The Surviving Bullies Project

Monday, May 08, 2006

The Pilot Program Results are in!

ello all!

Last Wednesday, the SBP traveled to New York City to debrief with the teachers who implemented the pilot anti-bullying program in their advisory classes.

The teachers went through Susana’s Story, a case study about a teenage girl who was being bullied by students in the new town she moved to. They also created corresponding activities for each class. The program lasted ten 40-minute advisory classes.

We came away from Wednesday’s meeting very excited. The teachers unanimously expressed that their students loved the story. We were especially struck by one teachers’ comment: “[the curriculum] opened the kids up to themselves.” Many of the students at this Manhattan high school strongly identified with Susana and opened up about their own experiences.

This type of feedback made us realize that the Susana curriculum will not only help students in general, but it will help us reach the kids in trouble and actualize our mission for the Surviving Bullies Workbook. The teachers suggested that the workbook might be incorporated into the program in two ways. One way would be having students fill out a workbook for Susana (the main character in the case study), and coming up with strategies to help resolve the difficulties she experiences. At the same time, this exercise would indirectly provide those students who are being bullied themselves with the tools and confidence to solve their own problems. Also, actual copies of the workbook could be made available for those who need them.

This is a very exciting realization because we have been constantly struggling to answer the question of how we can get the workbook into the hands of the kids who have been targeted by bullying.

We plan to make the development of curriculum materials one of our highest priorities over the next two months, especially a teacher’s manual that breaks Susana into ten lessons with questions and discussion prompts included. This manual seeks to make the lives of the teachers (an integral part of the curriculum) as easy as possible during the implementation of the Susana curriculum. Our goal is to return to the school in Manhattan in the fall with a well-written and well-presented set of curriculum materials for the anti-bullying curriculum, round two: wiser and better!

Stay tuned for more updates on SBP endeavors!

Cheers,
Shan Shan

Posted by Dickon on 05/08/06 at 04:08 PM

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