Internet program teaches harms of bullying to elementary students

From: eSchool News
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/around-the-web/index.cfm?i=54474&i-d
By DANI MCCLAIN

Primary Topic Channel: Safety & security

Anne Kasdorf was fed up with the “your mama” jokes and the name calling.

So when the teacher at Gaenslen Elementary School, 1250 E. Burleigh St., got an e-mail last school year inviting her to pilot an Internet-based anti-bullying curriculum, Kasdorf jumped at the chance.

“I knew with it being online, the kids would get really into it,” she said. “And they did.”

The state Department of Public Instruction and the Children’s Health Education Center have partnered to create Bullyfree Basics, a program for elementary school students that transforms lessons on the dangers of spreading rumors and insulting classmates into animated, interactive games. The collaboration is the latest development in DPI’s effort to address the humiliations suffered in hallways, on school buses and, increasingly, on social networking Web sites.

Children and teens treating each other cruelly is nothing new, but what’s changed in recent years is educators’ sense of their own role in prevention, said Jon Hisgen, a health and physical education consultant at DPI. The idea that being bullied is an unavoidable part of growing up has faded as adults have realized how much bullying interferes with students’ learning.

“If there’s fear that they could be hurt or have things said about them, that preoccupies their thoughts all the time they’re in school,” Hisgen said. “The ability of the brain to take in and analyze information is shot because they’re thinking about what could happen when they leave that classroom.”

Two years ago, Hisgen wrote a print-based curriculum specifically for third- and sixth-grade students. The agency brought in Milwaukee’s Children’s Health Education Center last year to create an online program for fourth- and fifth-graders as a way to both strengthen a culture of kindness in Wisconsin elementary schools and experiment with online delivery. The Children’s Hospital affiliate offers similar curricula on nutrition, body image and tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.

“Online gives us the opportunity to educate them and then use the games to reinforce those messages,” said Bridget Clementi, the organization’s director. “We find it works from the students’ standpoint more than sending an outreach educator or using an in-house educator to give those kinds of messages.”

This past academic year, Bullyfree Basics was used in 34 districts statewide, including Greendale, Oak Creek and Kenosha Unified, Clementi said. Gaenslen Elementary, where Kasdorf teaches, was one of 13 Milwaukee public schools that took part.

She said the format worked well for her classroom, which is equipped with a laptop for each student. The children loved a game called “Bully Buster,” in which they used the laptop’s mouse to target unkind activities that appear in bubbles superimposed on a cartoon playground.

The goal is to earn points by busting bubbles that contain phrases such as “making fun of someone’s clothes,” “making threats,” “cutting in line,” and “passing notes.” Bubbles containing phrases such as “ask before taking” and “tell the truth” also appear on the screen.

The exercise gave her students an opportunity to talk about behavior they didn’t like and strategies to protect themselves, Kasdorf said.

One boy in particular was known to grow angry quickly and take out his frustrations on others. But after three months of working through the program, his classmates could stop him with a quick reference to the games they had played together.

“Toward the end of the year, the other kids would remind him about the lessons,” Kasdorf said. “He needed that reminder: ‘Oh yeah, we learned about that. We’re trying to be better citizens.’ ”