools free of drugs and weapons, some in Duxbury say overly harsh punishments have made zero tolerance a troubled approach that leaves too much power in the hands of school officials.

 

PA What constitutes a dangerous school? - Few schools fit definition, state education board says.

 

A+ for Empathy - The children in Amy Hamilton's fourth-grade class know exactly how their day at Mulready Elementary School in Hudson, Massachusetts, will begin. After they hang up their coats and backpacks, they know to put their homework on their desks. Then they read Mrs. Hamilton's message on the chalkboard, which can be anything from a comment about the weather to a question to ponder.

 

Second Step - This award-winning program for pre-K through grade 12 teaches social and emotional skills for violence prevention. The Second Step lessons are easy to teach, flow sequentially, and require minimal teacher preparation time. Integration activities tie the lessons into academic learning requirements—health, science, math, social studies, and language arts—helping teachers build on what they are already doing in the classroom.
 

MI State Releasing First School Safety Report

 

AR 5 teens charged in taped assault - Group beat special education student at bus stop, police say.

 

Secret Service Offers School Security Tips - Agents Tout Tactics Used to Protect VIPs.
 

Big Legal Victories For Gay Students And Teachers - In groundbreaking rulings, the courts have sent school boards a clear message: Do more to stop gay bashing or pay the price.

 

Students still afraid despite fewer school weapons, crime. Why? Bullies. - Metal detectors and surveillance cameras have sharply reduced weapons and crime at the nation's schools, but a government report says students are more afraid on school grounds than off because of a problem that hasn't changed: the school bully.

 

Anti-Crime Study Boosts After-School Programs

  

Deadly Lessons: School shooters tell why

 

Are Time-Out Rooms Inhumane? - SPEAK OUT: Plan would limit schools' use of 'time-out' rooms.

  

The Responsive Classroom: A Practical Approach for Teaching Children to Care

 

MI Positive & Productive: Coleman Elementary School kicks off behavior program

 

CA County's tip line provides outlet for school concerns - Prevention of violence, teen suicide are missions; its anonymity, 24-hr availability boost its profile.

 

School Climate: Teachers’ Dirty Looks - Less Dramatic Than Paddling, But Emotional Abuse Still Hurts. Teachers may not realize the long-lasting effects of intimidating their students. Some students remember the humiliation decades later.

 

CA Three Districts Pay Damages In Gay-Rights Lawsuits
 

MI Families urge prevention of youth suicide - Vigil at Capitol honors those who have died.