Anti-Bullying Websites and Resources

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Anti-Bullying Network

The Anti-Bullying Network is an independent operation with the following objectives: to support anti-bullying work in schools; to provide a free website; and to offer an anti-bullying service which will include the provision of training, publications and consultancy services.

 Bullying

Basic information on coping with bullying for school aged kids, parents and teachers. It includes links, webquests and other activities.

Character Education Partnership (CEP)

Character education and school climate approaches can have a strong, positive impact on children and schools. Based in Washington, DC, it is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonsectarian coalition of organizations and individuals committed to fostering effective character education in our nation’s schools.

National School Climate Center

NYC-based national organization that helps schools integrate crucial social and emotional learning with academic instruction. In doing so, they enhance student performance, prevent drop outs, reduce physical violence, bullying, and develop healthy and positively engaged adults.

NJ Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention

The mission of the NJ Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention is to increase community awareness of bullying as a common serious problem of school-age children and to advocate for the implementation of effective bullying prevention approaches in NJ. The website includes a list of key points about bullying and hazing, and tips on how to deal with bullying in school.

Stop Bullying

This federal government website managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services provides information from various government agencies on how kids, teens, young adults, parents, educators and others in the community can prevent or stop bullying.

Stop Bullying Now

This website, created by Stan Davis, a school counselor and bullying expert in Maine, offers practical, research-based strategies to reduce bullying in schools and includes information on what works and what doesn’t work to stop bullying. It also contains training materials. Davis’s book, Schools Where Everyone Belongs, is a practical and useful guide on the subject.

Stop Hazing

This anti-hazing website covers many aspects of hazing in fraternities, sororities, high schools, student organizations and in the military. It includes statistics, information on laws, deaths, myths and facts about hazing.

Understanding Bullying and Cyberbullying Guide

This guide from Onlineschools.org was created to bring awareness to issues surrounding bullying and cyberbullying, and to help students, parents, and teachers prevent instances of bullying in the future.

Books and Bibliographies:

Here’s a list of recommended books from blogger, author and speaker Carrie Goldman’s blog: http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2012/04/anti-bullying-reading-recommendations-for-children-and-teens/

Goldman is a co-founder of the Pop Culture Anti-Bullying Coalition, and also runs Team Bullied.  In addition to raising awareness about adoption issues, she travels around the country speaking to corporations, schools, and communities about bullying prevention, and she runs workshops for people of all ages on how to deal with bullying, cyberbullying, and social conflict. She is the author of Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear (Harper Collins).

Many of the websites listed above include lists of recommended books. Here are a few titles that are especially recommended:

Aronson, Elliot. No One Left to Hate. Holt Paperbacks, 2001. 978-0805070996. In this post-Columbine book, the author eloquently explains the connection between educational strategies and bullying.

Garbarino, James and Ellen DeLara. And Words Can Hurt Forever: How to Protect Adolescents from Bullying, Harassment and Emotional Violence. Free Press, 2003, 978-0743228992.

Olweus, Dan. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Understanding Children’s Worlds). Wiley-Blackwell, 1993. 978-0631192411. This is a foundational reference and also a practical guide on bullying. Further information about Olweus’s approach is available from www.clemson.edu/olweus/

School Library Journal publishes a list of resources for bullying prevention each year. http://www.slj.com/resources/slj-resources-for-bullying-prevention/

DVDS

Triune Arts:

Triune Arts, a non-profit, charitable institution established in 1981, has developed award-winning educational video programs on a variety of subjects including resolving conflict creatively in the school community; the multicultural community and between victims and youth offenders.

Bullying in Schools – An Effective Two DVD Anti-Bullying Resource:

A two DVD set, “Six Methods of Intervention” and “Healing Circles” each contain additional information and discussion guides for use in a classroom or workshop setting.

Watch a preview clip on YouTube: Bullying in Schools

Research

Curricular materials have been developed by a number of people, including Nancy Mullin, Dorothy Espelage, Nan Stein and associates at Wellesly College’s Center for Research on Women.

Together We Are Stronger Than Bullying

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Bullying can occur at any time, in any place, and at any age; whether at home, school, a place of worship, or in the workplace. All people deserve to live in a world free from harassment and abuse.

Bullying is intentional. The individual does not knowingly provoke the bully and may have made it clear that the behavior is not welcome. What is Bullying?

Bullying behavior is often repetitive. Although it can take place in a single incident, bullying is generally carried out repeatedly over time.

Bullying involves hurtful acts, words, or other behavior. Bullying is an oppressive or negative act intended to hurt somebody else.

Bullying involves a real or perceived imbalance of power. Power in this instance can be defined as physical strength, social status, or intimidating behavior.

 

New Jersey declares April as Sikh Awareness Month

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Washington, March 29

The US state of New Jersey has declared April as ‘Sikh Awareness and Appreciation Month’ as part of its effort to promote awareness of the faith.

New Jersey’s State Assembly made the declaration in a joint resolution this week, saying it was an effort to combat the “increasing and unacceptable levels of anti-Sikh bigotry”.

“The month of April of every year is designated as ‘Sikh Awareness and Appreciation Month’ in the State of New Jersey in order to promote public awareness of the Sikh faith, recognise the important contributions of the Sikh community, and combat anti-Sikh bigotry,” the resolution said.

The resolution was adopted unanimously by both the New Jersey House of Representative and the Senate.

The state wants to acknowledge the lasting contributions of the Sikh people and the essential role they play in New Jersey’s diverse community, a media release said yesterday.

This state assemblies of Indiana and Delaware adopted similar resolutions earlier in the month. But unlike New Jersey they declared the month of April this year as the Sikh Heritage Month and Sikh Awareness and Awareness month, respectively.

The resolution noted that despite their progressive principles and charitable deeds, the American-Sikh community commonly experienced discrimination, often by individuals who are unaware of the beliefs and practices of the faith.

“Nearly 60 percent of Americans admit to knowing nothing about the religion or its practitioners, and national rates of anti-Sikh bigotry rose dramatically following the September 11th terrorist attacks,” the resolution said.

Sikhs disproportionately experience school bullying, with estimates indicating that over 50 per cent of all Sikh children, and roughly 67 per cent of turbaned-Sikh children, endure physical or verbal abuse while at school, it said.

In New Jersey, a Sikh student’s turban was set on fire by a classmate at Hightstown High School in 2008.

The resolution said that deadly assaults against the Sikh community had become all-too-common occurrences across the country.

“Although the Sikh-American community continues to peacefully overcome each attack on its cultural identity, the State of New Jersey is now compelled to promote public awareness of the Sikh faith and memorialise the lasting contributions of its Sikh residents,” it said. PTI

VIDEO: Muslim teens berated as ‘traitors to the country’

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By Caitlin Mota

The Jersey Journal

JERSEY CITY — Five Muslim teens were walking to Newport Mall after school on Tuesday afternoon when they were berated by a man because of their religion.

In a snippet of the incident that was caught on camera, the man, who has not been identified, tells the 18-year-old Dickinson High School students they are “traitors to the country” because they are Muslim.

Fatima Khan, who posted the video on Twitter, said she and her four friends — Ibtissam Jaouad, Aniza Nasir, Dolma Tsering, and Yahaira Osorio — were approached by the man on Seventh Street in Downtown Jersey City and he began yelling.

At first the girls thought he was trying to make a joke, but they soon realized the man was attacking them for their religion. Nasir was wearing a hijab when the man began his hate-filled tirade and that’s when Khan begins recording.

“I’m allowed to talk to streets … people on the streets,” the man says. “It’s important … your s****y people should go …”

In the video the man is interrupted by one of the teens who yells “what do you mean ‘your s****y people?’ She was born here, first of all, and I came here and I am an American citizen.”

The girls, audibly upset at this point, ask the man where he’s from when he says “you are traitors to the country.” Khan tells her friends to keep walking and to ignore him, while he continues to talk to the girls about “your s****y country.”

When reached by phone, the girls said they were surprised by the hate-filled rhetoric in Jersey City, but also acknowledged how it’s happening all across the country. The man also allegedly called them “evil” and “witches.”

“I don’t usually go through all that around here, especially since it’s so diverse,” Nasir said.

Mike McNamara, a Downtown resident, said the man in the video is homeless and in need a psychological help and little things on any given day can tick him off.

The incident occurred near the East District Police Precinct. The students said they went to tell police about the encounter, but were told not much could be done since they did not know where the man in the video went.

As they continued to the mall, the girls said they were stopped by another man who said the person who verbally assaulted them continued his rant even after the girls left. The second man apologized that the girls were put into that type of situation.

The teens hope that sharing their story will shed light on the seriousness of racism, prejudice and hate crimes.

A city spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment on the video. Reached by phone, Downtown Councilman James Solomon called the video “disgusting.”

“There is no place for this in Jersey City or America,” he said.

A study released earlier this year by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found hate crimes against Muslims rose 15 percent in 2017.The advocacy group blamed President Donald Trump’s restrictions on immigration from Muslim-majority countries as the reason for more hate crimes.

 

 

How discrimination is sending more black kids to prison

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By Andrea McChristian   

It’s usually a good thing to be No. 1. New Jersey, however, is a leader in two intolerable ways: Our state has the highest rate of black-white youth incarceration disparity and the highest rate of black-white adult state prison incarceration disparity in the country.

A black child in New Jersey is 30.64 times more likely to be incarcerated than a white child, according to a fact sheet by the Sentencing Project. This is a rate double that of the second state on the list, Wisconsin.

As of January of this year, of the 222 youths incarcerated in New Jersey’s three youth prisons, 148 were black and just 13 were white. And as of June 1, the ages of our locked-up young people ranged from 14 to 24 years old. While the offenses that children are incarcerated for appear to vary from nonviolent to violent, according to the Juvenile Justice Commission, there is one constant: Most of the youths are black, even though research shows that black and white kids commit most offenses at similar rates.

So what’s the root cause of the racial disparities?

Racial discrimination. These striking racial disparities reflect racially discriminatory circumstances that determine which kids get prison and which kids do not.

Any attempt to justify these staggering racial disparities based solely on their offenses speaks to our inability to address and redress the systemic racism which has led to their restraint. This is not about the individual. It is about a system that has existed for well over a century to strip childhood from black children.

This racialized approach to the confinement of black children has been a historical mainstay of our nation. From slavery and convict leasing, to the since-debunked “super-predator” myth of the mid-1990s, the inability of our system to see black children as children has erased their humanity and led to their criminalization. This has continued to present day, with recent research showing that black kids are often perceived to be older than their age, as well as less innocent and more mature.

This is a piece of the same system that criminalized and villainized crack cocaine users (largely black) but greeted opioid users (largely white) with compassion and treatment. We must channel this same compassion to our children of color. Our failure to do so has disproportionately funneled black children into the youth justice system.

One arena where this myopic view of black youths is playing out is in our state’s schools, where factors such as zero-tolerance policies and implicit bias have transformed classrooms into launching pads for confinement. A source of this problem is the ever-increasing presence of police in schools.

During the 2013-14 school year, almost one-fifth of New Jersey schools had sworn police officers; and with the recent passage of S-86, which authorizes additional trained special officers to police schools, this number has surely increased. This heightened police state in our schools has markedly harmed black youths: During the 2013-14 school year, black kids in the state made up 33.6 percent of school arrests and 31.1 percent of law enforcement referrals, while constituting only 15.2 percent of total enrollment.

The overpolicing of kids of color also extends beyond the classroom. In 2015, while black kids made up 14 percent of the total state youth population, they made up almost half of all arrests. High arrest rates of black youths are not only seen in counties with cities with large black populations, but also in regions where black youths make up a small portion of residents.

For example, black youths made up an estimated 13.9 percent of the total youth population in Gloucester County in 2015, but over 40 percent of total county youth arrests.

New Jersey’s failure to address the root cause of these disparities — racial discrimination — continues to trap our black youths in a cycle of incarceration for the rest of their lives.

We must stop condemning our kids of color, rather than our racialized system, for these intolerable racial disparities. To do so speaks little of their own guilt, but rather our misplaced inclination to blame black youths for their involvement in a flawed system of our own creation.

We should not be in first place for failing our kids.

Andrea McChristian is associate counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. She is the primary author of “Bring Our Children Home: Ain’t I a Child,” a report on racial disparities in New Jersey’s juvenile justice system.

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Does New Jersey’s anti-bullying law address racism in schools?

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 pressofatlanticcity.com

A Camden County lacrosse team’s season was canceled this month after students from Haddonfield uttered a racial slur at a member of the Sterling High School track team in Somerdale.

In a similar incident last weekend, members of Linwood’s Mainland Regional High School boys crew team were accused of taunting a black rower on Absegami High School’s crew team during a meet at Lake Lenape in Mays Landing. The punishment for those students has not been disclosed by the Mainland superintendent, but The Press has been told the boys involved have been removed from the team.

State data show such incidents are on the decline in schools, which many attribute to New Jersey’s anti-bullying law. The 2010 law established procedures and reporting requirements to help districts deal with harassment, intimidation and bullying, known collectively to school officials as HIB.

But under the law, how punishments for those incidents are doled out is entirely up to the school district.

Greater Egg Harbor Regional Superintendent John Keenan, who oversees three high schools, including Absegami, said there is no “one-size-fits-all” discipline for a violation because each situation is unique.

State data show most HIB violations result in detentions as well as individual counseling and parent and student conferences.

Christopher Kobik, superintendent of the Lower Cape May Regional School District, said racial bias may extend beyond the scope of the HIB law.

“HIB can address it when it fits; however, bias by definition has a wider scope that extends beyond individuals to practices and organizations,” Kobik said, noting his district references affirmative action policies for guidance, as well.

Although there haven’t been studies on its effectiveness, Rutgers University psychology professor Paul Boxer said the HIB law is successful in placing accountability on schools.

“There’s no leeway as far as schools not being able to follow every step. … I think it’s also a good thing in terms of really making it clear to students the potential severity of what they’ve done,” said Boxer, director of the Center on Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, who was also involved in making recommendations to the state regarding the law.

Data show most HIB incidents in New Jersey are related to “other distinguishing characteristics” of a person, but the second most prevalent target is a person’s race.

Kaleem Shabazz, president of the Atlantic City NAACP, said schools are doing a good job in reacting to racism, but there needs to be more “proactive” work, especially during a time when people may feel more emboldened to make such comments.

“We have to do more to prevent some of these incidents and let people know they should not interact with people like that,” Shabazz said. “It’s hard to look at ourselves and say we have ingrained racist feelings … but unfortunately, it’s here.”

He said the local NACCP is working with the Anti-Defamation League and offered to provide resources to schools in Atlantic County to combat racism and bullying.

Experts say there is no easy explanation for why students make racist comments. In the case at Lake Lenape, Boxer said the fact that a competition was going on could have been a contributing factor. Boxer said kids may also feel more empowered when they are in a group setting.

“They get messages from their parents, they get messages from the media about what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate,” Boxer said. “It’s not like racism in American society is something that just came out of nowhere.”

Keenan said training is a big part of a school’s anti-bullying procedures, and that involves not only staff but students. Many schools also have anonymous reporting apps such as STOPit, which is used by the Greater Egg schools.

NJ students more diverse, but schools more segregated, report shows

New Jersey is becoming more racially diverse, but its schools are becoming more segregated, according to the latest report from the UCLA Civil…

Regardless of the punishment, Absegami’s Myasia Joga wants an in-person apology from the students at Mainland Regional High School who she says taunted her.

“I need to read that they apologized, but it still isn’t enough,” the 16-year-old told The Press of Atlantic City earlier this week.

Mainland has apologized in writing. Superintendent Mark Marrone declined to comment on the situation further.

I’ve suffered from racism in N.J. Here’s one way to fight it

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And speak up when a makes it seem like not only is there such a thing as a “s–hole country,” effectively dismissing an entire people and place.

We don’t want to be a country that believes that children are filth because of the color of their skin. We push back at these kinds of harmful, biased stories, and elevate the news media when it does a good job.

In this digital age, let’s tell stories of our own so that we can change the very lexicon that we use to talk about these things. These messages don’t just provide a reflection of what our society believes, but also who and what it values, and what it believes it should do.

Khadijah Costley White assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers-New Brunswick.

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‘Turban man’ slur aimed at NJ attorney general is the latest indignation for state’s Sikhs

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https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2018/07/26/slur-aimed-ag-gurbir-grewal-latest-slight-njs-sikhs/840310002/

New Jersey Sikhs seek to promote awareness through acts of charity and faith

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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/sikhs-vaisakhi-new-jersey-faith-20180413.html

Melanie Burney

Once a month, on a given Saturday, volunteers from the South Jersey Sikh community meet for several hours in downtown Camden to put their faith into action by distributing home-cooked meals to the homeless.

The service project will take on extra meaning this month as the faithful celebrate Vaisakhi, the most significant of the annual Sikh gatherings that mark the spring harvest in India’s Punjab region. This year, the festival coincides with the first Sikh Awareness Month in New Jersey.

About 300 people are expected to partake in the service of langar, or free community meals, said Tony Rahil, the project director. About a dozen volunteers will help serve traditional Indian vegetarian dishes, mostly beans and rice and rice pudding, near the Walter Rand Transportation Center.

Launched in 2012, the community service project follows one of the basic tenets of Sikhism, the fifth-largest world religion, by performing selfless acts of service to others. Sikhs in Jersey City, Newark, Glen Rock, and Trenton also regularly provide meals to the needy.

Tony Rahil, a Sikh, started a project to feed the homeless in Camden in 2012. “We really feel strongly about it,” said Rahil, of Voorhees, a real estate agent. “You’re blessed to do the work.”

Rahil and Sikh leaders are trying to break down barriers and dispel stereotypes about Sikhs, who have been the target of hate crimes. They want to develop relationships with people of different faiths and backgrounds, especially in service projects such as feeding the homeless.

“Most of the people in the U.S., all they see are the turbans,” said Jagvinder S. Chattha, 45, of Westampton, an auto wholesaler. “We have not clarified our identity to our neighbors.”

This month, Gov. Murphy signed a bill designating every April in New Jersey as Sikh Awareness Month. New Jersey is home to about 100,000 Sikh Americans, one of the largest populations in the country. It is estimated that about 500,000 Sikhs live in the United States (The Census Bureau doesn’t ask questions about religion so there is no official count.) Worldwide, there are more than 25 million Sikhs.

Lawmakers said they hope the measure would help counter bigotry and educate the public about Sikhism, often wrongly viewed as a combination of Islam and Hinduism. Their distinct physical identity — unshorn hair and turbans for men and head coverings for women — make them easily identified and targeted for hate crimes.

“As we see a surge in hate crimes this year, so also is a surge in our resolve to heal with love,” Manwinder Singh, director of United Sikhs,said in a statement.

In New Jersey and elsewhere, there have been a spate of hate crimes and attacks against Sikhs, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In Hightstown, the turban of a Sikh student was set on fire by a classmate in 2008. In Wisconsin, six Sikhs were killed during a hate-crime attack at a gurdwara, a place of worship, in 2012. Ravi Singh Bhalla, who took office in January as Hoboken’s first Sikh mayor, has reported receiving death threats.

Rahil said Sikhs have been warmly embraced by the community in Pine Hill, where his family belongs to one of the oldest gurdwaras in New Jersey, Sikh Gurdwara Pine Hill. Located on a busy stretch of Blackwood-Clementon Road, the gurdwara is a center for learning, worship, and gathering for the faithful.

A steady stream of congregants came to the temple Friday, where a 48-hour worship service for Vaisakhi will conclude Saturday to celebrate their history and rededication to their religious traditions. Before entering, they removed their shoes and covered their heads. They reverently approached the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture, which sits on a throne in the center of the ornate room, and bowed as a sign of submission.

In a nearby room, a priest and members took shifts reciting scriptures without interruption. In the kitchen, three women prepared spices for langar after Friday night’s worship service.

New Jersey, With Long Reputation of Hate Crimes Against Indian Americans, Had Surprisingly Few in 2016: Report

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http://www.indiawest.com/content/tncms/live/

SUNITA SOHRABJI, India-West Staff Reporter

The state of New Jersey, which has had a long and troubling legacy of hate crimes against Indian Americans, had surprisingly few such incidents in 2016, according to a new report released March 27.

The report was released by New Jersey’s new state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who is Indian American. The 30-page report included data about the nationality, religion and gender of the victims, whether the hate crime was against a person, private property or public property, and several related details.

In 2016, only three hate crimes were perpetuated against Indian Americans, which the report identifies as Asian Indians. All three of those attacks were against Hindu Americans, according to the report, which also stated that two attacks were committed on the person, while one was committed on the victim’s private property.

More troubling is the large number of attacks on Muslim Americans: there were 26 hate crimes against members of the Islamic faith in 2016. Four of the hate crimes against Muslims were on public property, seven were on private property, and 15 were on the person.

Children between the ages of 11 and 17 were most often the targets of hate crimes; the largest number of offenders were also between the ages of 11 and 17, indicating that many such incidents may have been school bullying. But surprisingly, adult white males between the ages of 46 to 60, and a large number of senior citizens committed the majority of attacks.

African Americans and Jewish people were the most frequent targets of hate crime. Monmouth and Middlesex counties had by far the largest numbers of hate crimes.

No comparative data was available for 2017.

New Jersey gained notoriety in 1987, when a gang calling itself the Dotbusters – in reference to the tikka worn by many Indian American women on their foreheads – began harassing members of the community in Jersey City and Hoboken. In July of that year, members of the Dotbusters gang attacked banker Navroze Mody as he was leaving the Gold Coast bar in Hoboken with friends. The youth punched Mody with their fists, feet, and bricks, and left him unconscious on the sidewalk. Mody died four days later. The youths – who were tried as adults – each received sentences of 10 years or less.

Several days later, physician Kaushal Saran was severely beaten in Jersey City Heights. Saran survived a month-long coma, but emerged with severe damage to his brain and skull.

In more recent times, Indian American professor Divyendu Sinha was fatally beaten outside his Old Bridge, New Jersey, home in 2010, while taking a late-night walk with his family. Three of the five teens allegedly involved in the incident were acquitted of all charges, three years later.

In 2016, New Jersey law enforcement agencies reported 417 bias incident offenses, a 14 percent increase compared to 2015.

“It’s sad that we see bias incidents trending upward, but it’s not surprising, given that we have political leaders in this country who encourage the expression of intolerance and hatred, or in other cases, ignore or countenance it,” said Grewal, in a statement announcing the release of the report.

“What we need to do, as individuals and as a society, is to push back against this prejudice. We need to embrace the diversity that makes us stronger as a state and a nation, and we need to spread a countervailing message of tolerance and unity.”

“To quote Nelson Mandela, ‘No one is born hating another person.’ If people can learn to hate, they also can learn to love and respect one another,” said Grewal.