Empower Kids

The new school year is now well under way. And inevitably, getting kids together leads to disagreements, teasing, name calling, altercations and bullying among students. While a lot of research has been done about bullying and many schools have implemented no-bullying policies, bullying still exists and in some places it is even getting worse.

Professional Learning Board is proud to announce that national bullying expert, Izzy Kalman, MS, and his organization, Bullies to Buddies, have partnered with Professional Learning Board to create the new online continuing education course, Bullying – The Golden Rule Solution, for teachers and school administrators. Click here to see the course description or visit the official Professional Learning Board Facebook page and save $10 on this online course.

As a parent, I know what it’s like to have a child “bullied” by another student. It’s horrible to think another student was mean to my child and my first reaction was “How dare that kid do this to my child!”

Fortunately for me, my child, and the “bully,” this incident happened after we had completed development of the new Bullying – The Golden Rule Solution course. I used some of the role plays and strategies from the course with my child and they worked! The next time she was in the same situation at school, she used the responses we had practiced during the role plays and the other kid stopped bothering her.

That’s it. No teacher intervention. No principal intervention. No disciplinary action. Just two kids who worked it out. Problem solved!

The result was one child who felt she could handle her own problems with another student and a “bully” who realized there was nothing to gain from continuing his actions. I’ve also seen the Bullies to Buddies strategies work first hand with siblings at home.