The Bullying Academy, a web-based interactive program launched in September 2011 by national nonprofit, Students in the Know, was created in an effort to help put an end to the national epidemic which according to the U.S. Department of Education, causes 160,000 children a day to stay home from school for fear of being bullied. (Statistics from StompOutBullying.org, the American Justice Department, and BullyingStatistics.org) To date, over 20,000 students have successfully completed the program, all 50 states have at least one registered school, and an average of 25 new schools register each week.
The anti-bullying program for 4th-8th graders was created to help students and educators recognize the dangers of bullying and cyber bullying. The primary emphasis is to inform students of preventative measures related to bullying as well as to develop effective communication strategies. It's a free program, and engaging and educational.
I had a chance to interview Tommy Walser, Executive Director of Students in the Know, and founder of Bullying Academy.
1) How was The Bullying Academy started? What was the inspiration?
The founding of the Bullying Academy in 2011 was inspired by the needs of our digital youth generation and how they learn and experience the world. Like many others driven to end bullying and its tragic consequences, I have experienced bullying in my own life and the lives of those around me. However, my desire was to create more than an awareness campaign, it was to create a curriculum that teaches students how to respond to and stop bullying.
Our goal is to engage students and to teach them that bullying should not be tolerated as merely part of growing up, and that all students have the right to a safe learning environment. I want every kid in the United States to feel connected to the common experience of ending bullying and a shared learning experience as ubiquitous as Smokey The Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog and scouting is to generations before me. My vision is to help youth develop life-long skills they will take to all personal relationships, higher education, the workplace and their communities.
I believe that education in the classroom setting is the proper place to begin tackling the root of this problem, but there is little to no anti-bullying resources made for classroom use.
The solution was to create the Bullying Academy which is an interactive and completely web-based program that provides anti-bullying curriculum for 4th-8th grade students, and in the 2012-2013 school year will expand to 9th-12th grades. We created a program that teachers and their students could access on school computers, laptops and tablets. In our first academic year 750 schools and more than 30,000 students have engaged the program.
2) Who is behind the development of this resource?
Students in Know Foundation developed the program. Students in the Know (SITK) is a non-profit foundation created to educate students about current issues in an effort to improve the future quality of our community at large.
3) What are some ways the program is being used in schools?
Before we launched the Bullying Academy in September 2011, we talked to teachers and learned there were key obstacles to overcome to create a national online curriculum for teaching anti-bullying in 4th-8th grade classrooms.
- Curriculums that require extensive training of teachers slows down the process of implementation.
- Educators don’t have the time or resources to put together their own curriculums.
- School servers block a majority of youtube.com videos and other flash sites created to address bullying.
- States and school districts that mandate anti-bullying programs provide little or no training and little or no funding for programs.
- Purchasing anti-bullying programs slows down implementation if the fee is more than approved discretionary spending.
- Kids love incentive-based learning, they are motivated by prizes and parties that are typically not in teacher and school districts budgets
4) How can parents learn more or find out how they can encourage their school to join up?
Parents can visit our site at bullyingacademy.org, and check out our content themselves. If they visit the educator’s page there are instructions to demo our program. I would encourage parents to find out what your child’s school is doing to address bullying education in the classroom. Parents can recommend our program to their child’s school; often the best people to reach out to are the guidance counselors, technology coordinators, and principals.
To learn more about the program, you can read one school's story.
Learn more about how to stop cyberbullying
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