Reddit reviews Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy

Well, it's almost the 4th, so I'll give you a patriotic update on me:

1. Using good old fashioned social media, I got the attention of the Executive Director of the Connecticut chapter of the March of Dimes. I will be discussing youth events with her after the weekend is up.
   
   
2. Also got the attention of Slate columnist Emily Bazelon following her AMA /u/emilybazelon to see if legal bullying change is at all possible in CT as well. I feel the current 2011 laws protect the administration much moreso than they do the individual being bullied so I hope to change that. It's most notable in her book, Sticks and Stones too. A girl had to commit suicide in MA to spark a measure of change there, so why don't legislators change our laws too? Do more tragedies like Newtown need to happen in order to wake up our Congress for some new legislation? It's a sad state of affairs in Washington regarding this issue.
   
   Happy fourth, I guess.

In my experience across several schools, as a teacher and administrators, when we hear about it, we do something about it. I've found teachers to be pretty good about reporting up their concerns around bullying and harassment, and as administrators, we in turn respond pretty quickly.

We're sometimes stymied, though, by lack of information from or follow-up at home. I've had a few students report to me that they told their parents weeks/months ago about being bullied, but the parents did not share that information with the school to do something sooner. I've also had some parents commit to take action at home -- such as calling a cell phone provider to block a number or to contact Facebook to report an offending post/account, and then heard later that they didn't. (Facebook has been very good in my experience about responding to parents/families when they raise the flag about harassing content -- and they've also been very consistent that they will only take action in response to a parent/family request, and not in response to a school request.)

For anyone interested, I highly recommend "Sticks and Stones" by Emily Bazelon (http://www.amazon.com/Sticks-Stones-Defeating-Rediscovering-Character/dp/0812992806).