Newspaper Reading

Anti-bullying ad sends gut-wrenching message to a different audience - adults

By Donna Krache, CNN

Editor’s Note: Not In Our School offers resources to help adults empower students against bullying. You may also want to check out The Stop Bullying Speak Up campaign, sponsored by Cartoon Network, CNN and Time Warner, a student-centered approach that also offers educator and parent materials.

(CNN) - It’s an anti-bullying message designed to hit home with a different audience - adults. And it hits hard.

The set is an office breakroom. The office bully calls a coworker names, then pushes and threatens him, even as horrified colleagues pretend not to notice. One gets up from his table and scurries away. The victim is humiliated. The bully revels in the power.

In the end, the boss intervenes, but not to bring justice - just to tell the bully and the victim to "get back to work."

Anyone who watches the public service announcement, “Break Bullying,” would see no office would allow the scene to play out that way. In reality, it didn't: It was based on actual experiences from the producer's middle school years.

And that’s the point, according to the organization Not in Our School and Mike Nelson, the producer of the spot: If we wouldn’t stand for bullying as adults, why do we allow it to happen in our schools?

When Nelson’s boss at production house MAKE told him to do a piece on bullying, he jumped at it. Nelson was bullied in middle school and fell back on that experience to create a story that would resonate with adults who saw it.

He decided to use real images and real language. Even "bleeped out," the expletives are obvious and stinging. Nelson says that’s the reality of bullying.

“This is how it happens,” he told CNN.

The Not in Our School program focuses on what adults can do to help kids address bullying and make schools safe for everyone. Its site offers a guide to start a Not in Our School campaign as well as a video kit and links to anti-bully supports. It also features anti-bullying lesson plans for elementary, middle and high school classrooms.

Nelson’s anti-bullying message had a strong impact on Cohn-Vargas. An educator and daughter of a family that escaped the Holocaust, she notes, “Many adults have taken action from personal experience.”

Now that he's an adult, Nelson said, he's taking his own action against bullying.

“I basically played out my own experience in school,” he said. “I wrote that exactly as it was.

“That hurtful behavior sticks with kids for the rest of their lives."

 

Newspaper Reading: Preparation for Group Discussion

Student: __Elinton Jeronimo__________________________________

1) Select one magazine or newspaper article to bring to class. This article can also come from an online newspaper such as The New York Times or The Los Angeles Times.

2) Gather three words you did not understand, liked, and/or found interesting in the article you selected, look them up in the dictionary, and complete the table below.

WORD	PART OF SPEECH (Noun, Verb, Adjective, Adverb, etc.)	SYNONYM OR DEFINITION
Bulling	Verb	Use superior strength or influence to intimidate someone, typically to force him or her to do what one wants.
Gut-wrenching	Adjective	Informal causing great distress or suffering.
Stinging	Verb	Feel or cause to feel a sharp tingling or burning pain or sensation.

3) To help with the context for the words you selected, highlight or underline the sentences that contain the three words you gathered.

4) In one sentence, explain what the article is about. You can use the following sentence starters to help you: “This article is about…” “The main idea in this article is…”

5) Bring this sheet and a hard or digital copy of your article to class. Be prepared to share this information with a group of peers next class.