Bully Prevention

By Riva Richmond

TODAY’S bullies are not restricted to cafeterias, gym class and schoolyards. With technology, they can appear in every digital corner of a modern child’s life. But parents and children can take heart. Technology can also be harnessed to combat online bullies.

“It’s being used to spread the pain, but the positive thing is it can be used to stop the pain,” said Hemanshu Nigam, founder of SSP Blue, a security and privacy advisory firm, and former chief security officer for the News Corporation’s online properties, including MySpace. Many tools can help you find and remove hurtful content, stop abusive contact and, increasingly, tackle wayward conduct, he said.

Here are tips on how to find those tools and learn how to use them.

MONITOR SOCIAL NETWORKS The most damaging bullying happens on social networks, because the attacks are public.

Bullies can leave cruel comments on profiles in Facebook, MySpace or Formspring, a nine-month-old question-and-answer service embraced by teenagers and used to level anonymous attacks. Bullies can post unflattering photos or videos and create fake profiles or online groups dedicated to bashing people they dislike. There have even been instances of bullies obtaining passwords to the accounts of their targets, hijacking profiles and posting scurrilous comments.

In 2008, a Florida eighth-grader who shared her MySpace password with a onetime friend discovered, after a falling out, that it was being used to post offensive sexual content. Three 14-year-old boys in Newburyport, Mass., were arrested this year after they created a fake Facebook page to harass a classmate. A Seattle middle school suspended 28 students for online bullying of a classmate this year.

The most popular social networking sites are prepared to handle trouble. All the sites let users remove comments from their own profiles, sever friend connections and block and report abuse. You can also restrict access to a profile using privacy settings.

“It’s a constant battle to make sure teens are safe,” said Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer. When harassment appears, “we want to get it down quickly,” he said, and typically do it in less than 24 hours.

To report or take a bully off your friends list on Facebook, go to his or her profile and click “Report/Block this Person” or “Remove from Friends.” Blow the whistle on hateful content on group and fan pages by clicking “Report Page” and specifying the offense, which helps Facebook prioritize serious incidents. People in photos can dissociate themselves by clicking on the photo and on “remove tag” beside their name. If nudity or other Facebook violations are involved, report it and Facebook may take it down. Otherwise, you’ll have to ask whoever posted it to remove it.

On MySpace, you can block an abuser from the abused person’s profile page and report him or her by clicking “Contact MySpace” at the bottom of any page. MySpace also allows people to preapprove all comments made on their profiles. Go to settings, select “Spam” and then “Require approval before comments are posted.”

If you are staring down a mean comment or question on Formspring, don’t answer it, and it won’t be seen by anyone else. You can also block the author from contacting you again. To report harassment, click “Help” on any page and submit a complaint. Consider adjusting the privacy settings so only people you approve can follow you, and to block anonymous questions.

BLOCK MEAN MESSAGES Bullies also use e-mail and other message services to spread torment. Nasty messages can be forwarded many times to many people, and are nearly impossible to stop.

But like social sites, Web-based e-mail services popular with teenagers generally have codes of conduct that forbid harassment and intimidation, and mechanisms for reporting bad behavior.

In Hotmail, click “Options” at the top right of any page, navigate to “Blocked Senders” and add the e-mail addresses of bullies. In Gmail, set up a filter for offending addresses from the “More actions” drop-down menu and choose to automatically delete future messages (and perhaps also forward them to a parent).

Instant messages typically come from people only after a user has added them to a chat list, and abusers are usually easy to remove, block and report.

Blocking unwanted cellphone calls and text messages, however, requires visiting your carrier’s Web site, gaining access to the family account with a password and then supplying problem phone numbers. It cannot be done from the device itself. Verizon’s Usage Controls and AT&T’s Smart Limits for Wireless both cost $5 a month.

BECOME A HALL MONITOR There are several software programs and online services that can help parents detect and address bullying.

Parental-control software, which is installed on PCs your children use, comes in free and paid versions from a variety of companies and involves various levels of intrusiveness. Norton Online Family, a free service from the security software maker Symantec, for example, can monitor social network usage and oversee certain chat lists and I.M. conversations.

SafetyWeb and SocialShield are newer services that can also help monitor social network use. Both charge $10 a month. SafetyWeb finds online accounts tied to children’s e-mail addresses and monitors public online activity for signs of trouble — and semipublic activity if, for example, a child is friends with a parent on Facebook. The company is opposed to “spying,” said its co-founder, Geoffrey Arone, so it focuses on alerting parents to potential problems by watching for profanity and red-flag keywords.

SocialShield delves deeper into private social network content by having children add its Facebook, MySpace and Twitter applications. With this access, SocialShield monitors and distills what is happening for parents and alerts them to suspect content.

Several new services monitor text messages on smartphones, including Kid Phone Advocate from Parents Are Listening Services and CellSafety from WebSafety (both $10 a month). Both products watch for words and phrases that may be trouble.

CALL THE AUTHORITIES In serious situations, you may need help from your school or the police, especially if there are threats of violence. This means you will need evidence.

Demonstrate the problem with screenshots or saved copies of Web pages (choose “save as” in your Web browser) and copies of e-mail messages, instant messages and texts. Preserve it yourself, or use software like CyberBully Alert ($14.95 a year) to help you.

For court, it is best to have digital evidence directly from online services and the bully’s own computer, said Mark D. Rasch, who formerly prosecuted computer crimes in the United States Justice Department and is now a principal with the consulting firm Secure IT Experts.

Online services do not keep data forever and hard drives get wiped. The easiest and best way to preserve evidence is to enlist law enforcement. Otherwise, you will need a lawyer, a civil suit and subpoenas — and deep pockets.

“Don’t wait,” Mr. Rasch said. “If there’s any credible threat of injury or damage, you want to take this seriously and have it investigated.”

Eight to twelve year-olds across the country revealed, in a recently-released survey, that bullying, conflict, and meanness weighed heavy on their hearts and minds. 2171 kids throughout the US were asked to share their personal stories of bullying and conflict in a survey conducted by Naomi Drew in conjunction with Free Spirit Publishing. Across the board, what the children shared was surprisingly frank, sometimes heartbreakingly so. “I try to ignore conflicts, but if I can’t I just hurt,” said a 5th grade girl. A 6th grade boy who was cornered by a gang of kids in his school hallway wrote: “They ripped up my science book, took my hat, and laughed at me. I was so mad I went to my locker and sobbed.”

An overwhelming number of the students surveyed expressed their desire for positive change. 80% said they wanted to learn ways to end bullying, avoid fights, get along better with peers, and work out conflicts. Many felt overwhelmed by the meanness of their peers. An 11 year-old boy who was being bullied daily said, “It just makes me want to die.” With the spate of recent youth suicides that have been in the headlines, words like these can’t be ignored.

73% of the kids surveyed said other kids are somewhat to very mean. “I’ve been through a lot,” wrote a 4th grade boy. “Kids don’t like the way I look. They call me names and kick me. I am so sick of being picked on.”

Conflict is another major issue for kids. Almost 50% see conflicts happening often, every day, or all the time. 68% said being teased or made fun of is the number one source of their conflicts in their lives, and 64% listed name-calling as the cause of their conflicts. A 10 year old girl wrote, “Kids called me names every day. It got uncomfortable to be at school.” How about these break-your-heart words from a 9 year-old, “People call me names and make fun of me because I don’t have a mom.”

It’s clear from the survey that kids want and need change. Teachers want change too. A fourth grade teacher from New Jersey who responded to the survey wrote, “Anger and bullying are among the major issues I see as a teacher.” With character education programs being cut left and right, and No Child Left Behind turning our schools into testing machines, it’s time for priorities to shift. We need to stop focusing so much on test results, and do a lot more to help kids learn in an atmosphere of peace and emotional safety. In the words of a 10 year-old survey participant, “I wish there was a way to clean up this mess and find a way to make peace.”

School Bullying Addressed At Dept. Of Education Summit

The Department of Education holds a two-day summit to formulate a national plan to end bullying in schools.

School starts for the majority of the country this month, and while students are getting ready to head back to class, the Department of Education is focused on stopping a classic problem — bullying.

Over the last two days, the DOE convened the first-ever summit on school bullying.

Leaders attending the conference tasked themselves with developing and implementing a national strategy that reduces and eventually ends bullying.

“Our department has a renewed commitment to enforcing the law, including civil rights law that applies to racial, sexual or disability harassment,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Duncan also says bullying distracts from the fundamental purpose of school — learning — and feels that most people don’t realize that bullying violates civil rights laws.

“I’m not sure that many educators and parents realize bullying can constitute racial, sexual and disability harassment that is prohibited by civil rights laws enforced by our department’s Office of Civil Rights,” said Duncan.

In a National Center for Education statistics study, just less than a third of students, ages 12 to 18, reported they have been bullied in school.

By Melanie Jones
Times Staff Writer

Educators and experts agree: Bullying has always existed and probably always will. However, new school policies look to provide better protection against such incidents.

A spate of suicides across the country has spawned anti-bullying laws in several states, including Alabama.

Attalla, Etowah County and Gadsden school systems have passed new bullying policies ahead of the new school year. Rep. Betty Carol Graham, D-Alexander City, sponsored the law in the House during the last legislative session. She said Alabama was one of the few states without a statewide bullying policy.

“I talked to students and parents who said there was no one to talk to without fear of retaliation,” Graham said.

The law establishes “a dedicated person in each school a student can go to and say, ‘Can you help me?’.”

That’s exactly what’s needed, according to Edward F. Dragan, school safety consultant and author of “The Bully Action Guide.”

“One of the best ways of (protecting children) is to create a climate within a school that allows kids to go to someone without fear of retaliation,” Dragan said.

He takes it a step further to say schools should identify “safe teachers” and have one on each hall “trained how to get information, cause the kids to open up and know when to follow up.”

Local school systems designate the principal or “principal’s designee” as the person with whom to file a complaint.

Complaints must be filed on board-approved complaint forms and signed by the student or the student’s parent or guardian and delivered by mail or in person. The forms will be available in the principal’s office and/or counselor’s office.

Bruce Brown

Why would a class president, successful athlete and solid student take his own life?

It may be no more rare than one branded an outcast.
Chances are, when a person commits suicide, there were risk factors and signs that could have shown the way to treatment to avoid the tragedy. From outcast to leader, depression and mental issues can add up to disaster.
“Suicide knows no boundaries,” said Michelle Izzo-Voss of the Jacob Crouch Foundation, which shared the stage at Lafayette Middle School with Faith House on Wednesday in a program designed to inform educators of risk factors for suicide, mental illness and bullying.
“It varies, depending upon age, sex and ethnicity,” Izzo-Voss said. “Teachers are in a unique position to recognize signs and to help. We’re not expecting you to counsel the students. We want to make you more aware, and better able to identify factors, and then refer the student to the appropriate resources.
“Without help, the program will continue to compound.”
Izzo-Voss stressed that teachers should be aware of protocol and proper steps to take at their individual schools.
There are an estimated 750,000 teens in America who are depressed, with 60 percent to 80 percent of those going undiagnosed, according to Izzo-Voss, who added that 63 percent of suicides display symptoms for a year before taking their life.
Some forms of mental illness prompt more boys than girls to act, while in others girls are more prone to action. Signs of risk, then, become crucial for educators, many of whom spend more hours of the day with a student than does a parent.
Faith House’s Angelle Bellard focused on its Bullies2Buddies
program, which combats the problem of bullying in schools.
“We want to empower students to react more effectively to bullying,” Bellard said. “We help the students cope with bullies, to maintain their composure and control. If they refuse to get angry, they let go of that ‘victim’ mentality.”
Tragedy can result if the victims of bullying can’t cope, as in April 1999 when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered classmates and staff at Columbine High School in Colorado.
The Faith House effort helps difuse such actions before they begin.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 1:38 PM on 2nd August 2010

More than half of young women are bullied at school because of how they look, according to a report published today.
Some youngsters miss months of education to avoid their tormentors, according to the survey.
Researchers spoke to girls in England and Wales, between the ages of 15 and 22. They found 56 per cent were abused verbally, physically or online because of their weight, height or hair colour.
Only one in five of the girls surveyed was happy with her appearance. More than half were bullied at school (posed)
Only one in five said they were personally happy with their appearance, and 53 per cent said they had since gone on a diet, according to the research by youth charity Rathbone.
Charity spokesman Peter Gibson said: ‘All bullies are cowards, but persecuting the weakest takes a special kind of nastiness.
‘It was heartbreaking to learn that young women had been punched and kicked simply because they couldn’t afford the best clothes, or humiliated on the internet due to their size.’
Just over half of young women who were bullied said they played truant from school, with one girl missing six months of education and her SAT exams.
The main reason for bullying was weight, followed by hair colour – almost entirely girls with red hair. Other reasons included height, clothing and racism.
About 40 per cent said they missed meals to get thinner, and 17 per cent said they had been on a diet since the age of 12 or younger.
More than 60 young women were surveyed. Of these six said they had either taken laxative pills or made themselves sick to keep their weight down.
Bullied girls refused to believe nice things said about them. Although 91 per cent said their families and friends called them beautiful, one 17-year-old girl from Greater Manchester said: ‘Even if Peter Andre walked into the room and told me I was gorgeous, I still wouldn’t believe it.’
Encouragingly, the Rathbone report found 60 per cent of those who were abused because of their appearance thought they could turn to a friend, relative or teacher for help.
Mr Gibson said: ‘The demonisation of young people is rife and there is also far too much pressure on women in particular to look a certain way.
‘It is up to all of us, from teachers to parents, and magazine editors to programme makers, to celebrate women for who they are. As our survey shows, the putting-down and name-calling is simply ruining young lives.’
Many of the young women questioned came from poor backgrounds, and either lived alone or with a single parent. The majority were on the Entry to Employment programme, which gives unemployed young people skills to gain work.

He wins a scholarship for a speech-aid device.

By Dan Scanlan

Matthew Reid is a 13-year-old whose 2-year-old stepbrother, Aidyn, is dealing with cancer.

If that’s not enough, Matthew stutters, making him the target of school bullying, he admits.

But thanks to eloquent words he wrote about his life with stuttering, his spoken words now flow more easily. Matthew’s essay won a SpeechEasy Sean Anderson Scholarship. And a tiny hearing aid-like device was presented to him Wednesday at Wolfson Children’s Rehabilitation Services in Jacksonville.

He called that “pretty sweet.”

“I actually feel pretty excited and it just feels awesome,” Matthew said after a few minutes of steady speech with the device.

“His stuttering had gotten so bad everybody was getting a bit aggravated,” said his mother, Dora Reid. “It is so different to actually have a conversation with him. … I can’t ask for a better blessing, with the exception of healing Aidyn. This is a blessing beyond words.”

Matthew is a tall teen with two older sisters and his stepbrother who live in Waverly, Ga., with Dora and Mark Reid. His stuttering lengthens and sometimes stalls words. Home-schooled for three years due to bullying and Aidyn’s medical issues, he had to stop speech therapy when his stepbrother was diagnosed with germ cell cancer and underwent nine chemotherapies, 25 radiation treatments and 11 surgeries.

He admitted that school with a stutter was very tough, so he couldn’t wait for the device so he could go back to class as an eighth-grader.

“Every other week, this one kid would try to pick fights, but that’s just how he is,” Matthew said. “I want to just talk a little bit smoother and just hope people would stop making fun.”

The road to SpeechEasy started when the Wolfson staff noticed Matthew’s stuttering when he was there visiting Aidyn and arranged an evaluation. He was urged to write an essay about how stuttering affected his life, which won the scholarship.

Started by Ocoee residents Andy Anderson and Martha Lopez-Anderson, the scholarship provides free SpeechEasy devices and therapy to children who stutter. It is named in memory of their 10-year-old son Sean, who received the device nine months before his death in early 2004.

Looking like a hearing aid, the $4,700 SpeechEasy mimics what is called the choral speech effect. That’s when stutterers improve when they talk, sing or read with other people, said Judy Hammer-Knisely, the speech pathologist who evaluated him.

“The stutterer thinks someone else is speaking with them,” she said.

Hammer-Knisely placed the device in his left ear Wednesday and asked his mother to help with simple exercises.

“How do you think this is going to help you with your brother?” Dora Reid asked.

“It will help a lot because I wouldn’t want him to try and talk like I do,” he answered.

Lopez-Anderson said she had happy memories as she held her late son’s photograph through Matthew’s first session.

“I see the same progress and the same improvement I saw in my son,” she said with tears in her eyes. “A child should have an opportunity, besides speech therapy, to have an improvement in their stuttering, anything that will give them the tools to not withdraw.”

This is the fourth year a child served by Wolfson rehab has received the Florida scholarship.

By SUSAN ENGEL and MARLENE SANDSTROM

HERE in Massachusetts, teachers and administrators are spending their summers becoming familiar with the new state law that requires schools to institute an anti-bullying curriculum, investigate acts of bullying and report the most serious cases to law enforcement officers.

This new law was passed in April after a group of South Hadley, Mass., students were indicted in the bullying of a 15-year-old girl, Phoebe Prince, who committed suicide. To the extent that it underlines the importance of the problem and demands that schools figure out how to address it, it is a move in the right direction. But legislation alone can’t create kinder communities or teach children how to get along. That will take a much deeper rethinking of what schools should do for their students.

It’s important, first, to recognize that while cellphones and the Internet have made bullying more anonymous and unsupervised, there is little evidence that children are meaner than they used to be. Indeed, there is ample research — not to mention plenty of novels and memoirs — about how children have always victimized one another in large and small ways, how often they are oblivious to the rights and feelings of others and how rarely they defend a victim.

In a 1995 study in Canada, researchers placed video cameras in a school playground and discovered that overt acts of bullying occurred at an astonishing rate of 4.5 incidents per hour. Just as interesting, children typically stood idly by and watched the mistreatment of their classmates — apparently, the inclination and ability to protect one another and to enforce a culture of tolerance does not come naturally. These are values that must be taught.

Yet, in American curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as the primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others.

What’s more, the danger of anti-bullying laws, which have now been passed by all but six states, is that they may subtly encourage schools to address this complicated problem quickly and superficially. Many schools are buying expensive anti-bullying curriculum packages, big glossy binders that look reassuring on the bookshelf and technically place schools closer to compliance with the new laws.

But our research on child development makes it clear that there is only one way to truly combat bullying. As an essential part of the school curriculum, we have to teach children how to be good to one another, how to cooperate, how to defend someone who is being picked on and how to stand up for what is right.

To do this, teachers and administrators must first be trained to recognize just how complex children’s social interactions really are. Yes, some conflict is a normal part of growing up, and plenty of friendly, responsible children dabble in mean behavior. For these children, a little guidance can go a long way. That is why the noted teacher and author Vivian Paley once made a rule that her students couldn’t exclude anyone from their play. It took a lot of effort to make it work, but it had a powerful impact on everyone.

Other children bully because they have emotional and developmental problems, or because they come from abusive families. They require our help more than our punishment.

The kind of bullying, though, that presents the most difficulty in figuring out how and when to intervene falls between these two extremes: Sometimes children who aren’t normally bullies get caught up in a larger culture of aggression — say, a clique of preadolescent girls who form a club with the specific function of being mean to other girls. Teachers must learn the difference between various sorts of aggressive behaviors, as well as the approaches that work best for each.

Most important, educators need to make a profound commitment to turn schools into genuine communities. Children need to know that adults consider kindness and collaboration to be every bit as important as algebra and reading. In groups and one-on-one sessions, students and teachers should be having conversations about relationships every day. And, as obvious as it might sound, teachers can’t just preach kindness; they need to actually be nice to one another and to their students.

Teachers also need to structure learning activities in which children are interdependent and can learn to view individual differences as unique sources of strength. It’s vital that every student, not just the few who sign up for special projects or afterschool activities, be involved in endeavors that draw them together.

Look at Norway, where the prevention of such incidents became a major emphasis of the school system after three teenage victims of bullying committed suicide in 1983. There, everyone gets involved — teachers, janitors and bus drivers are all trained to identify instances of bullying, and taught how to intervene. Teachers regularly talk to one another about how their students interact. Children in every grade participate in weekly classroom discussions about friendship and conflict. Parents are involved in the process from the beginning.

Norway’s efforts have been tremendously effective. The incidence of bullying fell by half during the two-year period in which the programs were introduced. Stealing and cheating also declined. And the rate of bullying remains low today. Clearly, when a school and a community adopt values that are rooted in treating others with dignity and respect, children’s behavior can change.

Indeed, our analysis of successful bullying-prevention programs across the United States and abroad reveals that the key common factor is their breadth: both in terms of the people who participate and of the deep connection between specific policies and the larger social ethos of the school community.

Involving the legal system makes a strong statement that a society won’t tolerate bullying. But for laws like the one in Massachusetts to succeed, they have to be matched by an educational system that teaches children not only what’s wrong, but how to do what’s right.

Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the teaching program at Williams College, where Marlene Sandstrom is a professor of psychology.

New Delhi, July 21, 2010

Fed up of the relentless bullying by her schoolmates, 5th-grader Ziainey Stokes decided to approach US President Barack Obama directly. The president not only responded to her letter but also inspired her to start a national anti-bullying organisation.The girl not only mentioned her own problem
but also addressed the problem of bullying in general in her school.

“What I wrote about (in my letter) was that the kids at my school were being bullied and how it wasn’t right,” Ziainey tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. The president, who reads 10 letters from the public each day and personally answers a handful, replied: “Your letter demonstrates a desire to change the culture of your classroom as well as your community.”

Ziainey is now recruiting people for her still-unnamed group and researching similar organizations. “She’s really taken an initiative,” says her mom, “and I stand by her.”

Michael learns how to be abusive from watching how his dad treats his mom. Lucina never learned to be a bully, but since she’s privileged, why shouldn’t she lord it over those who are not?

The two pre-teens have little in common except for their ages, their obnoxious behavior, and the fact each is the figment of the collective imagination of a group of about 50 middle schoolers collaborating on a book called “I Was a Bully … But I Stopped.”

The book, a work in progress, is on a fast track to be printed next month, in time to be distributed throughout Broward County’s elementary schools as part of the school district’s anti-bullying program. It will also be available online.

“Bullying really hurts everybody in school, and it takes everybody to stop it,” said local author Bob Knotts, who conceived of the book and, as founder of the Dania Beach-based Humanity Project, developed the free workshop producing it.

After the book is distributed in Broward, Knotts said he intends to offer it to the Palm Beach County and Miami-Dade school districts.

Broward County was the first school district in Florida to develop an anti-bullying program; the rest of the state’s districts following suit by the end of 2008. The school year that ended in June was marked by two high-profile incidents that raised awareness of bullying, both at Deerfield Beach Middle School.

In October, seventh-grader Michael Brewer skipped school for fear of being confronted by a schoolmate who had allegedly tried to steal a bicycle belonging to Brewer’s father. That schoolmate and two others are accused of assaulting Brewer off campus and lighting him on fire. Brewer survived.

Then, in March, Deerfield Middle eighth-grader Josie Lou Ratley was violently attacked at a campus bus stop by Wayne Treacy, a Deerfield Beach High School student who accused her of insulting his dead brother in a text message earlier in the day. Treacy, 15, sent threatening messages to Ratley and to other friends, but apparently no one, including Ratley, took them seriously enough to report them.

Treacy has been charged with attempted murder.

The Ratley beating prompted the district to more vigorously promote its Silence Hurts program, an anonymous way students can report bullying and threats of violence. The district’s anonymous tip line is 754-321-0911.

Knotts said he has two goals with the Humanity Project workshop — to provide an academic exercise for children “at-risk” of low achievement or failure in the school system, and to engage them in bullying prevention.

He didn’t compel the students to talk in front of the class about whether they had personal experience with bullying. “I expect some elements of all their experiences will end up in their finished stories,” he said.

“I used to be bullied a lot,” said Elizabeth Dash, 12, of Hallandale Beach. “It’s because I carried a book with me wherever I go. I love to read.”

Working on the book, Dash said, is giving her and other students in the workshop at Olsen Middle School in Dania Beach a chance to get inside the heads of bullies. The students came up with the back story for their central characters: Michael Rose and Lucina, whose last name hasn’t been decided (and may not be).

Michael is a 12-year-old dyslexic boy of interracial heritage (his dad is black, his mom Asian) who bullies because it’s all he knows how to do. Lucina is a white girl from a wealthy family but whose parents recently divorced.

Once the characters were developed, the students were sent into groups to work on their stories. Each group was free to create a victim and to figure out a realistic way for the bully to change before the story’s end.

With a bully as the main character and reform the turning point of the story, the students learn to focus on changing the causes of bullying rather than just reciting the effects. The bully, through the process of change, becomes almost as sympathetic as the victim.

“I can relate to Michael a little bit,” said Dash. “But only a little bit. I don’t think he wants to be a bully. I actually think it’s because of what he’s going through.”

And allowing the students to create the victims provides insight into how it feels to be bullied.

One group of girls imagined Michael terrorizing a small, freckled boy with a squeaky voice, demanding the boy’s lunch money.

“It happens more to people that look weak,” said Nickhayla Meikle, 11, of Hollywood. Her group plans to stop Michael’s bullying by introducing a female peer to teach him the error of his ways.

“It’s awful that people bully people just because it looks like they can’t fight back for themselves,” she said. “Sometimes if it gets out of hand, I’ll go and tell an adult.”

Other groups may choose to have the victim fight back, to have an adult intervene, or to turn the tables by making Michael the victim of a bigger bully.

In Dash’s group, the target of Michael’s bullying has a protector. How that person figures into the ending is still being worked out, she said.

Knotts said he’s eager to see what happens in each of the stories, which are due at the end of July. Knotts will then take elements from each of the stories and blend them into two tales: one about Michael, one about Lucina.

The finished product, Knotts said, will be published through a State Farm grant.

“This is a really good class,” Dash said. “It’s not just teaching me about bullies. It’s helping me be a writer, and that’s what I want to do.”