TalkEZY

22 Hub teachers band together to confront bullying

Instead of relaxing at the beach, 22 city school teachers spent their free time yesterday learning how to root out bullying in Boston and replace it with a culture of kindness.

The class comes after 40 students were caught bullying this past school year and were sent to a Saturdays for Success program to confront their own destructive behavior.

“The biggest part behind it is to create a culture and climate in school where all kids are accepted and bullying is not,” said retired Boston public school teacher and principal Ed Donnelly, who is leading the three-day workshop.

Donnelly is the co-director of the Bullying Prevention Research Institute run by the Education Development Center, a nonprofit hired by Boston Public Schools to help develop bully prevention initiatives.

His “pupils” will go on to become bully intervention and prevention specialists for their schools, serving as a support system for victims of all kinds of bullying — from traditional name-calling and brutish acts to anonymous cyber smears.

The specialists will also educate other teachers on spotting bullying, and encourage bystanders to take a stand and to help redirect a bully’s energy into constructive actions.

“Being a bully is a learned behavior. ... What we are trying to do is take those kids and let them see there are other ways they can use their power,” he said.

Jennifer Flynn, a special-education teacher who already serves as an intervention specialist at John F. Kennedy School in Jamaica Plain, said she wanted to learn more about combating bullying after a fifth-grader came to her after getting repeatedly teased by classmates who called her “dumb” and “stupid” because she is a slow reader.

“I took this to up my knowledge,” she said.

Source Website:  http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/google/bully/~3/oRw2pQZhddY/url