This week I will be gathering resources on cyberbullying in preparation for an upcoming school board meeting. As I explained in a recent post, school districts in the Sacramento region are dealing with troubling, even tragic, stories of bullying/cyberbullying at a Wholesale Jerseys number of school sites. As a result of media coverage on the very real, very negative impact of bullying on students (targets, bullies, bystanders) within and beyond the school day, I think/hope all districts are revisiting this important topic.

As the co curator of both a district and a global digital citizenship site, I am always on the lookout for new resources, lessons, and research. I really appreciate timely resources from two of my favorite digital citizenship organizations: Cyberbullying Research Center and Common Sense Media.

Cyberbullying Quiz What the Research Shows ProfessorsSameer Hinduja (Florida Atlantic University) and Justin Patchin (University of Wisconsin Eau Cheap NFL Jerseys Free Shipping Claire) are the co directors of the Center for Cyberbullying Research. As researchers, they delve into and provide information about the nature, extent, causes, and consequences of cyberbullying among adolescents. I highly recommend using their newly released Cyberbullying Quiz to jump start faculty discussions. The quiz is short (15 true/false questions) and each answer also includes the supporting research.

In addition to the quiz, Hinduja and Patchin have published a comprehensive Cyberbullying Fact Sheet that is written for educators, administrators, and parents. If you are looking for a professionally done handout for a Parent Night, I recommend the Fact Sheet.

Common Sense Media, although not solely focused on cyberbullying, is also constantly updating and adding to their resources. The awesome Kelly Mendoza, director of program development for Common Sense Media's education programs, recently Wholesale Jerseys China hosted a webinar with Dr. Elizabeth Englander, professor of psychology at Bridgewater State University:Cyberbullying, Sexting, and Social Media Use. Both the audio and the video are excellent as is the content! I learned a few new terms from Dr. Englander, such as self cyberbullying:

issue that is a little peculiar that you may have never heard of is something called self cyberbullying. This is a problem where kids essentially go online, they create a second persona online, and they use their second identity to cyberbully their first identity themselves. And then they take evidence of this to either their friends or to adults, and they say essentially 'see, I being cyberbullied.' It one of these issues that I thought was going to be very rare. However, we been tracking it for three years now, and we've found that about 15 percent of kids admit to doing this. Cheap Jerseys Supply Englander is also the director and founder of theMassachusetts Aggression Reduction Center, or MARC, academic Center in public higher education, committed to a public health model for bullying and cyberbullying prevention for the state of Massachusetts. MARC K 12 cyberbullying curriculum looks excellent, including their videos. I will definitely be sharing the K 5 video, Meanness Is Like Littering, with my district community:

Dr. Englander also champions the Great American No Bull Challenge, which includes wonderful student created videos Wholesale NFL Jerseys such as Numbskull:

It become quite clear that modern education must encompass more than just academics, and that matters of the heart must be taken seriously and nurtured as a matter of priority. Lisa Currie

The Challenge:Can kindness and empathy Wholesale Jerseys Outlet really be taught?

This morning I re readLisa Currie October post for Edutopia: Why Teaching Kindness in Schools Is Essential to Reducing Bullying. In the past couple of months, the impact of school wide bullying in the Sacramento region has been disturbingly newsworthy: the tragic suicide of an 8th grader in one district; a bullying lawsuit in an adjoining district; a number of student suspensions for racist activities at another; and an embarrassing parent confrontation during a regional cyberbullying public Wholesale Cheap Jerseys event for another. This recent stream of bad press highlights the need for districts to teach and expect kindness and civility (AKA good citizenship) face to face and online.

In my current position as a technology integration specialist for a large public school district, I am a regular visitor in K 12 classrooms. Many school sites display banners and/or posters around the campus reflective of the sites character education programs. Many have added cyberbullying to their character ed programs or are offering it as a stand alone part of their digital citizenship curriculum (all sites are required to have some type of digcit program in place). I am proud of the way many of our students, particularly at the secondary level, have stepped up to the challenge of confronting bullying. At one site, for instance, through their Unbullyable project, I know students have had a positive impact on their own campus Wholesale Jerseys as well as on their feeder elementary and middle schools.

I am grateful I have not yet opened the SacBee to find one my district schools featured on the front page for hurtful or hateful acts. And I applaud the efforts of K 12 teachers across the district to support their students in standing up and speaking out against bullying/cyberbullying. Yet a number of times, at several high school campuses, as I make my way through throngs of students exiting at the end of the school day, I hear them yelling out to classmates with rude, racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., comments. As tempting as it is to keep walking (it just kids being kids, no? I not actually a faculty member here, right?, etc.), when I stop and face the offending student (who probably had not realized there was an adult in their midst), he or she basically always has the same reply: Sorry I was just kidding. It takes my standing there a while longer before they will generally say once again that they are sorry. It think/hope the difference is that the first is because I heard them; the second the one that matters, is for having said the unkind slur in the first place.

Kindness can be taught, and it is a defining aspect of civilized human life. It belongs in every home, school, neighborhood, and society. Maurice Elias, Rutgers University

Stepping Up to the Challenge

But really, can kindness be taught?Can school districts serve as hubs for promoting these essential, Jerseys Outlet timeless life skills? As evidenced in the Unbullyable project, I think so. Part of my job involves checking that all sites are teaching digital citizenship. In the first quarter of the school year, each site submits how it plans to meet e Rate requirements. So teaching a few lessons during an advisory period, for instance, from Common Sense Media wonderful offerings, meets the requirements and often generates thought provoking, possibly behavior changing conversations. But some sites go above and beyond the minimum requirements by supporting a variety of student led initiatives. These sites recognize that, with bullying/cyberbullying, the most impactful campaigns are student initiated and student led.

Tips and Resources for Teaching Kindness Cheap Jerseys

So how do we teach kindness to our students? Cheap NFL Jerseys I believe in the power of stories to transform hearts and actions. Thankfully, there is a wealth of powerful literature, starting with picture books, that teachers can use to ignite ongoing conversations on what kindness looks like. Palacio Wonder. Their Living the Dream: 100 Acts of Kindness lesson/challenge would be a wonderful literature extension for primary grades to use in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and upcoming birthday. For middle and high school, I recommend visiting Facing History and Ourselvesand checking out theirBullying and Ostracism Collections for resources to help students critically about the dynamics and impact of bullying in schools and communities. is from stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, recent or from the past, and the ensuing conversations, that students often come to understand the role of the bystander in allowing bad things to happen, from bullying on the playground to unthinkable, unspeakable acts of government sanctioned brutality. Students need examples of what it means to cross the line from bystander to upstander. They need opportunities for grade level and cross generation conversations on how the courage of a single person to stand up and speak out against bullying and social injustice can change the school climate or even the history of the world. One of my favorite upstander tools is the Upstanders, not Bystanders VoiceThread. I co curate this VoiceThread with my Digital ID partner/National Writing Project colleague. In the two years since we started the Upstanders, not Bystanders project, we come to value how all voices and stories matter, from our kindergarten contributors to our Rwandan genocide survivor. Teaching kindness and civility needs to start in the primary grades and continue through adulthood.

One tip I have for readers is to document the work of your school sites. In the Sacramento bullying samples I mentioned above, I believe three of the four districts are currently Wholesale Stitched Jerseys in the process of developing district wide digital citizenship plans. The fourth district has curriculum and procedures in place, but refers to the program as digital literacy rather than digital citizenship. Although the broader title makes sense, in the likely need to CYA, I think it wise to intentionally single out how each site specifically implements the teaching of citizenship/digital citizenship. A simple procedure my district has put in place, in addition to each site submitting an implementation plan at the start of the year, is requiring each principal to sign a statement at the end of the year verifying that digital citizenship has been taught at his/her site.

As my district heads into the third year of requiring school sites to document their digital citizenship plans, one shift I noticed is also one I strongly recommend: Rather than plug in your plan at the close of the school year (post testing), as some of our secondary sites initially did, start the year teaching kindness and civility. Whether it through a shared article, a story, an assembly, etc., if Cheap Jerseys China the activity is followed with classroom discussion, I am pretty sure you will find, as a number of our teachers have, that student buy in will be greater as will instances of students actually putting their citizenship skills into practice. I love their Cyberbullying Quiz What the Research Shows, and all the resources linked under their Related Posts section. This exceptional resource, and many more, are listed on the Stepping Up page of the Digital ID project along with the invitation for your students to submit a PSA in the upcoming 2015 Digital ID PSA Challenge.

Edutopia! Lisa Currie Cheap NFL Jerseys Paypal article is part of the dynamic Bullying Prevention collection of resources on teaching kindness, empathy, and digital citizenship.

On my New Year Resolution List is the intent to update this post during Cheap NFL Jerseys the school year with samples of digital citizenship surveys for students, along with data on the results and impact of teaching kindness and civility. I welcome your input.

Best wishes to all school sites for Cheap Jerseys From China a year of newsworthy positive accomplishments!

I grew up in a home with books. In the room we referred to as the an entire wall was lined with my parents books and book collections. There was also a small glass three shelf bookcase that did not require any climbing and reaching on my part and that held book. It was The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rowlings. Wyeth illustrations that drew me to this classic. Other than my dad golf books, few of their books were illustrated. Wyth illustrations were gripping and fueled the imagination, as you can see by scanning the online Project Gutenberg version.

I think it entirely possible that I actually learned to read at home, not at school. I remember being assigned to reading groups according to reading level. I can remember ever coming home wanting to talk about any great stories from the classroom readers. Although when my first or second grade NFL Jerseys Cheap teacher introduced me to Charlotte Web as a read aloud, I know I begged to have my own copy.

Back to The Yearling. When I first discovered the book, I was still in the primary grades. Even though I couldn read it, I could tell from the illustrations that it was an animal story, a favorite genre then (and still today). When I told my dad how much I wished I could read The Yearling, he gave me a great piece of advice: Just keep checking back every so often, because at some point you will be able to read it.

Looking back, I pretty sure it was the Nancy Drew detective seriesthat helped boost my reading level up to The Yearling lexile. Although totally done as outside reading, separate from classroom readers/anthologies, I regularly brought my latest Nancy Drew book to school in order trade with friends. Sort of an organically organized early book club. I guessing it was about 5th or 6th grade when I realized The Yearling was now an accessible read.