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Bullying.org News -November 8, 2010
"Never doubt that a small group
of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it
is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead
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Dear Friends of
Bullying.org,
Thank you for being a Friend of Bullying.org. This newsletter is
being sent to over 12,000 friends, supporters and partners of
Bullying.org in families, schools, School Boards and Ministries of
Education, Universities, Business, Community and Government
leaders, Media, Bullying Researchers and anti-bullying activists
around the world. If you know of others who are also committed to
working together to more effectively address the issue of bullying,
please forward or share this newsletter among your own contacts and
networks as you may deem appropriate. Let's try to have more than
20,000 list members by this time next year!
Bullying.org's mission is dedicated to the prevention of
bullying through education and awareness. Since February 16, 2000
we have offered online educational resources as well as supporting
programs and in-person presentations for young people, parents,
educators and community leaders.
Through this newsletter we want to introduce you to other Friends
of Bullying.org; people, projects, special events, new research and
resources -all focused on supporting Bullying.org's mission, "To
eliminate bullying from society through education and
awareness".
Thank you all for helping us to make a difference for others!
Sincerely,
Bill Belsey
Founder and President,
Bullying.org
"Where you are NOT alone!"
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Bullying Awareness Week November
14th - 20th, 2010
And the countdown is on...!
Click here to watch
this video to find out why the CBC's Rick Mercer thinks
that Bullying Awareness Week is so important. Thanks so much for
your support Rick!
The City of Calgary
formally recognizes Bullying Awareness Week. Thank you former
Mayor Dave Bronconnier!
Bullying.org recently learned that Tennessee Governor Phil
Bredesen has declared Nov.
14-20 as "Bullying Awareness Week."
Bullying.org is proud to have started this grassroots initiative,
but the success of the week rests entirely with you, our wonderful,
passionate, partners. Thank you so much for sharing our vision and
for making a difference for others!
"When I first conceived of an annual Bullying Awareness Week
nearly nine years ago, I certainly understood that we need to be
addressing this issue each and every day. Facilitating social
change takes ongoing, longterm effort. Having such a week forces us
to renew our commitment to addressing this issue, to have important
conversations about healthy human relationships in our families,
schools, businesses and communities in positive, proactive ways,
rather than always reacting to negative situations. My father
always use to say, 'What the mind can conceive, and the heart can
believe, we CAN achieve!' I think that he was right!" -Bill
Belsey
Some special days include:
Wednesday,
November 17th , 2010
Stop Cyberbullying Day!
"Send the Msg: Stop Cyberbullying!" * (Msg =
message)
Thursday, November 18th, 2010
BE the
Change! -Youth Leadership and Action
Day!
Friday, November 19th, 2010: Blue Friday!
Wear
blue
as a sign of peace and safety today
If you are a young person in the Calgary area, please consider
registering for and participating in the annual Blue Friday Youth
Leadership conference. It will be held on Friday, November 19th,
2010 at Forest Lawn High School in Calgary, Alberta. For more
information, please contact the amazing Flo Cameron at blue.friday@ciacy.org or register online at http://www.pmast.org/registration.html
To find out how your family, school, community group can
participate and to find many event ideas and free supporting
resources, please visit www.bullyingawarenessweek.org.
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| Alex Hope Elementary School
in Langley, British Columbia |
Currently there are over 1,000 schools registered to participate in
the 2010 Bullying Awareness Week activities this year! Bullying.org
will award free access to our Webinar,
"Bullying: What Parents Need to Know, What Can Be
Done" to all parents of any school that submits
photos or a video showing how their school participated in BAW this
year! Photo submissions can be e-mailed to help@bullying.org and videos can be posted on
YouTube or TeacherTube.
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Seventh
Rain Partners with Bullying.org !
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Bullying.org President, Bill Belsey, with the
band "Seventh Rain"
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Bullying.org is proud to announce a new partnership with the Rock
band Seventh Rain.
The band, consisting of Ryan Williams - Vocals, Rich MacFarlane -
Guitar, Luke Sheppard - Bass and John Byskal - Drums, are wonderful
musicians and also have a powerful anti-bullying message for their
fans.
The band took top prize of $200.000 at the 90.3 AMP Radio Rock Star
2010 competition!
Bullying.org is working with the band by providing educational
resources that they can use and share with their audiences to help
them "Stand Up!" (to bullying).
Put on your headphones, turn up your speakers and listen to their
great song, "Something More".
If you are working with young people, this song, along with their
lyrics is posted on page # 1 of the
"I Want to Share -Music" section of www.bullying.org.* You can also learn more
about their positive, anti-bullying message by visiting the I Want
to Share -Multimedia" section of www.bullying.org and watching a video about
what youth audiences are saying about their music and their
message.
Look for Bullying.org's logos and banners on stage when the band
performs at a venue near you!
Here is how you can contact the band to have them come and play at
your school or in your community. Let them know you heard about
them as a Friend of Bullying.org.
twitter: @seventh_rain
(*Published on www.bullying.org with all full copyrights and
permissions from the artists).
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Bullying.org
-The CTV National News
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| Bullying.org President, Bill Belsey is interviewed from
Colombia via Skype on the CTV National News re. the tragic death of
Rutgers student Tyler Clementi |
Click here to view the
interview.
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Bullying.org Partners With Yale
University!
Bullying.org was approached the the Rudd Center for Food Policy and
Obesity at Yale University to help raise awareness about the
challenges faced by overweight youth.
The Rudd Center at Yale University is a non-profit research and
public policy organization devoted to improving the world's diet,
preventing obesity and reducing weight stigma. Bullying.org would
like to make our friends aware of some of the free resources that
the Rudd Center offers to address victimization and bullying
against overweight youth.
Children and youth are particularly vulnerable to weight-based
teasing, something which has long-term consequences for both
emotional and physical health. Researchers at the Rudd Center have
developed a number of free, educational resources to help expose
and combat weight bias and
victimization, including videos and handouts developed specifically
for overweight youth who have been teased or bullied, as well as
information for parents and educators, which are available online
on their webpage.
You can find their videos here:
http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=254
Resources specifically for kids and teens are available at this
link:
http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/what_we_do.aspx?id=197
Also feel free to take a look at their Website, www.yaleruddcenter.org, to get
an overview of what they do at the Rudd Center.
Bullying.org hopes that our firends will take a look at some of
these materials and see if they can be of help to you in your
efforts to prevent bullying.
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 Global
Connections
Bullying.org had the honour of presenting on the
topic of cyberbullying at the second annual conference on bullying,
which was organized by Universidad CES in Medellin,
Colombia. Thank you Natalia and your team for all of your hard work
and congratulations on organizing such a successful
conference!
For more information on the conference, please visit: http://simposiobullying.ces.edu.co/index.php/memorias
The wonderful youth drama group from Medellin who closed the
conference with an outstanding performance!
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Bullying.org
is very proud to announce two groundbreaking, new
partnerships!
The University of Ontario Institute of
Technology (UOIT) Faculty
of Education is partnering with Bullying.org to offer
our research-based, professional development courses about bullying
and cyberbullying from www.bullyingcourse.com for their teachers-in-training as a formal
part of their course of study!
"The
student-teachers are UOIT will now have a clear advantage over
their peers at many, if not most other Universities in terms of
preparedness to enter the classroom.
In my correspondence, travels and conversations with teachers
across North America and indeed around the world throughout the
past decade of working on this issue, most educators, myself
included, never received a course, let alone a class about the
issue of bullying during their time at University.Bullying is often
the number one non-academic issue that most teachers
facea according to a
survey by Statistics Canada, it is the number one concern of
parents, so why weren't teachers being prepared? To me it's like
graduating nurses and doctors who were never trained in helping the
public deal with the flu. Such a situation would be unthinkable
today, yet this is what is currently happening with respect to the
issue of bullying in education.This leadership from UOIT is a
game-changer" -Bill
Belsey
Congratulations to UOIT, our children will now be the winners
because of your leadership!
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The Calgary Regional
Consortium is
partnering with Bullying.org to offer our research-based,
professional development Webinars about bullying and cyberbullying
to educators in Canada and around the world.
Any educator in Canada or around the
world can register for these Webinars, by visiting:
http://www.crcpd.ab.ca/index.php/site/programs/category/21#programs
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Some
recent feedback from a course participant:
"Like
many educators, I felt an uncertainty and discomfort when dealing
with bullying. I was looking for a Professional Development
opportunity that would increase my knowledge and understanding
about what actually goes on when bullying takes place and what I
can effectively do about it. In my view, a worthwhile starting
point is taking the course, An Introduction to Bullying for
Educators. Completion of this course is empowering in that
'knowledge is power' and it lays a firm foundation from which to
grow both personally and professionally. It has helped me develop
a greater understanding and confidence in addressing the everyday
challenge of dealing with bullying in schools. "
-Jacqueline
(Ottawa, Ontario)
What
researchers are saying about www.bullyingcourse.com:
"I
like the (E101 -An Introduction to Bullying for Educators) course a
lot. It is filled with practical information that teachers can
relate to and use. Research has demonstrated a need for teacher
training in how to respond to bullying and cyberbullying. This
course provides an accessible way for teachers to get much-needed
information. I think this course could be adopted by schools and
used as the basis for staff development."
-Sheri
Bauman, Ph.D.
Associate
Professor
Director,
School Counseling Program
Editor,
Journal for Specialists in Group Work
University
of Arizona
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Caring Kids Award Winners and the Bullying.org Web of Fame!
Ref: http://bit.ly/dgk2tS
That's easy for an adult to say, but really hard for kids to do in
real life. Yet, every day, there are kids on the school bus, in the
gym change room, in the cafeteria and in school hallways who
regularly show such acts of kindness and courage.
Bullying.org would like to recognize such great young people!
You can learn more about how to nominate a young
person you know as one of Bullying.org's Caring Kids, please
visit:
http://www.bullyingawarenessweek.org/pdf/Caring_Kids_Award.pdf
Those chosen will receive a beautiful gold pin, a special
certificate and be celebrated on www.bullying.org
's "Web of Fame!"
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Homophobia Must
Stop!
This issue of the Friends of Bullying.org News is dedicated to the
memory of Tyler Clementi and all young people
who have been victims of homophobia.
This video was
created with this issue in mind by Melissa Bull and her colleagues
at Music Mind Records. They posted it to Youtube and www.bullying.org in hopes that others who might
need help and support would visit www.bullying.org and our partners.
Credits: "Rainbows" Lorenzo Owens, Music Mind Records
The following, brilliant song Chromosomophobia was
written and given to Bullying.org by my late teaching
colleague Bob Blue. Please consider sharing and discussing it with
others.
Chromosomophobia (Click the title to
listen to Bob sing his song)
by Bob Blue ©1992
Inside everybody's genes there is a set of chromosomes
That will determine all our fates to some degree
It inspires the philosophers and scientists
To argue over what make you be you and me be me
But of all the chromosomes, the one that makes the biggest
noise
Is simply labeled with the English letter "Y"
Well, without it, you're a woman and you've got an extra
"X"
But if you've got it then you're gonna be a guy
Now considering the permutations likely to appear
Within these intricate and complicated genes
It's a wonder that we ponder on our gender
As we do with expectations of deciding what it means
How we labor to attribute such a myriad of issues
To the chromosome determining to our sex
Can it really be so crucial to our psyches and our
futures
If instead of "Y" we have a double "X"
And when people love each other and decide to be together
How absurd it is for someone to imply
That the love is not legitimate
Unless one of the lovers has two "X's" and the other has a
"Y"
As the lovers struggle on to find a way to build a life
That they can share, it seems archaic and obscene
To suggest that they should call it off 'cause it could never
work
Citing as evidence, the make-up of a gene
With so many hefty reasons for the gaps between our
spirits
It seems backwards, contradictory and wrong
To oppose a way of living life that brings two people
closer
When they feel that close is right where they belong
In this universe wherein we grew from nothings into
somethings
On this planet where we try to make a home
Let us pause to recollect that we are more than what we're made
of
And a chromosome is just a chromosome
A chromosome is just a chromosome!
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Netizenship: A Concept and Call for Participation
(an open letter to my fellow teachers)
As you may recall, I have long been involved in trying to raise
awareness about the seriousness of bullying and cyberbullying
behaviour. But when I speak to students, parents and my fellow
educators in schools or at conferences, I try very hard not to be a
fear-monger, there is far too much of this going on today. In fact,
if you do this too for too long or often you will turn kids off in
a heartbeat. I do try to celebrate the many positive things that
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can bring to our
lives, in addition to helping young people understand that their
virtual actions can have real-life consequences for themselves and
for others.
With this background info. in mind, I want to create a space where
educators can share examples of non-profit, educational online
communities, projects, and related resources for youth that
classroom teachers can use to encourage, support and inspire what I
have referred to for many years as "Netizenship"
(Citizenship in the Information Age).
To me, Netizenship, like citizenship, is not merely about "being
safe" in person or online. Netizenship is a learning journey
wherein the individual strives to become more aware, not only of
their rights, but also of their responsibilities to others in
society, moving from a "Me to We" consciousness in person and
online if you will. Once this awareness takes hold, Netizens begin
to think about how they can use ICTs to benefit others in their
communities, schools and beyond. In my mind, it is these acts of
altruism and engagement that defines the Netizen. With the goal of
encouraging greater Netizenship, it is my hope to have
http://www.netizenship.net become a community that shares programs,
projects and related resources that can help educators, parents and
others who work with youth, to model, encourage, support and
inspire young people to become Netizens as part of a broader
Netizenship movement!
Although http://www.netizenship.net is fairly modest in
size and scope at this time, I have no doubt it will likely grow
quickly with the contributions and support of other educators like
you.
Please feel free to share this message and broader idea with your
own Professional Learning Networks as you may deem
appropriate.
I would greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions.
Let's work together to encourage greater Netizenship among our
youth!
Yours in teaching and learning,
-Bill Belsey
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Quick
Pics: Friends of Bullying.org
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(L to R): Michael McMann,
Suzy Randle (Fort Vermilion Victim Service Unit) with
Frank Oberle, Solicitor General for the Government of Alberta and
Bill Belsey, President, Bullying.org |
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(L to R) Dean Shareski,
Bill Belsey and Dr. Alec Couros at the
Digital Citizenship Symposium
in Calgary, Alberta |
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Links
and Stories and Podcasts Oh My !
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Thank you to the staff and
students of Strathcona-Tweedsmuir
School in Okotoks,
Alberta for having me present, "Virtual
Worlds, Real Consequences" at your
school recently. The feedback I received from students and staff
was much appreciated!
A special thank you also to Westberry and Rosetown schools on the
beautiful Saskatchewan prairie and Foundations For The Future
Charter Academy in Calgary for their warm welcome and kind
hospitality. Your students were wonderful !
See
you soon!
- Lycee Louis
Pasteur School in Calgary
- Riverbend
Junior High School - Edmonton
http://bit.ly/9yRWeR
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Bullying.org Contact
Information:
Phone: 1 403 932 1748
e-mail: help@bullying.org
http://www.bullying.org
"Where you are NOT alone!"
-The world's most visited and referenced Website about
bullying
http://www.cyberbullying.org
"Always on? Always Aware!"
-The world's first Website about cyberbullying
http://www.bullyingcourse.com
"Learn to be the change!"
-Offering online courses and Webinars about bullying and
cyberbullying
http://www.bullyingawarenessweek.org
"Prevention through education and awareness"
-The official Website of the annual Bullying Awareness Week"
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Bullying_org
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