Bullying What Every Adult Needs to Know produced by Paraclete P.docx

Bullying: What Every Adult Needs to Know
produced by Paraclete Press (Millis, MA: Aquarius Health Care
Media, 2003, originally published 2003),
27 mins
PARACLETE VIDEO PRODUCTIONS
Stew Herrera: Seven out of 10 kids have been bullied. Over
150,000 students stay home from school each day to avoid being
bullied. Bullying has serious consequences for both the victims
and the bullies, ranging from low self esteem to violence and
even to suicide. Young people need guidance from the adults in
their lives to deal with bullying in a healthy way. This video
contains information that every adult needs to know about
bullying and about how they can help young people who
experience bullying.
Lynne Reeves Griffin: Bullying is really a, a subjective
experience. It's what the children feel. It's what the child says to
you is bothering them.
01:10 Stew Herrera: Lynne Reeves Griffin, of Proactive
Parenting in Scituate, Massachusetts is a lecturer, writer, and
consultant to parents, teachers, and healthcare professionals
regarding child development and behavior management issues.
01:20 Lynne Reeves Griffin, R.N., M.Ed. Director of Proactive
Parenting
Lynne Reeves Griffin: It's any situation in, in which children
feel intimidated, they feel threatened, they feel unsafe, and so
even if a very sensitive child is telling you they feel that and to
your eyes that looks rather, you know, kids will be kids kind of
a thing, you still have to hear that because that child is telling
you that's their perception, that's their feeling, that's their
experience.

01:45 Stew Herrera: Throughout this video, kids will share
their experiences with bullying.
01:50 UNKNOWN: You're supposed to be what everybody else
wants you to be. When you're not, that's when you start getting
bullied.
01:55 UNKNOWN: I think that there are a lot of aspects of
bullying. Um, there's the physical aspect of getting pushed
around in the hallway or intimidation. But I think that bullying
also includes psychological aspects. Um, teasing, name calling,
um, getting inside of people's heads so it starts eating away at
them.
02:15 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc., A
Subsidiary of Reader's Digest
UNKNOWN: When I talk to kids, what I hear from them most
is that bullying is any behavior that makes them feel unsafe. It
hurts their feelings, makes them scared and they're afraid to go
to school and they can't have fun anymore.
02:30 Stew Herrera: Mark Brown remembers being bullied as a
child. Born in Jamaica, he moved to the United States when he
was 19. Today, he is a Youth Motivational Specialist who is
dedicated his career to helping young people understand the
harmful effects of bullying. Through a national outreach
program sponsored by QSP, Inc, a subsidiary of Reader's
Digest, Mark uses his own personal experience and expertise to
teach kids about the importance of tolerance and respect.
03:00 Mark Brown: I can relate to the kid who's bullied. I can
recall being 10 years old in elementary school in Kingston,
Jamaica and there were three girls in my class who just made
me feel miserable and the thing is, after 32 years, I can still

remember their names. I can still see their faces and I can still
recall how afraid I was, how ashamed I was 'cuz how they made
me feel. And some people think that bullying and peer pressure
are the same thing. Not really. Peer pressure is when a group of
kids will cause someone else to want to do something. For
example, I gotta get Nike sneakers or I gotta get Adidas
footwear because everybody else wears it. When somebody's
bullied, they don't feel safe. They feel hurt, they feel wounded,
and they feel ashamed.
03:40 UNKNOWN: I think people are bullies because they're
insecure about themselves and that sometimes by, by teasing on
someone else or bullying someone else, they get also almost a
natural high that makes them feel better about themselves
04:00 Stew Herrera: Ann Phelan is a sixth grade guidance
counselor at Nauset Regional Middle School in Massachusetts.
04:05 Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset
Regional Middle School
Ann Phelan: Sometimes it's about power and affiliation and if a
child perceives that they will have peer recognition by being in
charge, by being the tough guy, they'll assume that role and
usually it's reinforced by their peers because they don't wanna
get in the way of that person. So they actually empower them
when they take on that role.
04:25 Lynne Reeves Griffin: What I find in my practice is that
the children that are labeled as bullies are often children who
have parents who potentially have issues socially as well so that
the role modeling and the coaching that the child receives or
doesn't receive puts them in a place where this is more likely to
happen. Typically those children who have issues with
boundaries socially and then are labeled as a bully are in fact
children that have trouble with boundaries in a, in a number of
different places.

04:55 Mark Brown: I'm no counselor or psychotherapist but in
my experience with kids, I realize that bullies often act the way
they do to gain some kind of superiority. They want to be
noticed. They want to be in charge and they don't know how to
behave or how to build good relationships and my wish is that
these people think about how they behave and learn from those
around them to develop some good, strong social skills.
05:15 UNKNOWN: I think that usually when somebody bullies
someone else, it's a cry for help. That they're so insecure about
themselves, something's going on inside their head that they
feel the need to have to personally attack somebody else.
05:30 Ann Phelan: There's different kinds of bullies in this
school. Um, there's the ones that are really quiet and subtle
about it and do it when no one can see it. There's sometimes a
group and there's usually a ringleader and then a group that kind
of encourages it or, um, supports it. There's the outward
aggressive bully that's physical and just continues to have one
incident after another with lots of behavioral consequences
within school and, um, you know, there's the occasional bully
that most of us have been. You know, sometimes we just pick
on someone.
06:05 UNKNOWN: When a boy bullies someone, I think that
they use their hormones and physically try to bully that person
or the victim. I think that they hit people more than girls would.
06:20 UNKNOWN: You always find girls that will physically
fight but I think it's more of like the name calling or, um,
attacking how the girl looks, what the girls wearing, what the
girl did the weekend before.
06:30 Ann Phelan: Girl bullies are vicious in that they pick on
things like promiscuity issues and sexuality issues. They usually

work together as a group and it's always, um, an inconsistent
theme. For instance, they may bully one girl for a while and
then become friends with her. Ostracism is really huge with
girls in that I'm not talking to her, so you can't either. And that
is really devastating for girls. Boys are just really blatant about
it.
07:05 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc., A
Subsidiary of Reader's Digest
Mark Brown: In my work as spokesman for QSP's national
outreach program on bullying, I talk to hundreds of kids every
single week and I found, in some cases, the verbal bullying is
even more dangerous than the physical bullying. Kids are
intimidated and they carry the names people use against them
for life. I've met kids who have been called a fat kid and they're
now in school teaching and a tear rolls down their eye when
they remember what it was like to be called a fat kid in school.
In some ways, physical bullying is harsh. Kids are pushed,
shoved into lockers and hurt that way but sometimes the word
can remain in your mind and your heart and your psyche for a
long, long time.
07:40 UNKNOWN: Well, last year, um, I was in a tough
situation and I had to wear this, uh, this kind of a brace kind of
thing where, uh, it kinda was pretty, pretty ugly. Um, it was
basically like waist up. Uh, I had a collar around my head and I
couldn't, couldn't really move. One time I was in math class and
I was trying to sit down and I fell over and this girl that was
sitting a row over from me started hysterically laughing and
pointing at me in front of the class. This happened a couple,
couple times and, you know, maybe not, I didn't fall over in my
chair a couple times but, you know, she would find a way to
make fun of my situation.
08:25 UNKNOWN: One of my friends was interested in this

senior boy and he had a girlfriend who was a senior and the boy
started calling my friend and his girlfriend found out. And so
she decided to get her group of friends kind of against my group
of friends, to make sure that the girl knew that he was taken and
to stop talking to him and to kind of back off, even though he
was the one calling her and trying to hang out with her. And it
got to the point where my whole group of friends was being
physically, not physically bullied but they would like hiss at us
and call us, you know, names and it got to the point where I
didn't feel safe walking down the hallway that they were
walking down because I was afraid that I was gonna be, like,
attacked and I was taking alternative routes in the school to
avoid seeing them in the hallways and it just got to the point
where I couldn't take it anymore, my friends couldn't take it
anymore.
09:25 UNKNOWN: There was, um, a kid in our middle school
that was just different than everybody else. He was unathletic,
not coordinated, talks differently. He just didn't seem to hang
around in the same, around the same kids and I think just
different but I think different is huge in middle school because
you're supposed to be what everybody else wants you to be but
when you're not is when you start getting bullied.
10:00 Mark Brown: Bullies often try to pick on those kids who
they believe are not gonna fight back. That was my situation.
When I was 8, 9 10 years old, I was never very assertive. If my
teacher said something to me, I would kind of cower and hide
and not say anything and there are those in my school who knew
that about me and they would use that as a reason and a means
to make me feel miserable and very often it is the child who is
more compliant, who is less assertive, who is more quiet, who
carries themself almost like a target. Here I am, I'm prime for
bullying. I encourage kids very often to walk with their
shoulders up, head high, let the bullies know they aren't afraid
of them. Sometimes I can tell that a child is being bullied.

Maybe they'll come from school and they're very
uncommunicative. They don't say much. They go to their room
and they're quiet. They don't want to play their favorite games.
They don't want to go out and have fun with their friends
anymore. Their homework isn't as good. Their work quality isn't
as good. They don't wanna go to school in the morning and they
don't lose, they don't wanna eat as much anymore. These are all
little signs that maybe a child is being bullied and if you see
those signs, it's time to open up, talk to them, and find out
what's going on in their lives.
11:10 UNKNOWN: Usually, like, they'll turn like red. Like
right on the spot they'll start blushing or, you know, even just
kind of walk away or maybe start crying. Those are like the
immediate signs. I think over time, they can become really
withdrawn from people, kind of just like I get picked on. I
wanna totally just avoid people all together and then I think,
like, the extreme case would be depression. Girls will actually,
you know, develop eating disorders, um, anorexia, bulimia. Um,
I, I have friends that that's happened to before and it's changed
their lives, you know. They have to battle this horrible illness
now.
Parenting
Lynne Reeves Griffin: Now one of the tricks that we as parents
and teachers need to know is that asking questions isn't always
the best way to get your answer. If you were to say to a child,
for example, what's going on? Is there anything going on at
school? Are you having trouble with your friends? Sometimes
that puts kids on the spot and they're reluctant to answer those
questions or they may not know how to answer those questions.
So another, more valuable, way of going after that information
is to state things as a fact. You're sad. Something's up. I'd love
you to tell me what that is. It's a different way to go after it but
it makes the child feel more relaxed, more comfortable and you

validated that those feelings are real.
12:35 [music]
UNKNOWN: Our self-esteem was so low so all this anger was
just stressed and, like, pulling you and, like, keep on poking
you like a thousand times.
12:45 Lynne Reeves Griffin: The short term effects for a child
being bullied, uh, include being concerned about your daily life,
not wanting to go to school, not wanting to go to the places
where you're going to have to experience this. The long term
effects really have a lot to do with the evolving self-image of,
of a young child, of a pre-adolescent or an adolescent. In these
years, we're developing our sense of who we are, what we like,
what we don't like, how we're seen by others and so if you're
being bullied and others are giving you language about yourself
that forms that identity, that's problematic.
13:20 Mark Brown: In the short term, victims are often afraid
to tell anybody what's happening to them. They get afraid, they
get scared and they're concerned if they tell somebody, they'll
get more bullying or worse, if they tell and somebody finds out,
they'll be called a tattle tale and then it's, they'll feel there's
even more ridicule coming their way. The effects of bullying
can last a long time. I read, I read one study where a gentlemen
was checking on kids who were bullied and he found out the
impact remained over 60 years later. Now in my travels, I met
principals, teachers, and counselors. I met one particular
assistant principal, a lovely lady in the midwest, who recalled
when she was going to college 30 years ago, she was afraid to
walk in the main college campus because she remembered what
it was like being bullied in elementary, middle, and high school
and to this day, she still remembers that experience. So the
impact of being bullied can remain with you for a long time.
14:20 UNKNOWN: Gashes on your face from being punched or

bruises from being pushed into lockers can heal but it's a lot
harder for mental scars inside. To be laughed at during your
school year, to be made fun of, to be pointed out in front of
everybody. Those scars are harder to fix.
14:45 Lynne Reeves Griffin: The short term effect for, uh, the
bully himself in terms of, uh, you know, how it affects him or
her is that it reinforces ways of behaving. So, for example, if I
intimidate someone to get what I need and that works for me, I
get what I need because that person is afraid of me, then we
learn that intimidation works. The long term effect of course is
that you don't form good friendships, you have trouble with
relationships, people are, are, find, find it difficult to spend
time with you.
15:15 Mark Brown Youth Motivational Specialist QSP, Inc. A
subsidiary of Reader's Digest
Mark Brown: Studies have shown that bullies, in the long run,
very often are more likely to be involved in crime and doing
drugs and other antisocial behaviors in the long run. In the short
run, they may think they're getting ahead and they may think
they're getting popular but in effect, they really are turning
other people against them by anti-social behavior. It's important
for bullies to get help and to learn about the impact of their
behavior on those around them.
15:45 [music]
Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset Regional
Middle School
Ann Phelan: Helping the kid who's bullied is really, really
important because if they don't feel safe here and they don't feel
good about themselves, they're not gonna learn and their
academic performance is gonna go down and they're gonna hold
those memories with them for a long time. So the most
important thing I do is to establish a good relationship and to
validate their feelings and really just listen and sometimes it
takes a lot of time just sitting and listening and talking about

how they feel but then once they have your trust and once they
know that someone is gonna really take charge and listen and
help them, you come up with a plan that really involves the
child becoming empowered.
16:30 UNKNOWN: I love the feeling that I had my parents
behind me, my friends behind me, the school behind me. I
thought that was a plus because, at the beginning, I was all
alone and I felt that I was personally being threatened by these
girls and that there was nobody that I could talk to. I mean, I
kind of kept it all inside but then once I told the guidance
counselor what was going on, then, um, I think it actually
started because a teacher overheard me saying that I didn't want
to go to school anymore and she went and told, um, the
principal that they had to do something about it. But in the end,
it was the best feeling knowing that all of these people were
behind me to help me get through this and to help these girls
realize that what they were doing wasn't okay.
17:10 UNKNOWN: They used to, like, draw on us.
17:15 UNKNOWN: They used to throw us down on the floor,
beat us up, spit on our face, draw on our face. Just anything that
you think is horrible, you, you, that's what happened to us.
17:20 UNKNOWN: You couldn't really tell your parents 'cuz if
you did, you'd probably get your butt kicked more 'cuz they'd be
like oh, where's your mom now?
Parenting
Lynne Reeves Griffin: We have to be very proactive in our
communication with children. We need to be talking to our
children all the time. As parents and as teachers, we need to
have an open line of communications with our students. You
can let them know that you're, you will communicate with them

about anything, no matter how difficult. If that message is truly
sent to children, then they will get that message in reverse, that
if my parent will talk to me about anything then I think I can
talk to my parent about anything too. And you'll have that back
and forth, uh, experience.
18:00 Mark Brown: Victims of bullies want to know people
care. They want to know that people are involved in their lives.
I got a phone call from Dallas, Texas from a parent who called
me to let me know that her daughter who was bullied for two
and a half years was so overjoyed that one person, me, came to
her school, talked about bullying and seemed to understand and
care about them. She went home crying tears of joy. That kind
of behavior tells me that young people need badly and want the
support of their family, their friends, their loved ones, and
people in authority at the schools.
18:40 UNKNOWN: I was afraid that the girls were gonna find
out that I was, you know, being a tattle tale on them and that it
was gonna lead to more bullying. The school really did a good
job in making sure that I felt comfortable enough that the girls
weren't gonna find out.
19:00 Ann Phelan: Kids have a really hard time coming
forward and talking about bullying because there's a strong code
of silence within the school and with kids and in the peer, um,
hierarchy, you don't go get help in that case because sometimes
it can make it worse and so what we try to do is I work with the
children on creating ways where we can get help for them so
that they're not perceived as a tattler. Um, we encourage them
and validate their feelings, let them know that if we don't stop it
now, it can happen to other people. Um, kids perhaps have been
bullied for a long time and someone didn't listen or someone
didn't take attention. Lots of times parents will say oh, just
ignore them, that, you know, you can just go to school and deal
with it and after a while, kids just kind of accept it as part of
their role. So that's the unfortunate thing.

19:45 Mark Brown: In my experience traveling across the
country, I've met thousands of kids and very often what they're
most afraid of is repercussions. Is the bully getting back at them
because they have told someone about it. For them to get rid of
that fear, they must approach their parents and those in
authority and their role, the parents and principals and teachers,
first of all, is to take all the bullying seriously and to let that
child know, we are here to help you. We will help you to take
care of this problem.
19:45 Mark Brown: In my experience traveling across the
country, I've met thousands of kids and very often what they're
most afraid of is repercussions. Is the bully getting back at them
because they have told someone about it. For them to get rid of
that fear, they must approach their parents and those in
authority and their role, the parents and principals and teachers,
first of all, is to take all the bullying seriously and to let that
child know, we are here to help you. We will help you to take
care of this problem.
20:20 Ann Phelan Sixth Grade Guidance Counselor Nauset
Regional Middle School
Ann Phelan: I help the bully in different ways. Basically, I
think the most important thing is to talk to them about rules and
expectations, to talk to them about what's acceptable behavior
and to explore with them what their own personal experiences
are. Have they been bullied? What's happening for them at
home? How did they feel about it? And what we do is just work
through it in that respect.
20:50 Stew Herrera: Greg Baecker is the principal at Nauset
Regional Middle School in Massachusetts.
Greg Baecker, Principal Nauset Regional MiddleSchool
UNKNOWN: The disciplinary consequences we want to be the

last step because, you see, the key for us is we wanna be able to
help the child change their behavior. You can give a child all
the disciplinary consequences you want but if the kid still
comes back displaying the same kinds of behaviors, you haven't
changed anything. So the, the bottom line here is to find ways
to get both the bullier and the person who's receiving those
types of comments, to give them both strategies to be successful
so you can change those behaviors.
21:25 Mark Brown: We can help bullies to understand that their
behavior really is destructive. See, bullies often say hey, what's
the big deal. I don't mean to hurt nobody. I'm having fun. It's
not a big deal. I don't mean to hurt them. But they need to
understand that their words are weapons, their words can hurt
others and they need to be taught the importance of building
good social skills and the value of building and keeping great
relationships. One of the first things I would do is let the bully
try to understand exactly how somebody else feels. The old
Golden Rule says do unto others as you would have do unto
you. Have the bully put themselves in the shoes of the child
who was their victim. Many schools are using programs now
where they have playacting and role playing and they play out
situations for the bully to see and understand what their victims
are going through. That's one important way we can teach
bullies how to change their behaviors.
22:20 Lynne Reeves Griffin: I think we can prevent bullying by
recognizing that everything we do in advance of the incidents
themselves or the incident itself is important.
22:35 Ann Phelan: We have a guidance curriculum we've
entitled Positive School Climate and it incorporates a lot of
different things. We use some curriculums from some other
places, such as the Teaching Tolerance Foundation. We did Mix
It Up Day, which was a lunch day program where we asked kids
to sit with other children to look at social boundaries.

22:55 Greg Baecker: We had an assembly program after Mix It
Up Day to get the kids to respond to us as to what they thought
about the day. Was it beneficial? What was good about it? What
was bad about it? And we did this in, in whole grade
assemblies. A young man came up to the microphone and he
said to the group of 240 sixth graders that Mix It Up Day was
no different for him and he was asked well, why was that. He
said because kids treated me the same today that they treat me
every other day. They didn't sit with me and I don't have a lot of
friends. Now when he made that statement in a room with 240
sixth graders and adults, you could hear a pin drop. I am
pleased to say that as a result, someone heard what he said and
now he actually has kids sitting with him at the table and having
lunch with him.
23:55 Ann Phelan: Schools and teachers really have a huge
responsibility because if it's not allowed and if it's, if it's, it's
stopped, children have a good model of what's acceptable in
social behaviors. So schools have a lot of different roles. We
need to have programming so that children have an
understanding of boundaries and rules and perspectives. They
also need to be aware that those rules are not just within a
school but they're involved in state and federal situations, out in
public. Um, we need to be clear and consistent about what
expectations are. So for instance, if they hear something in the
classroom, a comment such as you're a fag, they need to stop
the lesson and they need to address it. That's not acceptable
behavior and we're not gonna accept that word in this
classroom. So that way the kids say phew, she's not gonna let
this happen or he's not gonna put up with that here in our class.
It's safe. If it happens again, the teacher needs to reinforce the
same kind of comment but then say you and I need to talk after
class about it so that the kids see that there's follow through,
that I can trust this teacher. They're not gonna let my class be
like this. In the hallways, teachers really need to be visible
because that's where it happens a lot and our administrator and

in most schools ask the teachers, be outside the classroom. Be
where the kids are mixing and mingling because you need to see
the subtle stuff.
25:15 Lynne Reeves Griffin: I think the most important thing in
general is communication and we hear that a lot but we don't
know what that really means and what that really means is that
you talk to your kids every day about important subjects. One
very simple strategy is to find a time at the end of the day to
say tell me the best thing about your day and tell me the worst
thing about your day.
25:35 Mark Brown: In order for us to prevent bullying, it has to
be a concerted effort at school, at home, in our churches, in our
communities, in our social clubs. If everyone decides I will
teach my children how to build good relationships, if every
child says I'm gonna be a good citizen, learn to be a good friend
and be respectful to each other, we'll be on the way to ridding
ourselves completely of bullying.
26:05 Producer Charity Spatzeck-Olsen
Director Hans Spatzeck-Olsen
Executive Producers Dr. Lillian Miao Robert Edmonson
Narrator Stew Herrera
Special thanks QSP, Inc., A subsidiary of Reader's Digest Mark
Brown Marblehead High School and its Staff and Students
Laurie Meagher Danielle Bushnell Mathew Witter Rule
Broadcast Systems Joe Laraja Nauset Regional Middle School
and its Staff and Students Ann Phelan Gregory Baecker Tony
Cedeno Susan Williams Center for the Study and Prevention of
Violence Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System
of the London Family Court Clinic, Inc. Music by FirstCom
Music, Inc.
PARACLETE VIDEO PRODUCTIONS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT C2003.
26:10 [music]

Grading Criteria
Maximum Points
Explained appropriate response to statements made by bullies
that their behavior was not intended to be bullying and that
victims are overreacting.
16
Compared characteristics of bullies and victims and described
how bullying might occur when these children with these
characteristics intersect.
16
Discussed monitoring and actions that teachers and parents can
implement to address bullying.
16
Described an intervention program for bullies.
16
Discussed the role of gender and diversity in bullying.
16
Wrote in a clear, concise and organized manner; demonstrated
ethical scholarship in accurate representation and attribution of
sources, displayed accurate spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
20
Total:
100

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