buttons? i have heard that before. [laughter] i am moving on. partnerships or the name of the game in getting this information out. working with the american federation of teachers in and the national education association. we have been able to provide free as bullying materials. ..

>> we'll continue to work with cnn and our other time warner and turner partners to reach out as well as reaching out on cartoon network to young people. we'll launch additional activities in the fall, um, that you'll learn about later in this year. but this is a long-term commitment for our network. um, it's both heartening and sad to know how long many people in this room have been working on this issue. but i will tell you that from a youth broadcaster perspective, cartoon network and my boss, stu snyder, who's our president, are committed to staying with this topic. this is not something we're in for a couple of years and then out. this is a concern of our target audience. we serve a vulnerable audience, and we continue, we will continue to put this information out there. um, we're also working on long form content. it's great that we do video

shorts, but it's been terrific working with writers and producers of some of our most popular shows. i know everyone in this room is a huge "gumball" fan. yeah, yeah? you work with writers and producers, it takes about 18-24 months to produce an animated show, so change is a little slower than we would like. but it was terrific to see "gumball" launch last fall with four of the first 13 episodes having bully prevention themes coach in. and we -- woven in. we'll continue to do video shorts. i think digital content is the next frontier for all of us. how do we give our kids time to practice in safe, anonymous, online spaces, in the gaming world n role-playing games so that they can practice the skills we want them to emulate in real life? that's a challenge for us as we go forward. and i think the other thing that i've heard from our advisers and from other folks that we've

worked with -- >> [inaudible] >> one of the videos is up. just let me finish this one sentence, is research. it's one thing to test engagement, it's one thing to test comprehension. we need to put research in place to test the efficacy of our messages and see how we can change them. so, katie, if i push something l it work? >> we're going to do it. >> you're going to do it? >> what would happen when we ask the questions no one else will and answer them with crazy experience? >> we have a lot of fun. but what happens when the situation isn't fun at all or is even dangerous? >> what do you mean? >> you know we speak up against bullies. now i'd like to try and experiment with the help of some junior dudes. >> rather handsome junior dudes. >> dude, what would happen be this one played the bully and this one played the new kid? bullying is unpredictable, and depending on how you react, you never know what kind of result you'll get. bully is going to give the new

kid a hard time. >> i think the new kid's going to fight back. >> wrong. new kids should calmly walk away, find an adult or teacher and speak up, tell them what's going on. >> you've got it. now, let's say you're the bully, being a jerk to the new kid. what do you do? >> roundhouse kick! just kidding, dude. i think you also find an adult and speak up. just a second. hey, i'm sorry. whoa, dude! dude! keep speaking up. and it wouldn't hurt you to say something ceent to new kid -- decent to new kid. talking to a parent or an adult connell help. keep speaking up until an adult does help. together we can all stop bulliesing. go to stop bullying: speak up to find out more. >> thanks, katie. prison -- [applause] so it's that psa and others,

again, on the web site. and just in closing, the key for us going forward is partnerships. we're in 99 million kids' homes every single day in the united states across multiple screens. while we've learned a lot about bullying prevention, and i think we know a lot about what kids want to know and who kids are, we're not the experts. our partners are the experts. so cartoon network sees itself as a portal. we look forward to continuing to work with our partners directing schools and parents to resources that are available for them, and can i'm hoping that this conference will introduce me to even more people we can work with. deb, thank you very much. >> thanks so much, alice. well, i skipped right over her at the beginning, and i'm so sorry. but sarah is here representing one of, i think, the biggest news items around bullying this year, the "bully" movie. and what's exciting about the "bully" movie is it's not just

the amazing, impactful film itself, but the action around it. >> hi, everybody. um, so my name is sarah foudy, and i'm the campaign director for the bully project. and the bully project is the social action campaign, um, that was developed, um, alongside the film "bully" really aiming to use the film as a catalyst to make big change, um, and really we've set as our goal nothing short of working to change the national conversation about bullying, um, alongside all of you. so, um, you know, i was really excited to see the ad council's, um, the psa today using the bullying footage. i had, you know, back in new york i was shuttling footage across the city, but i hadn't actually seen the final yet, and it's really incredible to see it, and i'm, you know, glad we were that partnership happened and that ad, you know, that psa

campaign will be happening. um, it was interesting to see the footage for me, i've been, um, in addition to being the campaign director for the bully project, i've been involved with "bully" really since the beginning. i actually lee hirsch, the director and i went to high school together. so i was there when he was being bullied. um, and i'm sorry to say i was not the best upstander. so it's been wonderful for me to be a part of this to be able to sort of, you know, make amends, if you will, and have a way to try to, you know, work in a different way, um, you know, to move forward on the issue. it's, um, you know, i -- during the production of the film close to the end i went out to this field, and i went house the house to talk to all of the parents of all the bullied kids and get their consent and their permission to let their kids be in the film. and one thing just from the conversation that was happening on the panel earlier, just to

enter into that a little bit, one thing that was really interesting to me was that so many of the parents of the bullies, um, you know, some were really disconnected and were happy for their kid to be in a film. and even though i brought the footage to show what was going on, didn't really want to engage in it, were just happy to say, great, my kid's going to be in a movie. but a lot of the other kids wanted, you know, invited me into the house, and i sat down with them and talked to them about, you know, showed them the footage, showed them the clips. some of them cried. and, you know, the parents of the bullies, um, really talked about, you know, wishing that they had been called by the school and that they had had more of a role of being at the table, um, to try to do something earlier. um and that, darn straight, their, you know, son or daughter -- their son in this case -- was going to be in the film as a way to make sure that their kid got the clear message

that this was not acceptable. um, so, you know, just -- i'm going to talk just a little bit about the sort of the birth of bully, you know, its launch onto the theatrical stage, but then switch over and talk about what we're doing now. one thing that, you know, those of us on the bully project team hear a lot of from our colleagues in the film making world which is where we all come out of is, you know, what do you mean you're still working on "bully"? you know, isn't it done? and the answer is a resounding, you know, absolutely not. there's, you know, a huge amount of momentum, and, you know, agenda items and things that we're doing over the course of the next, um, six months or so in particular and then ongoing that i'd love to share with all of you. so i'm, you know, i don't know that everybody in the room has seen it or has seen our trailer, seen the film or seen the

trailer, but, you know, assuming many have, um, you know, we launched, we premiered at tribeca in 2010, and we were bought by the weinstein company opening night. and really with their, you know, the weinstein company has a phenomenal pr prowess, started our theatrical release in march, this past march, and, you know, we were sort of heading the road of most documentary films where we were, you know, we had really good press, we'd had, you know, we'd had some amazing screenings, i think really thanks to deb, probably, with the department of education. and can, you know, had built some incredible partnerships even before we opened theatrically with stop bullying: speak up, with pacer, with, you know, aft, nea, with, you know, amazing organizations, pflag, um, you know, hrc, with lots and

lots of different organizations who were working with us to help get the message out that the film was coming, um, and that kind of thing. but then right before, on the eve of the theatrical opening, the mpaa gave us an r rating and said that the film, you know, shouldn't be seen, um, wasn't appropriate for kids because there was the use of profanity. and, you know, it was, there's, like, i think seven f-bombs in the film that are all, you know, out of the mouths of bull his to bullied -- bullies to bullied kids, and it's all language that these kids are hearing every day, and the mpaa was saying this isn't acceptable for kids to hear. we agree. [laughter] kids shouldn't be hearing this. they are hearing it every day. and, you know, so we were in the middle of figuring out how to respond, and we discovered that,

um, katie butler, a 17-year-old from michigan, had, you know, while we were in the campaign office figuring out our next steps and how to react, she'd gone online and created a petition on change.org and really almost overnight, it was within days, there were over half a million signatures of people out there, you know, a community of voices saying this is not okay. um, and, you know, it ended up meaning that "bully" was launch inside a different way -- launched in a different way in the press, in the media. it was sort of a perfect storm, if you will, for us to, um, have a much larger national platform to have the conversation about what's happening in schools, um, and why it matters for people to see the film and why it matters for people to come out of seeing the film and do something. um, and so, um, as part of -- so

we opened, you know, in the middle of the sort of wonderful political storm, or media storm rather or, we also took really advantage of that opportunity to find other ways into, um, conversation in sort of a more political sense. we ended up, we're really lucky, we ended up having a couple different screenings on capitol hill. you know, the -- as we were having one of our screening, president obama endorsed the state schools improvement act and the student nondiscrimination act. we screened at the rayburn house and, you know, representative mike honda had just coordinated the bipartisan antibullying caucus. so, you know, and in the meantime, we also forged a, you know, a connection with mike

huckabee and with the mormon church who's been, you know, very supported and interested in using lessons from "bully" in their community. so we've been working as hard as we can to build as broad a base and a bipartisan support, um, to, you know, with the aim of having, using the, you know, sort of the high profile of the film to create a forum for discussions and policymakers and educators who have real solutions and have real ideas about how to make a difference, um, to come together and have that be in, you know, sort of in the public eye. so, you know, it's been an incredible, it's been an incredible journey for those of us on the team and really a privilege to be a part of it and, you know, it's sort of like

"bully" has a life of its own and, you know, just trying to make open as many doors, um, to help push the conversation forward in as many directions as we can. so one of the things, you know, as we launched theatrically we simultaneously launched what has really become the centerpiece of our campaign, and it's called one million kids, the one million kid initiative. and, you know, lee hirsch really from the very, very beginning for him what was critical about this film and what went into the editing, um, decisions was that this was the voice of the bullied kids, that this was an opportunity for them to speak. and, you know, to work, to create a film that would create as much empathy, um, as possible from the audience. so what he has always wanted to

do is, you know, he's really set a goal of having no less than a million kids around the country see the film in supported settings. so we worked with one of our partners, facing history and ourselves developed a curriculum that accompanies the film "bully," it's, you know, using the different situations in the film to have a discussion with kids about, you know, the situations that they've seen and how it could be different. and so our one million kids campaign we launched in the spring, and sort of when school closed, we went for hiatus over the summer. but over 126,000 kids, um, and teachers, you know, from around the country went on one million kid field trips really where before the trip the teachers were trained using the facing history and ourselves' curriculum. the kids and the teachers got on buses or got on the mta in new

york city, and they went to the theater, and they watched the film together, and they went back to their schools, and they had discussions about what they saw. um, and, you know, used that opportunity to partner with the other bullying curriculum that may have already been in the school, um, you know, to have a real discussion with those kids about what was happening on the ground and to inspire those kids to take action and to become, you know, activists in their schools, to be upstanders, um, to take a stand against bullying. so we've, we're starting again, we've been spending the summer building, um, on one side building the funding to support it. we've partnered with jpmorgan, sears, first student, um, you know, we're happy to partner with others on the funding side. and on the other side we've been going to schools, um, and we've been talking to superintendents.

and we've got, we're looking at going, you know, back to school with some really big projects in different towns and cities across the united states. san francisco right now is committed to sending 25,000 kids on these field trips, you know, together over a two week period to participate in seeing "bully" in the theaters along with supported curriculum. washington, d.c., we've been talking at around 20,000 kids. new york city, same kind of size. um, and towns all across america. and what we want to see over the course of, you know, early september to mid october is the target range for one million kids is, you know, really an opportunity for, you know, the national press, the local press to again pick up the story, um, and tell the story of how people are using, um, the film to make a difference, using it as part of anti-bullying plans that they have or creating new anti-bullying plans in their

schools. and we're incredibly excited, and it's, um, you know, we don't see -- the film is not the solution. it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not the end in and of itself. it's a vehicle to have the conversation and to push the conversation forward in, you know, a very public way but also person by person. we've got our facebook page is constantly filled with outpourings, um, from different students and teachers and administrators. um, and i'm going to read you just n this closing, i'll read you -- in closing, i'll read you just one or two. this one is from the sioux city superintendent, paul guzman. participating in this million kids created some of the richest and most meaningful discussion in our community. we have consistently said that we are not unique because we have bullying in our schools, but we want to become unique, to

become the school district that has made significant difference. and then from the kids are always the ones that make us, you know, in the bully office we read them and, you know, get weepy sometimes. [laughter] i bullied, and i tried to fit in. of course, i realize now that i wasn't fitting in. i was becoming more of an outcast. so i started going around and apologizing, because it takes one person to make a difference. that's from stephanie morris in washington. there was a boy in my seventh grade class who had been pushed around and bullied, and some of the kids took his clothes. now i want to be his friend, talk to him. and then one last one, um, if it wasn't for what i saw today -- this was right after a million kids' trip to the theater -- if it wasn't for what i saw today, i probably would never have stepped in and stopped, and stopped it, to be honest. um, i probably would have

ignored it. so, you know, daily we've got a crew of folks who, you know, manage our social media, and, you know, it's a daily onslaught of amazing messages and posts on our facebook and e-mails, um, you know, really an outpouring, you know, from teachers and students who participated or who want to participate in this. and, you know, we really, we really do feel that, you know, we are reaching a place of a national tipping point where as a result of all the work so many different partners are doing and the extent to which, um, you know, the conversation has been changing around bullying and the focus is not just on the victims and, you know, the hard stories of how it's impacted people's lives, but it's also about the extent to which people are

making huge strides to say something about it, to stand up, to have a voice. it feels like that, there really is a shift, and we're happy and proud to be a part of that and, you know, look forward to all of the next steps, um, to helping bring that forward. one last thing, our million kids campaign we sort of wrapped that theatrical part in mid october and go into the long-awaited dvd release where we then will be able to complete our vision of one million kids. and the goal is to try to get the film and the crick rum and other -- curriculum and other tools that can, we hope, really make a difference into schools across america and beyond, um, at a price point or less, you know, so that it can be really, really, really accessible as widely as possible. so we can start looking to that,

um, you know, mid to late october. so, yep. >> thanks so much, sarah. [applause] next we are going to turn over to david washington who is going to talk a little bit more about the born this way foundation which i had the privilege to attend the launch of back in february. david? >> good morning, everyone, how are you? >> good morning. >> do we have more youth sneer can i hear you clap? [applause] come on, you can do better than that. how about the non-youth, can i hear you clap? [cheers and applause] there we go, let's wake it up. so good morning, my name is david washington, i serve as senior adviser for my philanthry and policy to lady gaga and the born this way foundation. i'm excited to be here today because we get lots of phone calls from folks wanting to help, and we're doing a little bit of building the plane as it takes off. so i really appreciate everyone's help in the room with

being patient, but i also want to share from lady gaga, who i spoke to a few days ago knowing i was coming here, her thanks to all of you. she was really excited, she made me prioritize coming here so that between her and deborah over there, i couldn't say no. but she knows you guys are the experts on the ground, you're doing it every day, you're the leaders, and one thing that's important to the born this way foundation is to not reinvent the wheel. we're looking for best practices, we're looking for partners. we've had many good conversations with many of you in the room, some on the panel, and i just want today say thank you for that. so from underneath the logo, our goal, our mission is empowering youth and inspiring bravery. we are not a bullying foundation because gaga sees the world as a kinder and braver world and what is that umbrella, what does that mean? and there's many issues underneath that will contribute to a kinder, braver world, and part of that is preventing bullying, so so that's why we're

here today. i'm going to spend the next few minutes giving you an overview of what's been happening the last year, actually just 30 seconds with the launch, but also share some of our goals moving forward. as some of you may know, we launched on february 29, 2012, at harvard with our wonderful partner, the berkman center, that is our lead research partner. as you can see on the upper right-hand corner, that's gaga on stage with oprah, secretary sebelius, who's speaking later today, we had deepak chopra, dr. sue swear and a couple others. so it was a really exciting day. on the left-hand side you'll see a picture of harvard's campus with the born brave bus. one of the more exciting things happening in 2013 will be the foundation bus tour that will be part of her musical tour. so who are leading partners, who are our founding partners? the california endowment, the mcarthur foundation and

viacom, and berkman as i showed, and coming together we are focused on the mission to connect young people in a safe environment, provide them skills and opportunities to be the best they can be. and a quote from gaga in her own words or about changing the world is i do not believe one person can change the world. i believe humankind as a whole can change the world. so what is our motto, what is our approach? i talked about the s, o as she likes to call it, safety, skills and opportunity. within safety as one of the earlier speakers talked about, roberto rodriguez, a former colleague of mine when we both worked for senator kennedy, you have to first and foremost provide a safe environment for kids. and then skills, many of you know about digital media and learning. one of the focuses of the mcarthur foundation are opportunities. once you provide a safe environment for kids and provide youth the skills, you also have to provide them with opportunity.

so defining safety, peer validation support, mentoring, health and emotional wellness, informed youth with knowledge of the resources, knowing what is available in their communities, youth-led with adult scaffolding. we know youth are the bomb, they can do fantastic things, but we also need parents, teachers, heads of local youth-serving organizations in the mix too. i want to go back to the third bullet just for a quick second. the health and emotional wellness part is really important to gaga. there is a lot of stigma around mental health issues, behavioral health issues, and that's one thing the foundation will be doing a lot of work on. defining skills. so when we talk about skills, ability to define, articulate and spread empathy, confidence to stand up for yourself and others, similar to the psa we saw from alice and cartoon network which was fantastic, dml, the digital media and learning side of things. one thing that's very important to the foundation as we engage

youth is to inspire them to be makers and creators of things and not just consumers of things. so, for instance, with the ad council effort, we're reaching out to parents, but could there be a parallel of that where we reach out to youth for them to be makers and creators of content that lends itself towards a kinder and braver world. defining opportunity, so building on safety and skills, we will create pathways for young people to advocate for themselves, for each other, their schools, their communities and the larger world. civic engagement of youth within their communities is possible and necessary. so when we talk about youth, from the work we've done with some pilot groups and our partners and their grantees, the youth have come back to us and talked about the way they think about their world is, makes sense, them first and then the next circle is their friends, then their school, then their community, then their social network and their world. so gaga never does anything

small. so our principals fall in these categories; revolutionary, nontraditional, inclusive, cultural-shifting. our practices will be and our youth-led, grassroots, online and on the ground, research-driven and a open tent partnership approach. these are a few of the things we're working on right now. i got calls before coming, and as i said before, partners have asked how they could get involved, and these are a couple tangible examples just so folks have an idea in the room. research and insight leads things, and that connects to our rab, the research advisory board. so dr. sue swear out of the university of nebraska at lincoln who, i believe, spoke at the first white house conference, she has graciously volunteered and committed a lot of her time to help lead a research advisory board of about ten people that is guiding us with evidence-based practices.

the parallel to that, we're going to also have a youth advisory board which will be made up of youth themselves to kind of keep us honest. the claps of the youth were kind of small, so that implies there's not that many here, but at least there's some, and that's a credit to the department. because i've been to many conferences where it's adults talking about what we should do for kids without kids and youth in the room and young adults. you see the born brave bus tour, so a quick 20 seconds on that is gaga's on her world tour right now. she goes to europe in the fall, she just finished the asia-pacific portion. ..

the various cities on tour before the concert, it's a galvanizing event for the community. i will talk about that a little bit more in a second. born this way online community and the born brave nation. what is the born brave nation? local platforms grounded in the national born this way foundation structure, community-based whether on line or off-line. this is all things we're having conversations with partners to make it robust and quality as partner. and driving a culture of change and connect the unattached. locally based, lowell alley heavy led movement to drive local change. in terms of the online community some may be on the listserv now.

you get messages from the cynthia germanotta, gaga's mom. and valerie jarrett. the online community we like to play with the term, what would a digital peace corps look like? it is a very grand vision but the verbiage tends to resonate with a lot. recent natsz with me, if we are thinking that what would it look like peace corps look-a-like? that is the aspirational nature of the online community. sharing peers and resources individual narratives and badges. one of the things that are really great being here today, all the other partners so we're not siloed but working together which has endless potential the born behave bus tour i was telling you a little bit about, you see the subbullets, what is the born brave bus, it is part tailgate party. part pop up community youth fair and part mobile research lab. partners in the room would be great to talk at that you

about if you had access of hundreds of youth in 30 different cities over the span of three months, what are some of the research questions you would like to ask? mind you, let me clarify, this is not just for little monsters. the pop up youth fair, this celebration is not for only youth going to the concert or adults. it is for, think of it as a catalytic event for the community. the bus comes in. there will be all the attention. why not gal vanize the community. all those doing fantastic work let's celebrate. part pop up community youth fair, part of community lab, part research lab. so research. you heard me reference that a few times. this is a very important to lady gaga and her mom and the board of directors. so informing, measuring and refueling the movement. academic research that aligns with initiatives that is the research advisory board. consumer insights that ground our approach and language. one of our current, our lead

media partner which is fantastic, viacom. phillipe damon has shown great leadership and hit it off fantastically with our leader, cynthia germanotta. so there is a lot of potential and excitement what we can do together. last bullet, reform and adapt strategy. so we're constantly be tweaking things. metrics. we start with with the research. we've been doing quite a bit of due diligence. from research we're developing insight and then our strategy. four components of that is online which i've talked about a little bit, the website, short form content. on the website we have had a quarter of a million visitors. e-mail addresses, several thousand submissions of unique content. so that is very exciting. on the road, so that is the bus tour. down the street is working with local organizations in the born brave nation and lastly on-air with our

viacom partnership. thank you. let's get to it. [applause] >> so i will take a moment here before we move on to julie's presentation to mention we want to make sure we accommodate as many of our questions as possible so that as the panel, i'm going to ask you to please write your questions and we have some department of education staff who will come around and collect questions as they come. we do have two more presenters. my pleasure to turn it over to julie percent hertz something who has let the bullying prevention month in october. which is very exciting. >> thank you, deborah. >> we have the born this way foundation, bully project, we have cartoon network and pacer which isn't exactly a household name. i will explain a little bit what we are. pacer is an advocacy organization. we're also based in the

midwest in minneapolis and formed in 1977 so provide resources families with disabilities who are involved in special education. you might ask how is the connection to bullying prevention? and we noted about a decade ago that we were receiving more and more calls from parents about bullying situation. the stories were really heart-breaking. parents said they didn't know what to do, what their rights were or what steps they could take. we decided we wanted to take action. as a result of that, we created pacer's national bullying prevention center and our, our organization even though we were founded on the premise that working with families with children with disabilities our prevention is all students. we have unique emphasis on kids with disabilities. we have education, advocacy and awareness building. we primarily because we're a smaller organization provide our resources to through our

web swooits and we have pacer. >> you can find the rest of this morning's session on the bullying conference online as we join the conference live as they're coming out of a break. we'll hear from first of featured speakers, maryland's first lady, katie o'malley. >> i asked them not to play rocky but apparently they took that as a cue i didn't want music. i want to thank you all for being here. i'm relatively new to this jobe. i've been with the office of safe and healthy students since january of this year. so it is really a pleasure for me to get the know all of you. what i'm here to do is introduce a very important person. the first lady of maryland, katie o'malley, who has a long history of public service. in 1988 judge o'malley began her career as a, in law as a

clerk in the baltimore county state's attorneys office. she attended law school in the evenings at the university of baltimore. work and school took up much of her time until 1990 when she married martin o'malley. who is currently the governor of maryland and my governor. one of the things that i'm, why it is of particular pleasure for me to introduce judge o'malley is that i have two 6-year-old girls, sally and daisy, who started kindergarten this year. their education, their experience in school is something i deal with every day as all families deal with the experience of kids in school, to know that judge o'malley and governor o'malley are working to make

maryland's schools the best they can be and are advocating nationally on behalf of all of us, all parents, all kids, is heartwarming. in 1991 judge o'malley and the governor had their first child, grace and while katie was finishing her last semester of law school, after graduating from law school and passing the bar exam, she was promoted to assistant state's attorney for baltimore county. she handled many domestic violence cases and child sexual and physical abuse cases. during her years as a prosecutor, judge o'malley and governor o'malley had two more children. tara, and william. and after being appointed to the bench in 2001 they had their fourth child, jack. the first lady has been a steadfast advocate for the rights of victims. for years she has served in

the fight to endodomestic violence, participating in several house of ruth functions and giving lectures both in maryland and overseas. in march 2009 judge o'malley spoke in washington, d.c. as the guest of the state department on women's rights in america and domestic violence. in maryland judge o'malley joined governor o'malley, and lieutenant governor brown to support and successfully pass legislation to remove firearms from the hands of domestic abusers. she is passionate, about ending bullying in schools and in 2011 she partnered with facebook and time warner to promote national bullying prevention month. she continues to visit public and private cools -- schools, colleges and universities and organizations around the

state to promote domestic violence and bullying awareness for all families and children. would you please give a very warm welcome to judge o'malley. ♪ . [applause] >> well, that was very nice of david to give that long duck shun. i told him not to do that but again, thank you so much. it's really such an honor to be here with all of you today as we stand together against bullying in our schools and in our communities. i'd like to thank president and mrs. obama for making this a priority. i believe this is the third summit they have had and it is really wonderful to be able to come and participate for me because i'm hearing from all these experts that help me so much in my own

state of maryland. i would also like to thank secretary duncan and david esqwit the h and as well as everybody from the united states department of education letting me come here. part of the creating the next generation of achieveser is allowing our kids toe learn in a bully-free environment. bullying is a issue martin and i feel strong about, not only as you heard he and i have four children because it affects so many people. it has such a ripple effect. i became interested in the issue back in 2005. as a judge i became a volunteer in a truancy reduction project through the baltimore city public school system and i was hearing from children basically in the middle school ages as we were trying to get kids in middle school energized about coming to school so in high school we wouldn't have so many dropouts. the middle schoolkids i would sit and talk about, it was sort of a recurring theme i was hearing from children, 6th, 7th graders

saying they're not coming to school because they're being made fun of. as i would ask more question i was realizing the kids mostly being made fun of were kids with different learning disabilities. i put my readers on, physical disabilities and certainly many of the lgbt youth t really struck a chord with me because i thought to myself, these kids deserve to be able to learn just like everybody else and we as parents, as teachers as community leaders really need to get on top of this. so that's when i became first lady of the state of maryland i thought i would make this one of my initiatives. in maryland we have passed strong anti-bullying laws. our state school reporting act which was passed in 2005 requires now that all of our public schools and many of our private schools, must in fact have a policy that's in place that actually says there's a prohibiting of bullying harrassment and intimidation. now it actually includes

electronic communications as well. our state was the, was the 7th state in the country to put that kind of law in place. last year, 4678 incidents were reported statewide. that was an increase of 860 reported from the year before. but even with these strong policies, there are still too many incidents of bullying that go unreported and even when we do have the bullying incidents reported, as many of you have heard today, how we respond to that is still sometimes wrong or we just haven't been able to get it right. so working together with our state department of education we're taking some important steps to stop bullying in our schools. we have a new state school superintendent as of july of 2012 and she is really come on like gangbusters. her name is dr. lillian lowery. she first of all is advising all of our local school districts to make the reporting forms available online which will make it a lot easier to report the

incident to authorities. another major goal she and i both share is actively training our educators and our administrators in our schools to be aware and to respond effectively in the area because sometimes the way we responded just hasn't been there. like when we tell a kid to talk to a trusted adult, sometimes they will do that. but then the adult doesn't really know how to respond. and when we held at town hall meeting after one of the meet viewing of the "bully" movement movie, a teacher explained to him, his principal told him not to use the bullying incident reporting forms because it was making their school look bad. so this type of story and also teachers coming ups just saying we just don't know what the to do. we need aolicy, has kind of forced us in this area to realize that, laws and policy alone are not fully addressing the issue. so dr. lowery this year created a panel of experts to develop a technical

assistance guide, basically a book and it is based on best practices and resources about the harmful mental and physical effects of bullying. that is not only the effects it has on the actual victim but on the bully, the perpetrator and the entire school climate. the booklet will be available to all of the teachers and administrators in maryland through the guidance counselors office coming up soon. maryland will soon be the first state to set measurable benchmarks and goals to eliminate bullying within our state's borders by tracking incidents in the schools as a condition of learning so that we can look at the contributing factors and improve the way we respond. in maryland we're talking two people and taking some innovative steps by partnering with some really magnificent people who are leading the way to fight to end bulllying. many of them are here today. last october, during national bully prevention month, martin and i joined with facebook and time warner's cartoon network to take the pledge to end bullying and make everyone aware of the dangers of

cyber bulllying. the reason i got on facebook because ply kids were on it. certainly they were completely embarrassed that i was on facebook but they did friend me. so i guess just to check up on what i was saying and i truly try to not say anything on facebook but i think it is important as parents we are familiar with the platforms that our kids are using to communicate with each other. last year when we partnered with time book, with facebook and time warner we encouraged every governor, every first spouse, every parent, educator and student to go online to take the pledge. i would encourage all of you here today if you haven't done that to go to the face book page, stopbullyingspeakup and take the pledge. so far since they began the campaign, over one million people have taken the pledge. so that's great. this year we also form ad great partnership wit a wonderful man named ray rice. many of you may know him. he plays for the baltimore ravens.

go ravens! sorry he is my team. he has a great organization, ray of hope. he is trying to do as much as he can to bring the issue to the forefront as well. he is very active on the issue and sponsored a large group of 2500 people at the meriweather post pavilion to come together around the issue to talk about solutions. we hosted two premier screenings around the document trifpl, "bully"ing, by lee hirsch, and the weinstein company. if you haven't seen the movie it is help you will addressing the issue. we've been helpful in the state of maryland to get help from roslyn wise man. she is the author of queen bees and wannabes which is the book that formed the basis for the movie, "mean girls." she is informed us the way we think about bullies and how educators react to bullying. she has even come up with innovative ideas for schools.

simple things where to locate the guidance counselor's office. make it more accessible. make sure the guidance counselor office isn't this big glass window, when the kid goes in for help everybody can see. simple ways and complicated ways how we're handling issues and understanding and addressing issues in maryland. we've been truly lucky to have her partner with us. i say all of this to stress the importance how we think about the issue. we need to be thinking outside of the box and big because as our kids continue to learn and grow in this 21st century of instant and sometimes incestant communications through the internet, twitter, facebook, we need to make sure that they can grow and thrive. you know when i tell you all these great things i think we're doing in maryland i have to tell you that we still have so much more to go. just last april we lost the life of a young lady named guys. she was only 15 years old. she was a victim of cyber bulllying.

very complicated and sad case. a lovely young lady. one life lost to you will aboutlying is too many. there is still so much we need to do. as parents it is all part of being involved in our kid's lives. what we're involved what is going on in their schools we're more likely to respond appropriately to bullying. for our students it is about speaking up and empowering each other so no kid will have to take their life be forced to live day-to-day with the torture of bulllying. great examples were given, see somebody sitting by themselves at lunch, if they're being excluded, go up and sit with them. if you see something happening in the hallways or bus or locker room, stand up. we're not asking kids to say you have to be everybody's best friend but i think as educators and parents as people in the community, as we can teach our kids to be more tolerant, to be more respectful and to have dignity for others and their differences we're making huge strides. i think that is really what

it comes down to. a culture of tolerance. our kids, our communities, our schools and our educators and our families, we're all in this together. we really do need to come together as everyone has said today. it starts with each of us and certainly to quote lady gaga, we just need everybody to be brave. thank you so much for letting me come here and learn from everybody today and be a part of this. i'm sure we're going to continue to hear from more great speakers. so have a great lunch and thank you again. [applause] >> shall we need about 50, 49 more first ladies like that in the states? and again, as kind of a parent and educator, a person who cares deeply about these issues, when we

have leadership at the federal and state level like judge o'malley and the panel that you had this morning, representative from the office of the president, there is good reason to hope that, that these very difficult issues will, will be addressed appropriately and expeditiously. i want to introduce the, the next panel. and the moderator. i will introduce the moderator for the next panel. that is dr. lisa loch sais man, director of the division of youth, 4-h. at family national institute of food and as culture with the u.s. department ofing a kulth ture. in this -- agriculture. in this position she tell since 2010, she provides national leadership for the h-4-h development program, includes positive youth development, can curriculum development, formal and

informal learning, program quality and pier review process, organizational management, professional of development and of staff and volunteers, children and youth military program support. this is a very busy person. and supervisory support. so please welcome, dr. lochmans. ♪ . [applause] >> well, today it is my privilege to be part of a panel and moderate, being more than a bystander. what i really should let you know this is truly an example of positive youth

development and these are all up standers. these folks will have some of the qualities and capabilities and tell you there is their stories. first let me introduce to you a gill patterson, sitting here beside me. this is one of the folks who is a young adult, okay? but what we're looking at is this opportunity where he has, is training and working towards being on the u.s. olympic level in wrestling but had been a football player and certainly had some life-changing moments but he is an award winning greco-roman wrestler taking on a different kind of opponent these days, that of bulllying and its effect on athletes on and off the playing field. patterson plans to fight not only for the rights of lgbt athletes but the growing community of lgbt people seeking quality across the board through the formation

of the patterson project he hopes to bring forth change. i will turn it over to you. >> thank you very much. let me say it's an honor to be here today with such great individuals and people and panel of young people i got to eat lunch with. just tremendous individuals. so i guess a little background about me is that, in 2006 i took this journey to europe with a friend of mind. i took out a student loan for it. worst decision of my life but, i was on full scholarship for football. took out a student loan to go to europe. while over there i saw how people could live openly an honestly this their lives especially, people in the homosexual community. and that empowered me to come back home and come out to my family. and again, i come from a very strong and supportive family. i mean, excuse me, that can handle just about anything and if they can't handle it i will make them handle it,

you know. so i was able to come out to my family and they were okay with it. i have, brothers and sisters. i have a brother that is a marine. i have another brother going for his ph.d. i have a sister going for her degree as a doctor. so, you know, they are educated and they very welcoming and supportive. but the thing i noticed that was missing during my process were the positive images and positive role models for me to come back and look up to. i would, you know, i remember searching the internest and type in gay athletes and one bern would come up or i would type in, you know, adversity and you know, there would be all these athletes came up with different types of adversity but no one exactly resembled what i had been going through. so i came up with the kind of concept that was with a buddy of mine, i go out there and preach the good word is that going to help out? and he goes, yeah. and he says, what are we

going to focus on? and the things that i focus on is that knowing that i have been bullied and i have been the bully. i have been the biggest bully and i have been bullied by the littlest person. i remember going, growing up and hearing, you know, the little kid in the hallway call me fat boy or fatty. i had a learning disability as well. i had guys coming at me from all angles. i remember telling these guys the kid that may fun of me the most was the gay kid. the gay kid made fun of me consistently. for some reason i never said anything to him and hurt a lot. even though i was a big dude i go home and cry to myself. one day i knocked the kid out. and i don't advocate violence but i hit him. you hit him because he was different. you hit him because he was gay.

but you don't understand, i didn't hit him because of that. i hit him for other reasons. but because the perceived notion they looked at my frame and my size and what i looked like from the outside and how i sounded i then became exactly what they thought i was. i was merely a bully, bullying a gay kid. they never thought, well, he could be gay. that never came across. so i got a concept of some core issues i like to focus on these days when i talk to community groups, when i talk to kids. it is about how we bully ourselves and how we have this persona that we are not what we always think we are or we are what society makes us out to be or we have to choose a side. you know, one of the things, feeling of isolation. a lot of times people being bullied and people that are bullies have the isolation factor. they convince themselves into this little box and they will stay there and that's where we form those

cliques. because we find other people that will stay inside the little box. we find a little clique or niche or and this is what it is. this is community i want to be a part of because they understand me. sometimes the people still don't fit that. again those are things that athletes run into. athletes fight stereotypes. again i come from a family full of athletes. my young man down here, right after the bat said he wrestled we instantly bonded. all my brothers bonded too. she said her brothers wrestled. the she asked me how many fights do you guys get into and what was your mom's damage control bill? it is true. we broke a lot of tables. i lost two front teeth. this is song you guys may not know it, all i want for christmas is my two front teeth. i heard that for about six years. that was big but i felt i had to fight the stereotype of what makes meme? how can i be a better me and how can i help others?

again, we've got to fight stereotypes. i also learned that there were very few support systems for athletes and lgbt athletes. again you're not going to find 1,000 kids out of the closest participating in high level athletics. it is just not going to happen right now but if we but the supportive services together where coaches are, are talked to in their proper manner or they're given some guidance, it helps them to move along. and then we, one thing i noticed working with a lot of college athletes and seniors in high school, they have this thing, they find a need for escapism, you see kids take this route all the time. escapism comes in the form of drug and alcohol abuse and dependency. myself i even did it. there was a model we used to jess about but it was win or lose we still booze. this was football. that was our mind set. we're going to go grab

ourselves a 30-pack. i started realizing the abuse was not just for the drinking. it was to deal with the other issues i never faced or addressed. so that is something i also go back and i tell coaches you have to look out for. sometimes people that are using or abusing drugs and alcohol, sometimes they're not being give the right guidance and we have to do that. finally with lashing out. there are three forms of lashing out. there is the verbal lashing out. there is the physical lashing out and then there's a self-lashing out. we find there are a lot of individuals who do a lot of self-harmful behaviors, not just alcohol and drinking but they will do other self-harmful behaviors. it is all about how did this person get to that point from where they should have been? some the most accomplished leaders you find are athletes but how do we get those athletes dealing with some, you know, feelings of anxiety and angst to that next level? and that's where some of these tools that we can help

coaches and schools with, become, more involved. and then, like i said, i want to see more positive images for these young people. these young people are a good start. the thing that, someone taught me and i was, something called boys state. i was the governor of boys state. i was so proud of that. it was something me, john f. kennedy and bill clinton all shared together. to me that is an honor. i'm in the same group as those guys. but, i have role models and i have people that lead and guide me. where are the leadership and guidance for the youth of america and who is teaching who? when we talk about bullying and how we get to the absolute pinnacle of defeating it, we need to recognize that sometimes the people doing all the groundwork, the groundwork, the grassroots efforts, are sometimes just knot equipped

to always handle everything. you know i know for me if you ask me to write a dissertation on the environment i'm probably going to look at you and go i can barely spell environment let alone write a dissertation but i can speak to young men and women in a brother manner. what we have to do we start mixing and matching with different organizations coming together to work in effective ways to make the positive things happen. so, and again my image pretty much is in athlete ticks. i'm able to speak to coaches in much different way than someone else. but i have the ability to do that and i've always been a firm believer in once you empower others you can step back and they will take the reins and drive the carriage wherever it needs to be driven. so. thank you. >> we want to certainly thank akil for his experiences and his words

here. we now have the opportunity to hear from as on the panel it says, student leaders. but what i would like to know they each have their own story to tell and they each have a wonderful, engaging personality as we got to know each other during the lunch hour. eric, hit it off and introduce yourself. >> i'm eric more rel, a senior in baltimore public city school and i'm here because and i'm in a group called the intersection and i really like the idea of this bullying prevention because i recently just came over a struggle, accepting who i really was because, and, because it is not hard. i mean it is hard when you're gay you don't want to accept it because you're afraid what everyone else is going to think and what everyone else is going to do. when i was in the closet, the this all knew i wasn't

gay, they bullied me. i was bullied all the way up to high school. sometimes i still hear the language and some people still try to bully me and everything. it is hard to overcome it but, it is, you have to try and you have to find help and people that is there to help you because that is what i did and i started a gay straight alliance. i'm now the president of it and -- [applause] and now i'm like this right here i'm going to try to do stuff to help the lgbt community for teens because we don't have that many teens out here that stands up and you know what, i'm fighting for gay rights. i'm fighting for these rights or try to make it seem like we're equal so we can get the same education everyone else gets in school without being harassed or feeling unsafe. >> thank you, eric.

[applause] and, an. >> hi, i'm anna holcomb. i'm from hart county in georgia. i'm 14 years old. i'm going to 10th grade this year. i've been involved in 4-h clubs since first grade. it has been a huge part of my life. it has given me opportunities not offered by other youth organizations the i'm a homeschooled student so i don't get to experience the public school environment. so 4-h has been a major part in my life. one day at my county 4-h i was assigned to a make a tri-fold on bulllying. after a few hours of research i was in awe of all the things that, i was unaware of before beginning the research. so i continued researching and found that the estimated 3 million children and teens are bull i had a year and out of those three million,

two million of those victims told no one of their attack. automatically i felt the need to stand up for these victims. i finished the tri-fold and registered it to be put up for over 1000, 6th and 7th graders to view. once my assignment was complete i didn't stop there. i couldn't. out of all the research i saw i wouldn't be able to stop there. so i made the decision to use bullying as my topic of interest at district project achievement through 4-h. and i used that in the human development project. i faced first in the demonstration in 8th grade and used it against this year for district project and placed second overall at district. and i also had the opportunity to use it again in atlanta to go to state. but i had to turn that down for another event. also entered the tri-fold to be viewed for 8 through 12th

graders last fall. later on in the year my county 4-h agent gave me the opportunity to teach a group of georgia cyber education kids about bullying. it worked so well, roughly 4th through 6th grade. i it worked so well that i taught it to a group of 4-ers last fall and previous leadership and training and experience made me realize many people think that someone else will take a stand and do something. but, we tend to shy away from confrontation. having learned that leadership starts with taking the first step, many others will join your effort, if you make the first move, once with the first movement has begun many will join you. this will be my hope for this challenge, to end bullying. overall, hearing the victims stories and hearing the bullies regrets and all of the above it just inspired

me to make a change for the better towards bullying for communities. i may not be able to take a stand against millions alone but joining together with other passionate individuals, all the youth up here, all you guys out in the audience, if we join together and use our passion we can stop bullying and make the world and many victims lives better. so. [applause] >> steve. >> hey. i'm steve wayman from minersville, utah. a town with population that you can count on one hand. i was nervous when i got up here. i thought i would see 200 people. with lights in my eyes i can only see 20 of you. i feel a lot better. i'm 17 years old. i'm a senior in high school and i really started out, i lived up in salt lake area, magna, utah, i was bullied

for a long time as a kid because i wasn't much of a sports player back then. i was small and shrimpy. i got beat up a lot. my mom would say it is nothing. i kept growing up and we moved down to miersville when i was in 6th grade. was the same in meyersville then, until i hit high school. i started being a bullly and starting beating up a lot younger kids than i was. and it really, after a while i remembered how i felt and i started, i wanted a change. so for a 4-h project to try out for state ambassador, got me a scholarship, lots of money, yeah, i went to all the third and fourth graders of beaver county and i did a power point to show them what the different types of bullying are, and really how to prevent bullying period. i taught them being physical bully, beating somebody up,

emotional bully, basically calling them names and tearing them down and taught them about cyberbullying. it changed me for, in like a good way. you know, it taught me how kids will actually sit down and listen if you're not coming at them as an adult with power. if you're coming at them as somebody on their own level, they will believe every word you say. and i've been trying to, i'm trying to keep it at younger levels trying to stop bulllying as you're young, once you high school it is a lot harder because you think you know it all. i'm trying to make changes and keep on doing it after i graduate and stay with 4-h and all this good stuff, so thanks. [applause] >> thank you.

andrea. >> hu. my name is andrea. i'm from cincinnati, ohio. i'm actually in college right now. i go to american university which is couple miles away in d.c. but my efforts in bullying prevention have dealt with a lot of issues related to diversity. i went to a all-girls catholic high school in cincinnati. there is a lot of catholic high schools, all girls, all boys, coed schools in cincinnati. there is a big issue of diversity, intolerance which is what judge o'malley was talking about earlier and people being bullied because they're different or because they're the minority. even within the minority groups such as the black kids, talking about kids that are darker skinned or, someone that is a little bigger or, all kinds of issues that the culture of the private schools in cincinnati, they were being overlooked and, i dealt with

some issues at the school even before it. but when i got there, when i got to the school, at first i wasn't doing anything. i kept telling my mom about stuff and saying i really want to do something. there is no one at this administration that i trust enough to talk to about issues or, if i were to talk to them they were blow it off, blow it off as a racial issue or something that isn't that big of a deal because it is not, it is covert. it is behind the scenes. so i organized a teen diversity summit in my last year of high school and had teens from all the independent schools of cincinnati come and talk about issues that they faced. really big, i guess, conversation going on with it was a safe place for kids to talk. talk about issues that adults don't understand or that even maybe some of the

caucasian principals or majority at that school don't understand what we're going through or what we've been through. what the environment is like. so that is kind of what i did in terms of bullying prevention and, in my senior year that was the teen diversity summit that we had. this past april we had the second annual one. next year if it will be held at one with the other independent schools and they're going to rotate each year and really get involved. once that, once we got the teen summit that first year the administrations of the different schools really saw how important it was and got on board and so i'm happy, that that's happening and even though i did in my last year and didn't do it when i was a freshman, i'm happy it is still going on and i'm still involved. i'm also in 4-h like these two over here and one of the last things that i did was, this is my last year in 4-h.

i've been in 12 years in cincinnati. one of the only minorities in my 4-h county program was the county fair queen last year. and dealt with a lot of issues. but i brought in a lot of minorities in my club and in my county and one of the first year participants that i was mentoring wanted to do a project called project citizen where he talked about an issue that was important to him and how he can implement it. and get the schools involved in the issue was bullying. he was just 6 and 7th grader out of, not a all-black school but a school that had a lot of black kid and he was bullied because he was skin i in. because he was light-skinned. whatever might be and he didn't think that the schools were doing the right things and so i worked with him on getting a plan together and took him all the way to state and he actually won the clark

trophy at state. so that is something i'm doing to go to the lower generation because i'm close enough to their age where i can talk about issues and i can understand what they're going through. and help make a change. so. yeah. >> thank you. . . prior to that i experienced bullying from kindergarten on words. i was called a bunch of names,

girl, whatever and it really started to take its toll on me and by middle school i didn't have any self-esteem. i felt like no one really knew -- i couldn't tell anybody and i just felt like i was drowning. it was really hard for me. but i found a lot of supportive friends at my school who were also discovering who they were, their sexuality and stuff like that so that made it a lot easier for me to come out to everybody. so i think a few years ago, two years ago i decided to join glsen in the straight education network and this is my second year of being the ambassador. and so, basically what i do now is in my own community i try to make sure that no one ever feels like i felt when i was there. when people are bullied they feel like they can't express or they are and i feel that

self-expression is a human right that everyone is entitled to and when that is taken away it's a at the violation of your right. so what i do now is i wear a card to ensure that every student feel safe about being themselves and they don't have to worry about being harassed. [applause] >> aren't they great? these are terrific examples of youth leadership, those upstanders. [applause] they are not just leaders of tomorrow but leaders of change today and that is one of the key things. this is our opportunity as an audience in our informal discussion here i told them that i have some questions to ask them. now is your time to pull together the questions that will be brought up and i will give no address them with them but i do have some to tackle with them first and we kind of drew some straws as to who would respond to those. if you have questions please, there are folks in the audience

that are gathering those. first of all, how do you think we can and courage you to be more than bystanders, to be like upstanders? would you like to tackle this one? >> yeah, i can do that. so repeat the question. >> okay. how do you think we, those non-u.s. folks here can encourage youth to be more than a bystander, to be in upstander and to take the initiative like you all have? >> just really explain to them the actual problem and how big it really is. it's nothing to joke about. it's not cool. it's not going to get you by. you will get into trouble. just tell them you are not going anywhere but to prison if you keep that up. that is all i have got to say. >> okay. well and anna. add a little bit to that. >> like i said earlier, 85% of

bystanders want to do something but they don't know what to do. most importantly, inform them what to do and the most important thing is to let them know that there is a difference between paddling and telling. when you tattle in someone you know you have been telling on purpose with your intent to be to get them in trouble. telling is a major difference. telling would be trying to inform them to make something better. kids are always like if you tell you're a tatler. this is not your fight. this is not your problem and you need to stay out of it. if you are a bystander don't stay out of it. you need to tell someone and know there's a difference between tattling and telling and don't let it get to you. you are just trying to cause trouble, don't let it get to you. stay strong. >> it sounds like a familiar theme. thank you.

do any others have any comments you want to add to that question? >> alright, how can adults work with you to support the efforts like yours in youth adult partnerships? andreas? >> i really liked what robert kim said earlier on the panel, talking about having that safe person, having a safe adult at the school, whether it's a teacher or a counselor, someone that the kids know they can come to. when adults partner with kids they have to understand what the issues are so every school is different. the private school environment, the private catholic school environment and the all-girls tribus school environment. they are all different and my school specifically we had a

diversity director that didn't really get, i guess you could call it she didn't have importance in terms of the other faculty that she knew what was going on. they would contact her last when any issues came up and she was a person that the kids trusted the most of having a person and knowing your environment and knowing that you have two asian-american students or knowing that you have kids that aren't performing well and they are all from minorities and there are kids talking about them. you may not know what's going on but that diversity or is someone that can be that safe person and be bad in between. i think at my school specifically there were issues of bullying and the person that was bullied was comfortable in telling the diversity director what was going on and then there

is a calmer station the next day at lunch in the room with the full year and the bully. it was talked about and it was hashed out. they may not have been friends by the time they left but that was something where it was documented, it happened and the parents were involved and the teacher and the adults knew what was going on. they were that safe person so i think having a safe person in in the school environment is very important. >> thank you. this is for eric. what is something you think adults don't understand about bullying issues? >> something that adults don't really understand is bullying affects everyone in a different way. sometimes an adult might incorporated it's just a joke like other students think it's just joking with that that student that is it really hurt because they are not showing it but some teachers parents or

adult look at you and encourage it sometimes which is and the best thing because a lot of jokes actually do hurt when you think about it. just because it didn't offend you or just because it seems minor to you, it's different because all i hear lots with a lot of adults is, just toughen up. you need to toughen up. they are just playing. it doesn't matter, sticks and stones and olive that. >> i agree and i also think that people who are are adults now, the way in which children interact has changed dramatically. and everywhere you look, people don't even have to know you to judge you and attempt to hurt you. i feel that people who are

adults, parents don't completely understand the way the kids and direct and get involved. >> thank you. here is a couple of questions and they seem to be targeting youth but if others want to bill and. you basically mention the realization that you had been both bullied and a bully. what triggered your 180 and what kinds of interventions would you suggest have helped you to do that in what could we do from the federal government level and how can you respond to the first step? >> are you are saying my 180 from being bullied? >> yes. >> quite a difference. when you go from being bullied to bullying, didn't want to feel vulnerable and i wanted to gain my manhood back by being

dominant i guess it's how you put it, and then from going from a bully back to try to solve the problem. my conscience kicked in and slapped me in the face a couple of times and it was not the smart thing to do and i needed to stop the problem because it is a huge problem. >> thank you. any other comments? >> i want to add, when i was younger i was bullied a lot for my skin color and my arms, i have a muscular arms. i developed a hard exterior where a lot of people that i talked to since knowing them when i first met them they thought that i was going to beat them up as soon as i saw them. i never actually was a bullyer but i turned into a person where nobody wanted to mess with me. i was really just an observer

and trying to deflect anybody, even having the chance of saying something like i dare you to say something to me because i have dealt with so many issues and dean talked about that i just had a shell around me. finally when i started seeing, becoming an upperclassman in high school and seeing myself in the other kids, i wanted to do something about it. i knew that i could use my strength and things that i had been honing and to do something because i saw a need and there was a time to act. >> thank you. we are getting a lot of questions that are geared towards school and great questions from the audience but one key thing is think back to your elementary days. if you could go back what is one thing that you would want to have happen to make you feel included and what would that have been?

don't all speak at once now. >> read the question. >> you are in elementary school. what is one thing that would make you feel included? >> i would think something that i would have liked in elementary school is just like a little, not like group but when you are younger you pick your group and who you want in your group. i guess have the people who don't get picked the people who are always last get picked first and get to know other people and get to actually interact. >> okay. the rest of you? it sounds like a good technique so that leads to this question

about rules than could teachers and principals have been to help facilitate that in the community? so, because it sounds a little like that might be something that the adults could do. what could they do differently and better in the elementary classrooms and in your high school's? >> they could break up the click smack because they start at a very young age. have you meet new people that you never met before or that you never thought of talking about before issues with one another. get to know them and see why you're having issues and talking it out. >> any others want to answer that one? >> teachers need to make sure that they are not automatically when someone comes to them about he made fun of or whatever, place the blame on the person

that is the suspected bullyer because you don't know the whole situation and if other kids see you acting directly and punish thing them, i think they can't come to you about something because you don't know the whole situation and you have acted on it so they are going to think that in any situation that happens, the person that comes and says something to them is always the right person without understanding the whole issue. there is a lot -- when i go to different schools and watch my brother, these situations where there is a lot of stuff going on that when the one person goes to the teacher, the teacher listens to what they say and act. i am thinking, that's not what happened. that's not the whole story and then other students don't feel comfortable and don't feel safe to tell the person in charge. >> i was just showing her something that i had written

down earlier. when we go back to kids, i remember my foot will coach told me that there is always a penalty that has to be thrown and there are three sides to this story. there was yours, there was mined and then there was the truth. and that is where it really is hard for bullying. although i may not be a teacher per se when i go into a wrestling room and i have 30 kids running around and little steven bumps his head and he goes while sam threw me into the wall and sam goes back and says what we while we were playing with all anti-draft and that kind of pushed him but he tripped and then hit his head. it's up to me to try to figure out what the truth was and that is bullying aspects. especially teachers inside the classroom god bless every last one of them because it is one of the most difficult jobs to go in there and try to manage 30, depending on how big the school

is, anywhere from 15 to 40 kids and try to figure out who did what to whom. that gets really difficult so i think what a teacher would ask for is the helpful support system from educating their youth leaders and you know, if you see something you don't have to come tell me right away. you can write it down in a little journal and attach it as you leave class. this is what i witness. third-party accounts are very helpful when they are going back to a position because a guinness and as you see it right it down and give it to the teacher or an administration because if anything comes back later on they can at least say we have a third county -- third party account that was very detached from the situation was not a friend of anybody, was just a bystander walking by. >> we want to move along with more questions here you guys, but we do have one person in the audience that wanted to know how do you know if you are bullying

someone? what are some things that you would suggest that come to mind from your work to? >> how you are being a sub one? >> yeah so that they know when they are being that bully. >> you feel it really in your gut. or if you are just making -- that is a bad thing too. you just have to use common sense really. >> i think it's measuring a scale. you have to weigh the situation. again, some people don't have that gut feeling or sometimes you were very lucky that you left when he did for other people it will be a sense of alright, kid, i called him -- and i really didn't need to go

one. there is that scale that we know is intrinsically wrong and we took it too far. we went from saying things to doing bad things. >> what kind of a role do you think mentorship plays and working with prevention and? >> can you repeat that? >> yes. have you served as a mentor for someone who has been bullied or is bullying and if so what role do you play in prevention? >> well, one of the things that might gsa does is we go and talk with local public schools. elementary school to talk to kids one-on-one, you know just to help them through whatever they have been going through. a lot of kids what they need most is to hear from someone who

has been bullied and see someone who has made it through the bullying. you know, telling them how we got through it, just being someone to talk to really helps. >> okay. >> also with me mentoring a first year for h. or, that age relationships with people of the opposite is kind of like taboo or girls have cooties. he really warmed up to me and i got to talk to him about his issues. when i first talked to him i was like why do you want to do your project? he was like, i was bullied and when you develop a relationship of that person and get to know them before you start going into the issue is hard for them to

talk about, then you can. >> more about what you want to do life taking them out to eat for being friends with them and then having them develop that trust so that they can talk to you about issues and open communication. their first time in the counselor's office they are not going to say anything, so really becoming close with that person is what i have learned being a mentor. >> here are some on cyberbullying and since you're all technology savvy for anyone who can address the cyberbowling it is not just taken place on facebook and other social networks but the life on line gaming systems. there is name-calling and targeting. how do you think that should he addressed? >> as anybody a game or? >> i just wanted to make sure everyone else can answer. it just depends on exactly what

you are planning. if you are playing a little facebook game usually don't get those chat boxes but really, you get a bunch of the chat docsis and people call you -- they will drop the f-bomb for no reason and is just really random bike in fu. it's like what did i ever do? they have fun doing that i guess. i just think video games in the companies should start censoring or again get bigger on cutting down on that stuff. i don't know how to do that but -- >> surely you guys as youth leaders can come up with a way to form an advisory committee to advise them. >> i was just talking about the technology part. >> yeah, even if i'm playing and i'm on line, that is what guys

my age to because they don't go out anymore. they become gamers but it's virtually impossible. it makes me laugh when i have my headset on. i'm like wow, this 12-year-old is cussing me out. it's hard to control but what i will say is we need to address the parents on that one. if the kids is cussing you out on his x-box live, why is he doing that? what is going on at home that we are not addressing? >> so along that same line, adults are thinking about legislating on line behavior. you all are pretty serious those of you in this cyberbowling opportunities, what would you say to the bullies who say its free-speech? >> cyberbullying to me seems a lot easier to do than physical one-on-one bullying.

it's harder to realize how hurtful your words can be because you are typing any don't see the person on the other side so you don't know how hurtful you can be. you might be joking back and forth and when you say something and it goes too far you need to make sure you were watching yourself and make sure you don't take it too far. you cannot we smack sure they apologize but i would say just watch yourself and watch everything you do because it's a lot harder to bully in person but it's harder to realize you are cyberbullying because of the fact that we can't see them one-on-one and you were not sitting right beside them so it's a lot harder to catch yourself when you're doing that. >> i just wanted to say that it's interesting because kids, it's easier to say stuff on line but then anything that is

written on the internet is something that is going to stay longer than what you say. so, if you are saying something in person as someone as being a bully, that can be refuted or you can find ways to get around that but if you are writing it down and putting it on the internet, then you are putting yourself in the situation where nothing can speak against the words that are on facebook and the words that you said. you can't explain that and you can't say that i meant this. really getting that across and i have had a lot a lot of different adults talk to me throughout high school and our school about professional things, professional companies can look and see what you are doing and it seems to not stick. i don't know what needs to stick for kids to know that when you put something down, that what you are saying can hurt someone and if you didn't mean it that way it doesn't matter because it's down and anyone can take it how they want it.

so yeah. >> thanks. this question has to do with what akil talked about earlier when he googled, so as we look at teen athletics it seems to be one of those areas where it's a "don't ask don't tell" unspoken policy. it could be because of concerns of safety but what needs to change in the realm of team sports for more lgbt athletes to participate? >> i wholeheartedly know that they are participating in the thing is to what level do they stop participating and they go to live their lives clinics you go down the line and you look at every ad that has come out and they say well, so-and-so is a athlete. are you still involved in athletics and still participating in some way? most of them have given up on sports altogether.

they signed book deals and they go to tours and yet they are not coaching or participating because they have gone off and retired. and that is where you know, the big holed up inside being. it's not that they come out -- it gets the youth a little bit but how about those still the competing? i was out and fargo north dakota. i went out there for a wrestling tournament. i go every year. i've been going since i was 14 years old. so i'm out in fargo for -- i am out there and this gentleman comes up to me from phoenix arizona and he goes mr. patterson i want to shake your hand and say thank you. i asked him, i said for what? he said my son is here at this tournament competing. he was going to quit wrestling because he wanted to come out and he said no one would understand him. then he read your article and he

said he saw that you would still compete and i wanted to thank you. it was great but there were other wrestlers that i know that were like i'm going to come out and i'm done with this board. it's too much. athletics needs a change based on the two worlds always colliding. it's can i be gay and an athlete or do i have to be one or the other? i'm not talking about recreational leaks because everyone knows if you're in a recreational league you do it for fun and be get that really competitive guy. he can really be a jerk, kind of like it's not the world series. if you are really going to be a competitor on that level and you are doing like i am, one of the top 10 in the country and my weight class that is going on right now.

one of the top 10 in the country, i am very serious but how are the coaches and the other people around me, are they serious too? other athletes want to see that serious person to go on? if you are at diver like gainous and michael mitchum, he is from australia and he is an open gay diver. the team concept is going to make its way back and it's going to start a having coaches that have open door policies. it's going to have allies that are going to be willing to talk with you and i don't mean just an ally that is going out and talking but i mean an ally that seriously stands up in his teammate is being bullied. his teammate will get bullied and his teammate will have other teammates talk about him. when a person goes, until i am safe in that space i won't be a look come out fully.

i came out because i knew if anybody had said anything to me i had a foot -- six-foot six-inch man standing behind my six-foot three-inch self standing behind me. they never had to fight anybody but they made me feel comfortable. they made me feel like i was part of the family and that help me as a football player. you need to have that comfort level. you need to have a coach or administrator on your side helping you through the process. that is what is going to happen. coaches need to get on board. that athlete -- [inaudible] >> thank you very much. i just want to to say on behalf of the panelists it's been my privilege to be the moderator and certainly each one of you all here have certainly exemplified leadership in your rolling capacity as mentors and

in your presentation today and i want to just say that you had created a sense of belonging, you shared and we appreciate you taking that risk. it's not an easy thing to do and we certainly want to encourage in your endeavors and say thank you to the audience for all of the questions. sorry we didn't get to every one of them but they are here longer if you want to talk a little bit more to them. thank you for your time and effort in these upstanding leaders. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] ♪

♪ speeding ladies and gentlemen please welcome back to the stage -- [inaudible] ♪ >> i just want to see how long they would play the music. i'm going to tell my mother about this. my mother by the way is 91 years old. i'm not making this up. i talk to her regularly and every time i talk to her when she's about to hang up she says dave, be careful. sometimes i'm talking to her right before i'm going to sleep and i say what he talking about? i'm going to sleep. what you mean be careful? she says just be careful. it is my great pleasure to now introduce a congressional

champion of all of you, of all of us, of all of our children and colleagues and everyone who is working very hard on this issue. i worked for congress for five years and i know that congress people are very busy people. there are lots of demands on their time. this is a gentleman who is here today. congress is out of session. he is here today. his district is in california. he could very well be back in california campaigning. he is here today to be with us to talk to you, to answer your questions and tell you a little bit about what he is doing. when i kind of went through his bio, i was trying to figure out what is it about an individual member of congress who devote so much time to bullying? he is on the appropriations committee and he is on the budget committee.

he is formed an anti-bullying caucus. he is devoting time and energy to this and the question i ask myself is what kind of a person is this? let me tell you a little bit about congressmen michael honda and what kind of a person is -- he is and you will get a feel for why he is doing this. it's also his personal history for all you young people for what you can become and what you can do. congressman honda was born in california to a japanese-american farmworker less than six months before the japanese bombed pearl harbor. congressman honda and his family were shipped to an internment camp in colorado the day after the attack. they spent two and a half years there before being allowed to move to chicago when his father joined navy intelligence. for honda family moved back to

california in 1953 and his parents became strawberry sharecroppers. mr. honda took janitorial and delivery jobs to pay his way through san jose state university. he was one credit shy of graduation when he joined the peace corps in 1965, and i was a peace corps volunteer myself much later. peace corps volunteers in 1965 worthy fourth group of peace corps volunteers going out. these were people who were pioneers. the peace corps program had just gotten off the ground, sergeant shriver and president kennedy's dream of a peace corps volunteer. the individuals who went into the peace corps in 1965 were very unique people. this is another kind of dimension of the congressmen that kind of fills in the blanks of quiet person of his stature

is spending so much time on bullying. after two years in el salvador, where he helped schools and medical clinics, he returned to california to finish college. he took a job as a science teacher, later serving as the principal. the congressmen got his start in public service more than three decades ago, when he was named to the san jose city planning commission in 1971 by mayor norman matassa, another japanese-american who spent time in an internment camp as a child. in 1980 when congressman honda won the election for the local school board and later to the county board of supervisors in the california assembly before winning a house seat in 2000. the congressmen's late wife survived the atomic bombing of hiroshima. so this is a gentleman who

started working, his family was interned and his family started working as a janitor. he is now a congressman and an important member of congress. he is a leader in a field that we care so deeply about. it is with great leisure that i introduce congressman michael honda. [applause] ♪ >> good afternoon and thank you david for that introduction. i could have made it shorter. how would i say it though? i was poor, i was the lousiest student and i dropped out of college and went to the peace corps and i'm here now. [laughter] but it's been a 71 year journey and i think that this whole

attention towards bullying is putting a title to something that i think has been going on for a long time, a real long time and we are just putting titles and terminology to it and trying to figure out what is going on. one of the things that i always zero in on is language, the use of language, the level of the language, the perception that is attached to the language and also, perceptions of language and things like bullying is something that is learned. it's about power. it's about perception of power. it's also permission, giving them the power. it's about combating it is something like understanding it and it's about self-awareness, a

word that we use all the time, self-actualization. other things that have been talked a lot about today when i was listening to young people is trust, safety and one of the things that is interesting to me is that here we are in the nations capital struggling with something that goes on every day, and trying to address it. and we should. but address it sometimes through policy. a lot of times are policies are well-meaning and sometimes we have to look at our policies in bill making in question ourselves as policymakers. where are these ideas coming from and what is it that you want to accomplish? i want to do a shout-out to the schools here in d.c..

both to the chancellor, the superintendent and the mayor for having and advisory group here. and i think that a shout-out to some of the young people. i would like the young lady named -- and a young lady named sheree and it gentleman by the name of joshua. they'll go to different schools. their articulation of the issues was really interesting because they went into their own personal experiences to try to translate that into a language that is going to be heard by adults and they get translated into some sort of action. and i think that that is important and we need to pay attention to what our young people are saying to us now. like some young person here

said, going to the lower generation. she was probably about 18 or 20 and talking about the lower generation but she is right on. looking at young people, younger people, where you were looking at preschool where behavior is overt and sometimes more honest than anything else in addressing that at that level. saying they will outgrow it and things like this. if you put it off, to me that's a lazy approach. and the more interesting and probably more challenging approach is to look into it and to do something about it. the other heard -- thing i heard from the young people was the word trust and making a

distinction between what is going on in different kinds of neighborhoods, different kinds of neighborhoods may have different kinds of solutions. and approaches but perhaps the principles behind those solutions would be the same. sometimes i think that us adults, we forget to listen very carefully and then try to ask them, is this what you mean and is this what you are saying and not giving them the opportunity to say yes or no. i had to learn that as a principal of an elementary school that had 700 kids. one third was latino, one third was vietnamese and the other one third was cambodian. managing a school of 750 that was built for 500 was difficult

than the school had something like 300 suspensions. prior to me being there. k-6, k-5, how do you do that? and when i looked into it, it's about youngsters who are acting out and under the zero-tolerance rules, you know you have to do some kinds of things. i think that we have to take zero-tolerance schools and throw them out of the window. [applause] because it makes it to easy for us to do what we want to do and for the right reasons. we want to teach but at the same time we lose the teaching moment and the learning moment when those kinds of things happened whether in the classroom or on the playgrounds. the other thing i heard from young people is being saved.

i thought about this and talking about safe environment, talking about kids and -- let me rephrase that. when you talk about young people and the little people, i've got to learn how to not say kids. kids or baby goats, right? i think that terminology sort of helps us compartmentalize our thinking and our solution so i have kind have been struggling with that word. and so, when we look at young people and little people, we need to think that they have the same sentiments we do and one of the comments a young person said was, one adults on campus want to do something, sometimes they are trained to talk and not to do anything until it's over. no true words were ever said. ..

and rulemaking because we have

rules we have in our schools to keep places safe. but we make rules for kids, young people, little people, and it doesn't pertain to us, that's about power and perception. it's about control. whether or not bad things, you know, are to run a school but there's a contradiction there, what if an adult becomes a bully? and youngsters have low recourse so they have to wait until their adults so they can do it. we do that with parents, you know, as parents we say, do it because i said so. and it seems like when we want to raise young people with rationale thinking, critical thinking, then it seems like we should be modeling that at the

get go, and so what we did in the school we took a week and a half to come up with rules for the school and the rule was it's for the young tears, the teachers, the secretary and the principal. no exceptions. and that was difficult to do at first, but through that process of rulemaking, teachers found out they had the ability to start teaching because all these young -- youngsters are taking part in the rulemaking it. they owned it. i want wanted a simple and no negative words. came up with four, it was -- well, the first one has a negative word in it. no putdown.

it engages all kinds of things. the young people up here that were talking about all kinds of things putting them into boxes, keeping them in the closet, not allowing it them to become who they really are. no putdowns. active listening. meaning that you hear what they're saying, also hearing what they're feeling, and then it's to reflect back to them and ask them is this what you're saying? -- [inaudible] that we heard validate what they're saying. with a child, share something we share something it stays with within that group. because knob in terms of bullying, nobody wants to be a snitch, right. how do you create a place where they can trust you? and that trust comes over time and practice. the fourth one is -- what was

the fifth fourth one? active listening, no putdowns, i had it here someplace. i'll think of the fourth one. we -- but they all worked and what happens was by the end of the year we only had three suspensions. one was a repeat. none of them left schools. parents had to come school and work with us, you know, about what we're going do about the youngster's behavior. so -- oh. fourth was the right to pass. the right to say, no. we had an era at one time that said just say no. we said just say no. we never give time to practice

to say no. you don't say no to a adult in school especially a teacher or principal. we teach them how to say can i be at the end of the line, when you ask the question, can you come back to me later so i can think about it. straitists -- students say something and i'll know how to say it and be right. you know, so the right to pass. i've been on the students in the cafeteria like for putdowns and i said no, i'm playing. you know, and you hear the young people, you know, getting involved in each other physically because when you talk to them, they said i didn't mean anything by it. i was playing with them. it's still a putdown. i had to say i'm sorry and then they had to tell me when they want me to do. they said we want do you stop

saying this because it makes me feel this way and we want you to smile. i said, okay. and you know how much power it gave them? still, i never lost authority. and i think that's what adult needs in schools is the authority and the respect but also that level playing field and the area of growing up and listening to young people i'm still struggling with that word. so if i leave you with any message, the message would be this. bullying is intrapersonal. things that we learn from other people or society that we impose upon ourselves and we oppress ourselves with those things.

it can be community wide, it can be small groups. let me suggest this, it could be government too. it could be adults in power. it could be the superpower. you remember the old phrase we're the only superpour in the world now. how do we use it or abuse it? how do we share it? how do we behave and how is it perceived? and so, what i tell people is it's an issue of us working on our own stuff by being aware of and also being aware that it's seamless, it's ageless. when we talk about super powers it's about us too and the government making certain kinds of decisions. you can disagree with me, but

there are papers written about being a superpower and some of us in the past have exercised that power and committed a lot of people to -- [inaudible] and so bullying needs to be addressed from the get go looking at youngsters in preschool our children and parents. will be to young people here, some of the questions i always ask myself talk about, what exempted them from suicide. what exempted them from continuing to be a bully and not realizing they were bullied. what exempted them to be able to articulate their lives and be here as leaders? and so i would suggest that we invite young people, and i started out commending d.c. for

the schools and the mayor, and the mayor advised the group i would suggest to young people that they get their folks together, their student population together, many will be 18 by the time election rolls around, and from 13 to 22, they have a voting block there. maybe they should have a seat at city council on behalf of the infrastructure, which is schools, and on behalf of young people who are on both sides of the issue bully and bullied to be able to help form policies from their perspective, and that way, i think, we may raise another generation of young people who know how to take personal experiences and turn them into positive policy and translate. i think that is what this is all about. it's not confined to certain age groups or certain behaviors only. but it's an environment that requires us to be cognizant of

everything that goes on. i told david that i'll stop early so that maybe you might have questions because it's easy to come upper -- up here and talk having been in every one of the sessions. it gives you a chance to challenge and say, yeah, but, you said, what do you think of this. why don't they wind up with this thought, every school, every neighborhood, the route from portal from home to school needs to be safe. there needs to be present trusted adults who understand what trust is, that involves listening and confidentiality, and not putting down people, but also, be able to be part of the solution. and that perception and listening and all those things

are important to validate those kids, those young people who are being bullied and the young man who realized that when he became a bully, he to slam himself up and change. that realizization of learning about your old self is probably the most powerful tool we can give our young people, our little people as adults. so the next generation can form a better country, be better citizens than us, and also, help us form a more perfect union. thank you. i'll open to questions now. [applause] >> anyone have any questions? now is the opportunity to ask a few comments. >> no such thing as an embarrassing question.

i'm over 200 pounds and i'm single. get that out of the way and we can go from there. [laughter] [inaudible] or you can shout it out. there is a microphone. microphone can be intimidated. if you want to shout it out, i'll repeat it. here comes a coach's coach. i primarily work with jiewflts, and one of the statistics that always -- scares me nationally is that one of the most repressed and oftentimes neglected population is the lgbt youth in juvenile care. in the california juvenile justice system is large. they have their own union out there. when we're not addressing this in -- across the national board in terms of juvenile justice and

making sure that the needs of the lgbt community is met. what is your stance how do you feel we should go about the changes the people who are in the lockup situations who are getting bullied by the staff, the wardens, the handler, the cops, you know, because this is a larger thing, the kids essentially are at the will have so many people from the judges to the correctional officers. they're not getting the aid they should. >> and to the other inmates. you're talking about the institutionalized. >> yeah. >> you mentioned california, in california we passed finally after three or four years, passed a law that protected youngsters in high school, and that took a awhile. i don't think that we ever looked at the incarcerated, and i think that's something we need

to step forward and do something about. i don't think that the expectations should be any different of the folks who are working on the juvenile justice system or the justice system. we have a lot of humor around pent and gays in the penitentiary. you see it on movies and everything else even in drama and stuff like that but none of us ever thought about taking it to the next step and saying, wait a minute, that's not acceptable. someone said it up here, this humor, humor there's always a grain of truth in the humor, it's the truth we need to pursue . taking it from the laws and states that are passed by feds and taking it to the policy

makers at the local level. it seems to me that policy makers and superintendents need to convert that into policy and expected kind of training outcome in our schools. that's one institution, by the way, it's an institution where kids are required to go to for tennessee years -- teen years. it's a sentence. if that's a model, then, we should take that model and apply it to the justice system and have high expectations these folks are going to be safe there and that's a good place to be learning and teaching but also to protect young people who are lgbt there. great question. never thought about it. i think it was something we need

to do. yes? >> hi. bra x ton. >> why do you feel it's important equalize the playing field especially in the school district between students and staff and administrators. why do you feel it's so important, i guess, to empower the youth, give them a sense of self, and give them the sense that what they have to say really does matter especially in the education. >> thank you for the question. it's the first time it's ever been asked. let's see if i can answer it off the top of my head. people say that we discipline our kids as we were disciplined. remember that old phrase? good enough for me, it's good enough for you. look how we turned out. it's really about size and power. when you use it to corporal punishment, i try to do something about that in my own

life. you teach as you were taught, hopefully we don't teach as we were taught we teach better. i've had the most greatest issues of bullying when i became a principal and a vice principal by the assistant superintendent. he was on my teeth all the time. he wanted that, this and the other written. i said i'm not going do it because what you want is a report about a fight between two kids -- and several i don't know why you want a record of it. so i started -- i started pushing back, i got pretty well targeted. in fact a few years my jacket was about that thick.

so i think as adults we have to model, process, and behavior with our young people in engagement. if we expect them to become engaging, and thoughtful people we have to do that as adults. we have them five to six hours a day, and probably even longer after that. so we have that responsibility that environment is safe and reflect i have on the things that we want them to become. we have to do which we want them to become. so to me, it makes a lot of sense to do that. at first, there was lot of work. after awhile we found that teaching becomes more efficient because everybody is participating in thes at fear of the classroom and the school. yes, sir? >> my name is tyler gregory i

represent 4-h and the . >> what does 4-h stand for? >> head, heart, hands and healthy. >> cool. [applause] >> and i have a question, like, social media, like, as far as the youth go, like, as far as bullying and stuff, it's getting way out of hand. how do you think the california -- how do you think that the social -- how do you think that california can get the social media companies that are located in california to support the youth and digital responsibility? >> okay. [applause] nicely spoken. it's enough we had in my district, we call a student

advisory counsel, we have youngsters from all the high schools, and they pick the theme of bullying and they brought in facebook, and facebook participated whole heardedly and it was about cyber bullying and things like that, and they i think what the young people provided is some of the ethics that needs to be looked at alongside with, you know, the responsibility and the privilege and the power of having the digital format in front of us. you know, i never thought i'd say this, when i was a kid -- [laughter] i hated that when people said that when i was growing up. when i was a kid everybody knew my business, you know, but it was a small community.

now, you can choose to have everybody know your business, right. and vice versa everybody wouldn't know your business if you opted in for it, you know, showing your information. so we can -- [inaudible] some of the folks at facebook, most of those digital companies understand and are willing to participate in this, and they probably will see a kernel of opportunities there to make the digital world safer, more useful, assessable within and things like that be you involvement and your interest in coming in. i think they're doing something at the certain level, you bringing it down to your every day situation would be very helpful. so we'd >> b glad to give you some -- we'd be glad to give you some of the names. my staff back there to give you

that information, and i think that engaging them and recruiting them is good. it's thoughtful and progressive, sir? >> kevin, police u.s.a. we have 49 states that already have antibulling legislation. you talked about national piece of legislation on this arena. since we have local state -- pieces of legislation, one of the things we're missing is the enforcement piece. would you see possibly on the national level you would do something that would have more enforcement rather than mimicking what has been done at the state level. one of the big things that comes out of the talks of the conferences is the need for training and the need for funding for some of these, would that be something that in a more national bill, that you would be looking at? >> no, i didn't know about

that. i didn't think about it until you brought it up. and now it's my scope, an part of our responsibility that you added to it. but at the same time i would engage you to help us to do that. with the proviso we look at ways to make these things happen and not make it all top down, help us define what hazing or bullying or harassment -- how that -- where is that line between that and hate crimes? yesterday we saw an example of hate crimes. somebody with arms went into a temple and shot up the place. i don't have all the details, but other instances were young

people or adults, persons, start to act out some behavior that is just shocks us. but we need to go beyond that in terms of trying to figure out what happened, why did it happen, how do we prevent it? i suspected there's all kinds of reasons everything from bullying to racism so all the other stuff, ignorance, fear -- so it's a broad area that, i think, as a nation we have to come up with an ethics in how we behave as a nation what is acceptable and what it not acceptable and how we expect individuals to behave. that's got to be all part of that collective consciousness that we have, you know, and we're still growing as a nation and so, we need to address that. i'm not about trying to punish

anybody right away but trying to find ways to engage the different disciplines and it's not by accident the folks at the federal level looked at not only education but also health and human services and other arenas where all these things need to be engaged and to address it and how do we look at human behavior that has power to put down other individuals by different characteristics. i think it's a good challenge for us to engage. we don't mind partnering with you on that and getting other folks. by the way, let me say this issue at this conference is not partisan, you know. it's not partisan. sometimes we appear like we're partisan, on the congressional floor, but trust me it's not

partisan at all. >> congressman, thank you. i love the fact that you asked the young man what the 4-hs were. one a teacher, also the teacher. i want to thank you for being the champion of the issue in congress, and if we can express our appreciation for the congressman, please. ♪ [applause] ♪ [applause] you can go to your breakouts now. please be back by 3:30. [inaudible conversations] we'll be back to the bulling session in the summit in about a

little over an hour. nasa scientist said today the mars landing of "curiosity" was more than perfect. it began to broadcast images from mars surface within two hours of the landing. scientist i say they're ready to begin the next phase of the mission getting colored photos back from the rover. you can watch nasa's announcement any time. all this week here on c-span 2 looking back at some of the luncheon speeches. controlling health care cost on tuesday the nation's tax system with irs commissioner douglas and the rest of the week mental health insurance, the 100th anniversary of the girl scouts and tennis champ on billy jean king.

also coming up tonight on c-span2 our q and a interview with dan balls. he answers questions from students studying media and politics and talk about changes in the newspaper business. you can watch that tonight 7 p.m. eastern on c-span2. what we found is over the long haul, the clearing and reallocation of federal spectrum is not sustaining. >> with continuing demands for wireless president -- discuss the report to the government. tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. [applause] we're entering an all day summit on bullying. we had health catlin speaking at 5:00. in the meantime here's a portion

from the afternoon session. >> i did ask them not play rocky, but apparently they took that as a queue i didn't want music, and i want to thank you for being here. i'm relatively new to the job, i've been with the students since january of this year. and so it's really a pressure for -- pleasure for me to get to know all of you. what i'm here to do is introduce a very important person, the first lady of maryland katie 0 o'malley who has a long history of public service. judge o'malley began her career in law in the baltimore county state attorney office. she attended law school in the evenings at the university of baltimore. work and school took up much of

her until 1990, when she married martin o'malley who is currently the governor of maryland and my governor. one of the things that i'm -- a pleasure for me to introduce judge o'malley i have two 6-year-old girls, sally and daisy, who started kinder garten this year, their education, their experience in school is something i deal with every day as all families deal with the experience of kids in school to know that judge o'malley and governor o'malley are working to make maryland's schools the best they can be and are advocating nationally on behalf of all of us all parents, all kids is heart warming.

in 1991, judge o'malley and the governor had their first child grace and while katie was finishing her last semester of law school. she was promoted to assistant state attorney for baltimore county. she handed many domestic violence cases and child sexual and physical abuse cases. during her yearses as a prosecutor judge o'malley and governor 0 mally had two more children, kara and william and the fourth child jack. the first lady has been a steadfast advocate for the rights of victims for years she served in the might to end domestic violence, participating in several house of root functions and giving lectures in maryland and over-- seas.

in march of 2009 judge o'malley spoke in washington, d.c., as the guest of the state department on women's rights in america and domestic violence. in maryland, judge o'malley joined governor o'malley and lieutenant governor brown to successfully pass removing firearms from the arms of domestic abusers. she is passionate about antibullying in schools. around the state to promote domestic violence and bully awareness for all families. and children. would you please give a very warm, to judge o'malley.

[applause] ♪ that was nice of david to give the long introduction. i told him not to do it. again, thank you so much. it's an honor to be here with all of you today as we stand together against bullying in our schools and our communities. i'd like to thank president and mrs. obama to make it a priority. this is the third summit they've had. it's wonderful to be able to come and participate, for me, because i'm hearing from the experts that help me so much in my own state of maryland. i'd also to thank secretary duncan and david as well as frerch the united states department of education for letting me come here.

you know, part of creating the next generation of leaders and achievers is allowing our kids to learn in a bully-free environment. it is an issue that we feel strongly about not only because as you heard he and i have four children also because it affects so many people. has a ripple effect. i became interested in the issue back in 2005, as a judge, i became a volunteer in a truancy reduction process through the baltimore city school system. i was hearing from children in the middle school ages we were trying to get them energized coming to school. so we wouldn't have any dropouts. the middle school i would sit with it was the recurring theme i was hearing from them saying they're not coming to school because they're being made fun of. as i would ask more questions i was realize the kids that were mostly being made fun of were kids with different learning

disabilities. physical disabilities, and certainly many of the lgbt youth. it struck a cord with me. i thought to myself these kids deserve to be able to learn like everybody else. we as parents and teachers, as community leaders we need to get on top of this. that's when i became first lady of the state of maryland i thought i'd make it one of my initiatives. in maryland we have passed strong antibulling laws. the state school reports act which was passed in 2005 requires now that all of our public schools and many of our private schools must in fact have a policy that is in place that actually says there's a prohibiting of bullying, harassment, and intimidation, and now it includes electronic communication as well. it was the state was the seventh state in the country to naught kind of law in place. last year 4,678 instances were

reported statewide. that was increase of 860 reported from the year before. but even with the strong policies, there are still too many incidents of pulleying that go unreported when we have the bullying incidents reported as many have heard today how we respond to that is still sometimes wrong, or we just haven't been able to get it right. working together with our state department of education we're faking some important steps to stop bullying in our schools, we have a new state school superintendent as of july of 2012, and she's come on gang buster. her name is dr. lillian lowery. she's advising all of the local districts to make the reporting forms available online to make it easier to report the incidents to authority. another major goal we both share is actively training our educators and administrators and schools to be aware and respond effectively in the area because sometimes the way we respond is

just hasn't been there like when we tell a kid to talk to a trusted adult. sometimes they will do that, then the doesn't really know how to respond. and when we held a town hall meeting after one of the viewings of the "bullying" movie. i talked to a teacher that got up and explained to me his principal told him not to use the form reporting forms because it was making their school look bad. so, you know, this type of story and also teachers coming up saying we just don't know what to do. we need a policy has kind of forced us in this area to realize that, you know, laws and policy alone are not fully addressing the issue. so dr. lowery this year created a panel of expertses to develop technical assistance guide basically a book, and it's based on practice and about the harmful and mental and physical effects of bullying. it's not the effect it is has on the actual victim and on the

bully and the perpetrator and the entire school climate. will be available to all of the teachers and administrators in maryland through the guidance counselors offer coming up soon. it will be the first state to eliminate bullying within state bully by tracking incidents in our school to atroibt learning. in maryland we're talking to people and taking innovative steps by partnering with really magnificent people who are leading the way to fight to end bullying. many of them are here today. last october during national bully prevention month, martin and i joined with facebook and time warners cartoon networking to take the pledge to end bullying and make everyone aware of the dangers of cyber bullying. the reason i got on facebook is because my kids were on it. they were completely ement basserred that i was on there. they did friend me. so, you know, i i guess just to check up what i was saying.

and i truly try not to say anything. it's important as parentses that we are familiar with the part forms that kids are using to communicate with each other. last year when we partnered with facebook and time warner we encouraged every governor, every first spouse, parent, and student to take the pledge. i would own courage all of you here today if you haven't go to the facebook page stop bullying speak up and take the pledge. so far since they began the campaign over 1 million people have taken a pledge. that's great. this year we have also formed a great partnership with a wonderful man named ray. he plays for ravens. go ravens. sorry it's my team. he has a great organization called ray of hope and he's trying to do as much as can to bring the to the forefront as well. he's active on the issue and sponsored a large group of 2500

people of the marry weather to come around the issue to talk about solutions. we have host tbod premere screenings and town hall discussions around the documentary "bullying." if you haven't seen it. you need to see the movie. it smedz some light on the whole issue it's helpful in addressing some solutions. we have been lucky in the state of maryland to get help from ronald robin robin weiserman. she's the authority author of "queen bees and wannabes." she's been helping us inform the way we think about bullies and how educators react. she come up with innovative ideas for schools simple things where to locate your guidance counselors officer to make it more assessable to make sure that you're guidance counselor officer isn't a glass window. when a kid goes goes in for help everybody can see.

simple but complicated ways how we're handling the issues and understanding and addressing these issues that maryland. we've been lucky to have her partner with us with. i say this to stress the importance of how we think about the issue. we need to be thinking outside of the box and big. as our kids to learn and grow in the 21st century of instance and sometimes inexcess end communication through the internet, twitter, facebook, we need to make sure they can dwow and thrive. i tell you all the great things i think we're doing in maryland, i have to tell you that we industrial so much more to go. just last april, we lost the life of a young lady named grace she was 15 years old and she was a victim of cyber bullying. a complicated and sad case. lovely young lady. one life lost to bullying is too many. there's so much we need to do. so as parents it's all a part of being involved in the kids' lived.

when we're more involved with what's going on in psychologicals we are more likely to respond appropriately to bullying. it it's the students it's about speaking up and empowering each other so no kid will have to take their life or be forced to live day-to-day with the torture of bully, the great examples given today if you see somebody who is sitting by themselves at lunch. if they're being excluded, silt with them. if you see something happening in the hallways in the bus or the locker room, stand up. you know, we're not asking kids to say you have to be everybody's best friends. as educators and parents and just as people in the community if we can teach our kids to be more toll rabbit to be more respectful and have dignity for others and their differences. we're managing hugh strides. that's what it comes down to, culture of tolerance. our kids, our communities, our schools, and our educators and our families, you know, we are all in this together. we really do need to come

together as everyone said today, it starts with each of us. and certainly to quote lady gaga, we need everybody to be brave. thank you so much for letting me come here and learn from everybody today and be a pay the of this. i'm sure we've going continue to hear from more great speakers. have a great lunch. thank you again. [applause] we need about 49 more first ladies like that in the stateses. , and again apparent in educator a person who cares deeply about the issues, when we have leadership at the federal and state level like judge o'malley and the panel you had this morning represented from the office of the president, there's good reason to hope that these

very difficult issues will be addressed appropriately and expeditiously. i want to introduce the next panel, and the moderate. i'm going introduce the moderator that is dr. lee loxman who is the director of division and 4-h. at the national institute food and agricultural with the u.s. department of agricultural. in the position she's held since 2010, she provides national leadership for the 4-h development program, which includes positive youth development, curriculum development, formal and informal learning, program quality and peer review process, organizational management, professional development of staff and volunteers, children and youth military program support, this is a very busy

person. and supervise i are support. please welcome dr. luxman. ♪ today is my privilege to be part of a panel and moderate being more than a bystander what i should let you know, it is truly an example of positive youth development and these are all upstanders. so when you look at examples, these folks are going to have some of the qualities and capabilities and tell you their stories. first let me introduce to you

akil patterson who is sitting here besides me. he's one of the folks who is actually a young adult. okay. new to the youth and a young adult. what we're looking at is the opportunity where he has -- is training and working toward being on the u.s. olympics level in wrestles but been a football player and had an life changing events. he is taking on a different kind of opponent that is bullying. patherson plans not to fight not only the rights forest for lgbt people seeking equal across the board. through the formation of the patterson project, he hopes to bring forward change. i'm going turn it over to you. >> thank you very much. let me say it's an honor to be here today with great individuals and people and panels of young people.

i got to eat lunch with them, tremendous individuals. i guess a little background about me. in 2006, i took the journey to europe with a friend of mine. i took out a student loan for it. worse decision of my life. but [laughter] i have a full scholarship in football i took out a student loan to go to europe. while i was there i saw how people could live openly and honestly in their lives especially people in the homosexual community. and that empowered me to come back home and come out to my family. and again, i come from a strong and supportive family. i mean, excuse me, that can handle just about anything if they can't handle it, i'll make them handled it, you know. i was able to come out to my family, and they were okay with it. i have brothers and sisters. i have a sister that is --

brother in the marine and a doctor and they are educated and welcoming and supportive. the thing i noticed that was missing during my process were positive i want imagines and positive role models for me to come back and look up to. i was, you know, i remember searching the internet and i'd type in gay athlete one person would come up. i'd type in adverse i are there would be the athletes that come up with different types of adversity. no one that resembled that what i'd been going through. i came up with a concept with a buddy if i go out there and preach the good word, is it going to help out? he goes yes. what are we going to focus on? the things i focus on is that knowing that i have been bullied, and i have been the bully. i have been the biggest bully

and i have been bullied the by the littlest person. i remember growing up and hearing, you know, the little kids in the hallway call me fat boy or fatty, retard. i had a learning disability as well. i had guys coming at me from all angles. i remember the one kid who made fun of me the most was the gay kid. he made fun of me consistently. i never said anything to him. it hurt a lot. even though i was a big dude i would go back home and cry. one day i knocked the kid out. i don't advocate violence. they said you hit him because he was different. you hit because he was gay. i said, but you don't understand. i didn't hit him because of that. i hit him because of other notions. they looked at my frame and size, and what i looked like from the outside and how i sounded, i then became exactly

what they thought i was. i was bully a bully a gay kid. they never thought he could be gay. it never came across. i have a concept with core issues i like to focus on these days is when i talk to community groups and kids, it's about how we bully ourselves and how we have per sewn that that we have not what we think we are or we are what society makes us out to be. or we have to choose a side. you know, one of the things is feeling of isolation. a lot of times people being bullied or bullies have the isolation factor. they can condense themselves into little box, and they will stay there and that's where we form the cliques because we find over people that want to stay inside the little box with us. we find clique or niche and this is what it is. this is a community that i want to be apart of.

they understand me. sometimes the people don't fit it. again, that's things that a lot of athletes run in to. athletes are steer owe types. i come from a family full of athletes he said he wrestled and we instantly bonded. my brothers bond to do. she said her brothers wrestled and asked me how many fights get into and what was your mom's damage control. i said we broke a lot of tables. i lost two front teeth. i remember a song, all i want for christmas is my two front teeth. i heard it for about six years so, you know. i felt i had to fight the stereotype of what makes me me. how can i be a better me and help others? you have to fight stereotypes. i learn there had are few support systems for athletes and lgbt athletes. again, you're not going to find

thousand kids out of closet participating in high level athletics. it's not going happen now. if we put supportive services together where coaches are talked to in the proper manner or given some guidance that helps them to move along, and then we -- one thing i notice a lot of college athletes they have the -- they find a need for escapism. you see kids take the route all the time. ease camism comes in the form of drug and alcohol use and dependent sei. in my myself, i even did it. there was a model that we joke about. but it was win or lose, we still booze. this was football, you know, that was our mind set, you know, we're going to grab other a 30-pack. i realize the bows wasn't just for the drinking, it was to deal with the other issues i never faced or addressed. that's something i go back and i tell coaches, you have to look

out for that. sometimes people that are using or abusing drugs and alcohol. they are not given the right guidance. finally with lashing out, there are three forms of lashing out. the verbal lashing out, and then it's the physical lashing out and the self-lashing out. in which we find a lot of individuals who do a lot of, you know, self-harmful behaviors. not just the alcohol and drinking but do other self-harmful behaviors and it's all about how did this person get to that point where they should have been. son-in-law of the most accomplished leaders you find are athletes. how do we get the athletes that are dealing with some, you know, feelings of anxiety to that next level? and that's where some of the tools we can help coaches and schools with become more involved. and then like i said, i want to see more positive images for

these young people. these young people are god -- good start. the thing about me, i was something called boys state. i was the governor of boys state. i was so proud of me. it was something that me, john f. kennedy and bill clinton and i shared. it was an honor to me. i have role models and peoples that lead and guide me, are the leadership and the go dance for the youth of america and who is teaching who. when we talk about bullying and when we get to the absolute pinnacle of feeding it we need to recognize that sometimes the people doing all the groundwork, the grassroots effort are sometimes just not equipped to handle everything. i know for me, if you ask me to write a dissertation on the environment i'm going lock and go, i can barely spell environment let alone write a

december dissertation. i can spoke to young men and women in the proper manner. coming together and working effective ways to make the positive things happen. so and again, my niche is pretty much in at lets. i'm able to speak to coaches in a different way than someone else. i have the ability to do that. i've been a firm believer once you empower other you can step back and they will drive the carriage where every it needs to be drawn. >> we want to thank akil for his experience. we have the opportunity to hear from the on the panel student leaders. what i'd like to know they each have their own story to tell and each have a wonderful engaging

personality as we have got ton know each other during the lunch hour. eric, would you hit it off. >> hello i had name is eric morel. i'm a senior in baltimore city school. i'm here because -- i'm in a group called the intersection, and i really like the idea of this bullying prevention, because i recently just came over a struggle accepted who i really was because -- and because it's hard when you're gay and you don't want to accept it because you're afraid of what everyone else is going think or do, and when i was in the closet, the funny thing is my classmates knew i was gay and they still bullied me. i was bullied through all the way to high school and sometimes i still am get the language and people try to bully me and everything. it's hard to overcome it, so you

to try and you have to find help and people that are there to help you because that's what i did. i started a gay, straight alliance i'm now the president of it. [applause] and now, like that's where i am to go to stuff help the lgbt community for teens. we don't have that many teebs that stand up and say i'm fight for the gay rights or these rights. we make it seem like we are equal to get the same education that everyone gets in school without being harassed or feeling unsafe. >> thank you, eric. [applause] >> and an that. hi i'm anna i'mt georgia. i'm 14 years old.

i'm going tenth grade this year. i've been involved involved in 4-h club since first grade. my local 4-h club a huge part of in lie. it has given me opportunities that have been not been offered by other students. i am home school so i don't get to experience the public school environment. 4-h has been a major part of my life. one day i was assigned to make a try fold on bullying. after a few hours of research, i was in awe of the things i was unaware of before beginning the research. i continued researching and found estimated million teens and are bullied a year. out of the 3 million 2 million of the victims told no one of the attacks. automatically, i felt the need to stand up for the victims. i finished the trivedi fold and registered it to be put up for over 1,000 sixth and seventh

graders. once the assignment was complete. i didn't stop there. i couldn't. out of all the research i saw, i wouldn't be able to stop there. i made the decision to use bullying in general as my topic of interest at district project achievement through 4-h. and i used that in the human development project. i placed first in the bully dmen concentration and used it again for district project and placed second overall at district. i had the opportunity to use it again in atlanta to go to state. but i had to turn that down for another event. ..

having learned that leadership starts with taking the first step, many others will join in your efforts, if you make the first move. once the first move has begun people will join you. this is my hope for this challenge to end bullying. overall hearing the victim victims stories and then hearing the goalie's regrets and of the above, it just inspired me to make a change for the better towards bullying. i may not be able to take a stand against it alone, but

joining together with other passionate individuals and all of you up here and all of you guys simply join together, we can stop bullying and make the world and victims lives better. [applause] >> p, i am steven from myers for for -- myers berg, a time of the population could probably count on one hand. i can only see about 20 of you so i feel a lot better. i am 17 years old and i'm a senior in heise and i really started out, i lived in the salt lake area of utah and i was bullied for a long time as a kid because i wasn't much of a sports player back then. i got heat up a lot.

i kept -- and i moved one we -- we moved when i was in sixth grade. i started it being a bully and started being up a lot of younger kids than i was. it really, after a while i remembered how i felt and i wanted to change. for a 4-h project, as state ambassador which got me a scholarship, lots of money, i went to all the third and 4th-graders of county and i did a powerpoint to show them what the different types of bullying were and how to prevent bully. basically calling them names and tearing them down. and it changed me for, in like a

good way. it taught me how kids will actually sit down and listen if you are not coming at them as an adult with power. you are coming at them as somebody on their own level. they will believe every word you say and i have been trying to come i'm, i'm trying to keep it at younger levels, trying to stop bullying of the young because once you get in high school you think you know it all in high school, which you really do but -- [laughter] i try to help them when they are young so that they can make changes like i'm trying to do. i'm just going to keep on doing it after i graduate and stay with 4-h and all this good stuff. [applause] >> hi. my name is andrea and i am from cincinnati ohio. i am actually in college right now.

i go to american university which is just a couple of miles away in d.c. but my bullying prevention is dealt with a lot of issues dealing with diversity. i went to an all girls catholic high school in cincinnati. there are a lot of catholic high schools, all boys, all girls co-ed schools in cincinnati and there is a big issue of diversity and tolerance and what they were talking about earlier. because they are the minority, and even within the minority groups, such as the black kids talking about kids that are darker skinned or someone who is a little figure or all kinds of issues that the culture of the private school in cincinnati, they were being overlooked. i tell us some some issues at the school and even before but when i got there, when i got to the school, at first i was

telling my mom about stuff and saying i really want to do something or there is no one at this administration that i trust enough to talk to about issues or if i were to talk with them they would blow it off as a racial issue or something that isn't that big of a deal because it's covert. its behind-the-scenes. so i started a teen diversity summit in my last year of high school. i had teens from all schools in cincinnati come and talk about issues that they faced. a really big i guess conversation going on where face-to-face kids could talk about issues that adults don't understand or that even maybe some of the caucasian principals or the majority at the school don't understand what we are going through or what we have been through, what the environment is like.

so that is kind of what i did in terms of bullying prevention. in my senior year that was the first diversity summit that the hat and this past april we have second annual one and next year is going to be held at one of the other independent schools and we are going to rotate each year and really get involved. the administrations of the different schools really saw how important it was and so i am happy that is happening and even though i did it in my last year and i didn't do it when i was a freshman i am happy that it's still going on and i'm still involved. i am also in 4-h like these two over here. one of the last things i did was -- this was my last year and 4-h and i have been in for four years in cincinnati. my 4-h county program was the

county fair queen last year, and there were a lot of issues. but i brought in a lot of minorities in my club and in my county. one of the first year participants that i was mentoring was doing a project called project citizen where he talked about an issue that was important to him and how he can implement it and get the schools involved. the issue was bullying. he was a sixth or seventh-grader at not an all-black school but it was a school that had a lot of black kids and he was bullied because he was giving her because he would light-skinned or whatever he he was. i worked with him on getting a plan together and took him all the way to state any actually one. that is something that i'm doing to go to the lower generation because i'm close enough to their age where i can talk about issues and i can understand what

they are going through and help make a change. >> thank you. [applause] >> i kind of want to wait and go, it's your turn. >> i am a senior at the school of baltimore but i live here in d.c., and they came -- my parents were very accepting, but to get to the point why i felt like i was comfortable coming out to my friends and my family, it took a really long time. prior to that i experienced bullying from kindergarten on where i was called a bunch of names, girl,, whatever and it really started to take a toll let me in by a middle school i didn't have any self-esteem. and i felt like no one really knew. i couldn't tell anybody and i

felt like i was almost drowning. it was really hard for me. but i found a lot of supportive friends at my school who were also kind of discovering who they were, their sexuality and stuff like that so that made it a lot easier for me to come out to everybody. so a few years ago, two years ago i decided to join the straight education network and it was my second year of being a student ambassador for them. and so basically what i do now is in my own community i try to make sure that no one ever feels like i felt when i was younger. when people are bullied they feel like they can express who they are and i feel that self-expression is the human rights that everyone is entitled to and when that is taken away for violation of your rights. so what i do now is i work hard to make sure that every student feels safe to be themselves and they don't have to worry about

harassment. [applause] >> aren't they great? these are terrific examples of youth leadership, those upstanders. [applause] they are not just being leaders of tomorrow but they are leaders of change today and that is one of the key things. this is our opportunity has an audience in our informal discussion here told them that i have some questions to ask them. now is your time to pull together the questions that will be brought up and we will address them. i do have some to tackle with them first and the kind of drew some straws to see who would respond to those but if you have questions, there are some folks in the audience were gathering does. first of all how do you think we can encourage you to be more than bystanders, to be like you, upstanders? what you'd like to tackle this one? bea, i can do that.

so, repeat the question. [laughter] >> okay. how do you think we, those in the audience and those non-youth folk scanning courage you to be more quell just really it's nothing to joke about. you're not going anywhere. that is all i've got to say. >> and anna. would you like to add a little bit to that? >> like i said earlier 85% of high standards want to do something but they don't know what to do. most importantly informing them what to do. the most important thing is to let them know that there is a

difference between tattling and telling. when you tackle on someone you know you are telling on purpose with your intends to get them in trouble. telling, there's a major difference, trying to inform them to make something better. these days kids are always liked oh, you are a tattler. this is not your fight, this is not your problem and you need to stay out of the. if you are a bystander don't stay out of it. you need to tell someone and know that there'a difference between tattling and telling and don't let them get to you when they are trying to tell you if it's not your problem or you are just trying to cause trouble. don't let it get to you. ye brave. >> sounds like a familiar theme. thank you. any others have any other comments you would like to add to that question? alright, well, so how can adults work with you to support the effort like yours in the youth

adult partnerships? andrea? >> i really liked robert kim saarn the panel with the office of civil rights talking about having that safe person, having a safe adult at the school, whether it's a teacher, or a counselor, someone that they kids know that they can come to. when adults partner with kids, they have to understand what the issues are, so every environment and every school is different. the private school environment and a private catholic school environment, the all girls private school environment, they are all different and at my school specifically we had a diversity director that didn't really get i guess you could call it, she didn't have importance in terms of the other

faculty, but she knew what was going on. they would contact her when any issues came up she was the person that the kids trusted the most. so knowing your environment and knowing that you have two asian-american students are knowing that you have kids that aren't performing well and they are also minorities and their kids are talking about them. you may not know what's going on but the diversity director is someone that can be that safe ers and nevada that in between. i think that i school specifically there are issues with bullying. the person that was bullied was comfortable enough to tell the diversity director what was going on and then there was a conversation the next day at lunch in their room with the bully her and the bully. it was talked about and hashed out. they may not have been friends by the time they left but that

was something where it was documented and it happened and the parents were involved and the teacher and the adults knew what was going on. they were that safe person so i think having a safe person in a school environment is very important. >> thank you andrea. this is for eric and rajon. what is something you think adults don't understand about this bullying issues? >> something that adults really don't understand about it is bullying affects everyone in a different way. sometimes adults might think it's just a joke just like other students think that joking with students doesn't really hurt because they are not showing it at it does. some teachers or parents or adults look at it and they will laugh at it too like encouraging it sometimes which is and which isn't the best thing because a lot of jokes actually do hurt when you think about it.

just because it seems minor to you, it's different because all i hear with a lot of adults is, oh just tough enough. you need to toughen up. they are just plain. it doesn't matter, sticks and stones and all of that. >> yeah, i agree. i also think that people who are adults now, the way in which children interact has changed dramatically. everywhere you look there is cyberbullying. people don't even have to know you to judge you and attempt to hurt you. and i that people who are adults, parents don't completely understand the way the kids interact and how it has evolved. >> thank you. here is a couple of questions and they seem to be targeting

you steve but we will see if others want to fill in here. you know you basic we realized a realization that you had been both bullied and the bully. what triggered your 182 change on that and what kind of interventions will you suggest have helped you to do that and what could we do from the federal government level and all of you can respond. but we will let steve take the first that. >> step. >> the 180 from being bullied to bully? [laughter] >> okay, really just going from being bullied to a bully, it was like i didn't want to feel formidable. i wanted to gain my manhood back by being dominant i guess is how you put it. been from going from a bully back to trying to solve the problem, my conscience kicked

down and slapped me in the face of couple of times and said, i need to stop the problem because it is a problem. >> thank you. any other comments? >> when i was younger, i was bullied a lot for my skin color and for -- i have muscular arms, for having man arms. i kind of developed a hard exterior where a lot of people that i talk to since knowing them when i first met them they thought that i was going to beat them up as soon as they saw them. i never actually was a full bullyer but i turned into a person where nobody wanted to mess with me. really i was an observer and i was trying to deflect anybody, even having the chance of saying something to me. like i dare you to say something to me because i have dealt with so many issues, being talked

about, that i just had a shell around me. finally when i started seeing, becoming an upperclassman in high school and seeing myself in the younger kids, i wanted to do something about it. and ideas that i could use my strength and the things that i had been holding and to do something because i saw the need. >> thank you. we are getting a lot of questions that are geared towards school. you guys are punting great questions from the audience but one question is think back to your elementary days. if you could go back what is the one thing you would want to have happened to make you feel included and what would that has been? don't all speak at once now. feed read the question. >> you are in elementary school. what is one thing that would make you feel included?

>> i would think something that i would have liked in elementary school to make me feel included is just like, not like groups because most people you pick who you want in your group and who you want in your group. i guess have people who don't really get to pick the people, get to pick first and get to know other people and get to actually interact. >> okay. >> the rest of you? >> it sounds like a good technique so that leads to this question about what role than for teachers and principals have been to help facilitate that in their communities? because it sounds a little like that might be something that the adults could do. what could they do differently

and better and the elementary classrooms and in your high school's? >> they could break up the cliques because cliques started a very young age. they could break the cliques up and have you meet new people that you have never met before or it that you never thought of talking to before, people with issues with one another. get to know them and see why you're having issues and talk it out. >> any of the others on that one? >> in terms of elementary school, teachers need to make sure that they are not automatically when someone comes to them about being made fun of for whatever it is, place the blame on the person that is the suspect or the suspected holier because you don't know the whole situation and if other kids see you acting directly and punishing that person on the spot, they will think they can't come to you about something

because you don't know the whole situation and you acted on it so they are going to think any situation that happens, the person that comes and says some thing to them is always the right person without understanding the whole issue. there are a lot of younger kids that i have talked to or when i go to different schools and watch my brother, where i see situations where there are a lot of things going on that when the one person goes to the teacher, the teacher listens to what they say and acts. i am thinking that is not what happened and that is not the whole story. and another students don't feel comfortable or don't feel safe to tell the person in charge. >> i was just showing her something that i had written down earlier. when we go back to kids, i remember flag football coach told me there is always a penalty that has to be thrown in there or three sides of that story.

there was yours, there was mind and then there was the truth. and that is where bullying for educators, although i may not be a teacher per se i know when i go into a wrestling room and i have 30 little kids running around and little steven bumps his head and he goes, sam threw me into the wall and then sam comes back and says we were playing with the ball and he tripped and that kind of pushed him but he tripped and then hit his head. is up to me to figure out what the truth was. that is where even the bullying aspect especially for teachers inside the classroom, god bless every last one if you guys to do that because it's one of the most difficult jobs to go in there and try to manage 30, depending on how larger school is, anywhere from 15 to 40 kids and try to figure out who did what to whom. that gets really difficult so i think what teachers would ask

for is that helpful support system from educators -- educating their youth leaders. if you see something, you don't have to come and tell me right way. you can write it down and a little journal and attach it along when you leave class, this is what i witness. third-party accounts are very helpful when they go back to actually make a decision and again as soon as you see it just write it down and give it back to the teacher or the administration because if anything comes back later on they at least say we have a third-party accounts saying what they saw and that this very detached from the situation. it's not a friend of anybody. it's just a bystander who walked by. >> the want to move along with some more questions hear you guys, but we do have one person in the audience that wanted to know how do you know a few are of being a bully, you are bullying someone? what are some things that you would suggest that come to mind from your work? >> how you are being a bully?

>> yeah so they know when they are being bullied. >> you will feel it really in your gut. your conscience will kick you in your teeth and tell you it's not right. [inaudible] you have just got to use common sense. >> okay. >> yes think it's measuring up the scale. >> measuring of the scale. you have to weigh the situation. again some people don't have that gut feeling or sometimes, you were very lucky that you left when you did but for other people it's going to be a sense of alright, that kid called me that i really didn't need to go on. there are certain ways. there is that scale that we know is intrinsically wrong. we took it too far. we went from saying bad things to actually doing bad things. >> okay and do any of you that

have served as a mentor are -- were bullied and if so what does mentorship -- how does mentorship play a role in prevention and? have you served as a mentor for someone who has been bullied or in bullying or -- and if so what role do you play in prevention? >> well one of the things my gsa does, we go and we talk with local public schools, elementary schools and they talk to kids about one-on-one, you know just to help them through whatever they have been going through. a lot of the kids were bullied. what they need the most is to hear from someone who has been bullied and seeing someone who has made it through the bullying. just telling them you know how we got through it, just being someone to talk to really helps.

>> go ahead. >> also, with me mentoring as a a first-year four aycher even though he was a guy at that age, the relationship with people of the opposite is kind of like taboo or girls have cooties. he really warmed up to me and i got to talk to him about issues. when i first talked to him i was like so, why do you want to do your project on bullying? is there a recent? oh yeah, i was bullied and when you develop a relationship with that person and get to know them before you go into the issue that's hard for them to talk about, then you can see more about what they have gone through so taking them out to eat or being friends with them and then having them develop that trust so that they can talk

to you about issues and have that open communication. no one is the first first time in a counselor's office going to say anything. so really becoming close with that person, being a mentor. >> here is something on cyberbullying since you are all technology savvy. for anyone who can address this in cyberbullying. it's not just what is taking place on facebook and other social networks but a the on line gaming systems. they are cussing and targeting. how do you think that should be it dressed? >> iges wanted to make sure everybody else -- it just depends on exactly what you plan. if you plan, you usually don't get in the chat boxes but

really, the any big old game you get a bunch of chat boxes. they will drop the f-bomb for no reason and rag on you. they will be just like f you and it will be like what did i ever do? i guess they get in your head or something. i just think video games in the companies should start censoring or -- [inaudible] i don't know how they can do that but -- >> truly you guys as leaders could come up with a way to form a committee to advise them on standards. >> i was just talking about the technology part. >> even if i am playing and i'm on line, guys my age actually do. they don't go out anymore. they become gamers. it's virtually impossible. it makes me laugh when i have my

headset on. i'm like wow, a 12-year-old just cost me out. ..

when you say something and it gets a little too far you need to make sure you watch yourself. don't take it too far. make sure they're okay and apologize. i would say watch yourself, you know, watch everything you do. it's a lot harder to bully in person. it's harder to realize if you're cyber bullying because of the fact you ceabtd see them one on one. you're not sitting here besides them. it's a lot harder to catch yourself when you're doing that. >> i was going to say it's interesting because kids say it'siestier to say stuff online. anything that is written and on the internet is something that is going stay longer than when you say. if you're saying something in person someone being a bully, that can be refutedover find ways to get around it. if you're writing it down and

putting it on the internet, then you are putting yourself in a situation where nothing can speak against the words that are on facebook or the words you said. you can explain that. you can say i meant this. really getting that across and i've had a lot of different adults talk to me throughout high school and our school about professional things where professional companies can look and see what you're doing. it seems to not stick. when you put something down, that when you're saying can hurt someone and then if you didn't mean it that way, it doesn't matter. anyone can take it how they want it. so yeah. this has to do with what akil

talked about earlier when he googled gay athlete he couldn't see anything. it seems like don't ask don't tell now. it could be in terms of safety. what can be done in terms of lgbt athletes to participate. >> i know they are participating. to level do they stop participating and go and live their lives? you go down out line and look at every athlete that come out, they say well, you know, so and so is a gay athlete so and so is a gay athlete. my thing is are you still involved in athletics and participating in some way. most have given up on the sports all together. they sign book deals and do tours. they're not coaching or participating. they have gone off and retired. and that's where, you know, the big holdup egged -- ends up

being. it's not they have come out after their careers. it gives the youth a little bit. how about those still competing. i was out in fargo, north dakota. i went out there for a wrestling tournament. i have been going since i was 14 years old. it'sed in the middle of nowhere. i'm in far go for number 1 of my life. i'm throughout and a gentleman comes up to me and he's from phoenix, arizona. he said, i want to say thank you. i asked him for what? you know my son is gay and he's here at the tournament competing. he was going quit wrestling because he wanted to come out and thought no one would understand it. he read your article and sees you compete. i want to thank you for allowing my son to continue to wrestle. it was great. but there were other athletes and wrestles that were like, i'm

going come out and done with the sport. i'm leaving. it's too much. athletics is a change based on two worlds always colliding. can i be gay and an athlete. do i have to be one or the other. i'm not talking about recreational league. if you are in a recreational league. do you it for fun, if you get the competitive guy. he's a jerk. like it's not the olympics. it's not the world series. calm down. if you're going to be a competitor on a level, you're going like i am one of the top ten in the country in the weight class. it's going on right now. i'm glad i want to miss it. as one of the top ten in the country, i'm serious how are the coaches and the other people around me are they serious too? other athletes want to see that serious person to go on?

if you're a driver, you definitely have people like greg and mcmichael from australia an openly gay diver. we know individual sports have taken off. the team concept is going to make the way back and going to start by having coaches with open-door policy. it's going to have allies that are going to be willing to talk with you. i don't mean an ally going out and talking. an ally that seriously stands up when the teammate that is getting bully passenger's side -- that's what is going happen. until that person goes i feel safe in my space, i'm not going to be able to come out fully. i came out because i knew that if somebody said nick to me. i had a 6 foot seven guy and another guy in front of me that were going take care of me. they never to fight anybody. they made me feel comfortable.

they made feel like i was a part of a family. that helped me as a football player. and team sports, that's what you need, you need to have the comfort level the coach or the administrator on your side and helping you through the process. coaches need to get on board. two or one teammates need to be on the board. they need to be the next five years. >> thank you very much. i just want to say on behalf of the panelists, it's been my privilege to be the mod rater. certainly each one of you here have example fied leadership in the role capacity as mentors in your presentation today, and i want to say that you have created the sense of belonging. you have shared. we appreciate you taking that risk. it's not the easy thing to do. we want to encourage you in your

deafers and say thank you to the audience. sorry we couldn't ghetto every one of them. thank you for the time and effort in the upsubstantial doubting leaders. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] [inaudible conversations] ♪ [inaudible] ♪

i just wanted to see how long they would play the music. [laughter] i'm going tell my mother about this. my mother, by the way, is 91 years old, i'm not making this up. i talked to her regularly every time i talk to her, when she's about to hang up, she says, dave, be careful. and sometimes i'm talking to her right before i'm going sleep. and i say what are you talking about? what do you mean be careful. she said just be careful. it is my great pleasure to now introduce a congressional champion of all of you, of all of us of all of our children and colleagues and everyone who is working very hard on this issue. i work for congress for five

years. i know, that congress people are very busy people. there are a lots of demand on their time. this ask a gentleman who is here today, congress is out of session, he's here today his district is in california, he could very well be back in california campaigning. he is here today to be with us to talk to you to answer your questions, and tell you a little bit about what he is doing. what is it about individual of congress committing so much time to bullying. he's on the information committee. he formed a antibullying caucus. he's devoting time and energy to this. and the question i was asking myself is what kind of person is this? let me tell you about

congressman michael hon and what kind of person he is. you'll get a feel why he's doing it and it's also a lesson in terms of his personal history for all of you young people what you can become and do. congressman was born in california to a japanese-american farmers less than six months before the japanese bombed pearl harbor. congressman honda and his family were shipped to an internment camp in colorado after the attack. they spent two and a half years there before being allowed to move to chicago when his father joined navy intelligence. the honda family moved back to california in 1973, and his parents became strawberry sharecroppers. mr. honda took janitorial and delivery jobs to pay his way through san jose state university.

he was one credit shy of graduation when he joined the peace corp. in 1965, and i was a peace corp. volunteer myself, much later. peace corp. volunteers in 19 65 were the fourth group of peace corp. volunteers going out. these were people who were pioneers. the peace corp. program had just gotten off the ground. president kennedy's dream of the peace corp. volunteer, the individuals who went into the peace corp. in 1965 were very unique people. this is another kind of dimension to the congressman that kind of fills in the blanks why a person of his statute is spending so much time on bullying. after two years in el salvador he helped build schools and medical clinics he returned to california to finish college. he took a job as a science

teacher later serving as a principal. the congressman got a start in public service more than three decades ago when he was named to the san jose city planning commission in 1971, by mayor norman. another japanese-american who spent time in an internment camp as a child. in 1981, congressman honda won election to the local school board, and later to the county board of supervisor in the california assembly before winning a house see the in 2000. the congressman's late wife survived the atomic bombing of hero she ma. so had this is a gentleman who started working. his family was interned. he started working as janitor. he's now a congressman. he's an important member of congress. he's a leader in the field that we care so deeply about. it is with great pleasure they

introduce congressman michael honda. [applause] ♪ good afternoon, thank you david, for that introduction. i could have made it shorter. how would i say it now? i was poor, i was a lousy student. i dropped out of college. went to the peace corp. and i'm hire now. but it's a seventy-one year journey, i think that this whole attention toward bullies is a title to something that has been going on for a long time. a real long time. and we're jo putting titles and

terminologies to it and try to figure out what's going on. one of the things that i always zero in on language the use of language, the level of the language, the perception that is attached to the language, and bully is something that is learned. it's about power, perception of power, it's also permission giving them the power. it's about combating it, something like understanding it and about self-awareness the word that we use all the time is self-actualization. but other things that we talk a lot about today when i was listening to young people is trust, safety, and one of the

things that is interesting to me is that here we are in nation's capitol struggling with something that is goes on every day, and trying to address it and we should. but address it sometimes through policy. and a lot of times the policy meaning and sometimes we have to look at the policy in the bill making and question ourself as adult policy makers. where is all the ideas coming from? and what is it you want to accomplish? i want to do a shoutout to the schools here in d.c. both to the chancellor, the superintendent and the mayor for having the group here, and i think that a shoutout to some of the young people. i didn't get them all, i met a

young lady named brooke, a young lady named here is rei and a gentleman by the name of joshua. and they all go to different schools but the articulation of the issues was really interested because they went into the own personal experiences and tried to translate into a language that is going to be heard by adults and they get translated into some sort of action, and i think that is a . >> we're taking you live to the bullying summit. the earlier portion that you saw was from the morning and afternoon. and you find that online. again, live here at bullying senate host bit department of education. >> report out on some of the key points. i'm going it ask each of you to identify three key things your group has talked about in your

session. so if you can please go to the microphone in the middle. and identify which group one, two, three, four, or five you're reporting out from. and line up so we can hear you. [inaudible] careful. >> i know. i may need the crutches soon. >> i was in group five and for our first session, the first observation we made was god work doesn't always get recognized. a lot of times the aspects in the schools schools are getting recognitioned and so what we thought as one of the recommendations is maybe an ad that looks at the god things the school is doing. also looking at the best practices going on within the school. highlight the positive. there's a lot of good schools out there that need the recognition. also, two those looking for the good programs will have access

to those sites. the second observation we made was there a lack of communication in coordination among people and organizations working toward the same goal. and so the recommendation is communication mechanism as a means for creating sin begin and the efforts. it would save our resources. a third on -- observation there's no one solution that fit the all for all the schools and so the recommendation there is to develop programs highlighting cultural help identify differences in community and address them specifically and we had actually one more in the first session, the fourth observation was yowlt have power to make defenses. and so recommendation is adults need to provide the support of environment to enable empower youth efforts and help build

that scaffolding. >> wonderful. our second session, our first occupation was you can engage youth until there's trust. it's important for teachers and staff members to build trust with those students, and also, form some type of commonality. it seems like in the schools that have a commonality with the students, there seems to be less bullying. the second observation is adults helping youth telling them what to do -- integrate social and emotional learning. our third observation was competing priority and limited resources within the school and our recommendation is to convene and galvanize a multiple approach to include schools and outside agencies and all the stakeholders. >> wonderful. thank you so much.

some observations we found in the first session having a common language as far as bullying goes with terms and digital generations. we also had building on yowlt, building off what they're doing, and working from bottom up as well as the top down. and also the need for more culturally or linguistically based organization and needs. and alaskas we have were to use stop bulling.gov as a central organization for schools and research pooling and matching researchers and the needs for renovations. and the third one was to list services in order to stay connected. >> and i'm becky.

with not in our town and school. we talked about the need for a clear definition of bullying. that seems to keep coming up and agreed upon language about bullying. we also talked about including the voices of youth on both sides both those who have been bullied and those who have done the bullying to hear those voices we really like to hearing that today in the presentation. we talked about more networks for youth and coordinating those networks. and the action we're proposing is that that you put on a youth bullying summit just like this with a room full of young people hear voices. >> great. thanks so much for the recommendations. do we have representatives from one, three, or four? i see some movement.

>> from group three we were fortunate enough to have scott in our growth. we are going to coreport. from the morning session, i'll go first, scott. here, start with the morning. >> our first one is mobilize youth action. our second one is after awareness coming training, and our third one creating uniform message around climate respect and behavior. our afternoon actions are to have a team summit, to get youth empowerment by media and multiple outlets, and connecting youth to resources.

and the overall discussion this morning and afternoon. hay centered not just addressing bullying but looking at all of school climates. and comprehensive integrated approach, and this afternoon our conversations focused on really the youth. how do we ement power the youth, em gauge the youth, involved youth and the recommendation the number one around a team summit was we had several of the summits now where the professionals have been present and family and community members but maybe we need to have a team summit. >> great. thank you. >> thanks. >> thanks, scott. >> all right two more groups. were there representatives from, i believe, one and four are still waiting to report?

group one and ready to grab the papers now. she's ran out. she's going to be back in a second. okay. >> sorry. and group four? we will have another opportunity tomorrow after the breakout session to wrap up and discussion any final observations after secretary duncan speaks tomorrow. but for now, i think we'll move on to our next panel. which i'm very excited about. we often talk about how important it is to address bullies as a whole to make sure all students students are protected we strongly believe that all students no matter their race, color, sexual or jenation need to be protected from bullying. we recognize there is specific needs of different populations that might come into play that we need to consider in our bully

preventions efforts to ma sure all of those issues that may surround someone getting bullied are going to be addressed. i'm pleased to bring up the next panel. moderated by a wonderful colleague from our department of justice. ♪

good afternoon i'm. i'm an attorney. we are here for the addressing the needs of diverse population panel discussion. i'm pleased to be moderating the panel comprised of some real experts on the needs of distinct population of students. to the extent that one of the goals of the summit is to shine the spotlight on bulling of all iran children. it's important to illustrate the specific needs and challenges of specific communities so that the field can address those needs. my assistant attorney general at the department of justice is tom perez. he testified before the senate jew dish area committee last year. here is part what he had so to

scare said, quote, the bullying of kids who are lgbt is probably the largest growth area in our docket. this is about safety whether it's kids who are gay, whether it's kids who are muslim, whether it's kids in who speak english with an accent, kids with dabilities we have a case in tennessee involving bullying with disability. this is an emerging growth area i regret to say. we shine a light during this panel on three of these communities. students with disabilities. immigrant students, and lgbt students. i'm going to introduce our panelists but before i do so, i want to let you know you kind of unwittily stomached into a panel involved nail-biting intrigue. we have three panelists two of whom who are here next to me. one is in an unknown location.

her d.c. bound train broke down and she is on her way so if you see huffing and puffing her way on to the stage. don't be alarmed. it's just our third panelist. okay. so with that, let me sprue deuce our two that are here to my right is robert. he is the director of education for the gay lesbian and straight education networking. dr. is a lifelong educator with over ten years of experience, guiding, qoping within and assessmenting the implementation of curriculum on the state and district levels in the home state of new jersey. his professional and academic passions are known by the doctoral thesis. at the lgbt networking is fully

engaged in evidence-based efforts to provide tools to teach young people the value of respects that to makes difference. i'm going turn it over to robert. we have about fifteen to twenty minutes on his parking lot. we're going to go panel list by panelist there will be twenty minutes at the end for questions. >> and we're pulling up the right slides. there they are. god afternoon, everyone. i'm thrilled to be here on half of -- lgbt. i do want to take a moment though recognize the department of education before i go on. as a former public schoolteacher and administrator i often think, i'm sure many people here in the room do too we have gotten good

at building monuments to problems we face in k-12 education. with great appreciation that i recognize the department for the resolve to find solutions to the problem and for being a great in champing lgbt. i'd like to open up discretion by bringing student voices into the room. in my role of director of education. i have the opportunity meet and learn from courageous you'd across the country who have endured all sorts of bullying. many of the stories are sheer horror, there are those that contained more heartening and hopeful stories or subplots if you will that center around a courageous educator who is often the student's source of resilient sei. glises son is

we truly intend to meet the needs of students then we must listen to and seek to understand the school experience so we may identify and truly creases the needs. i wish my teachers would have understood that being gay was not being wrong. there's something wrong with the bullies. i wish they wouldhave understood that i was a good student. i was very nice, and there's nothing wrong with me. when i went to the staff, i felt there was no one there. i was speaking to the four walls of the room they were so blank it doesn't make me feel i would say comfortable, and knowing that something was going to get done. it didn't make me feel that way whatsoever. and lastly, teachers can be more

of that figure you look up to when they are accepting of you. it means the world to know you're okay and they are there for you. did you hear some of the needs? i invite you to keep the perspectives in thinking. we'll hear from more as i go along. so what's going on in our nation's schools? that's the million dollar question. the slide gives you a sense of the victimization and how the experience of lgbt student compare to the general student population. you'll notice in each category verbal harassment, sexual harassment, property damage and rumor spreading the percentage of lgbt students reporting experience with the kind of victimization indicated is greater than that of the general population. and certainly the personality age for both populations of student is unacceptable and

troubling. when we consider the outcome of the victimization for lgbt students we find that with greater level of victimization the increased depression and increased anxiety and decreased self-esteem. we find that the slide indicates that lgbt students more likely to miss school when they attend a school where there are high levels of victimization. they have a less sense of belonging. listen to this student's experience. it was in english class i faced all the bullying in. which english has been my favorite subject. and i always almost had 100% all the time. it started going down through the 90s and b. on a test on a c. on a few assignment and it started going down. lastly, in schools with -- electricity birth date students have lowered educational

aspirations for post secondary education and sometimes even the completion of high school. all of these high victimization-based outcomes are important to keep in mind when we meet students in the midst of bullying situations. i want to get into the needs as i share the dos and don'ts of meeting them, and supporting lgbt youth i think it's important in all situations we're going hear about today that we take a page out of jim collin's well known book and look in the mirror and answer the question. what is about the school that permits such bullying to take place? what is it about this school that permits such bully to take place in the kind of questions forces pushes us to consider how the whole school contributes to the creation a climate that either supports and sometimes promotes bullying.

since 1999 glis i'm lacking forward to sharing a lofort findings from that. hope fry this time next year. what the research suggests is additional questions about schools that educators ought to ask when considering that larger question that i suggested before. these include considering whether the school has club that provides visible student support such as a gay-straight alliance. adults who are supportive allies and create safe places within their classrooms and officers. reflection of electricity birth date lgbt and fullly e anymore rated antibulling policy that

specifically individuals that need to be protected. we know from the research too that the presence of these interventions, if you will, make a positive difference in the level of victimization experienced by lgbt youth. our national school climate survey shows these four factors make a substantial difference. we know this if we truly care about the most vulnerable students in the school, we ought to do what we know. most immediate for our consideration today are those things we need to keep in mind when supporting a student who has been bullied and when we presume that lgbt bias is present behind the bullying. we're going get pragmatic and practical. with the story of the lgbt youth that i've shared as a backdrop. i'd like to present simp dos and don'ts that focus on the need for appropriate response and the most importants aspect.

from what we've heard and the stories identify shared. treating them and their identity with respect is really, really important. so respecting the students identical is really as i said of critical importance. for one thing, we can never be certain how students identify themselves and we can't assume that those targeted with what appears to be anti-lgbt bias based bully actually identify with any of the identities. don't assume the student is lesbian, gay, by sexual or transcenter. we can't expect nor should we force a student to self-identify. i come back to a phrase a school superintendent father of five shared with his son when the son asked about the son in the family. he said, hey, dad, is andrew

gay? and the dad replied, it's his story to tell. expecting or demanding that a student self-identify as lgbt puts their identity ahead of the issue. and can make them feel it is their identified that is a problem and not bullying. along with the issues of identity it's how a student chooses to present him or herself. this is not the issue. we should avoid making any overtures that it could be. at the same time, though, it is respectful to ask a student how they would like to be addressed. it's respectful to use the preferred gender bro noun should you know this pep. two recommendations around student identity that assume that the student has self-identified as lgbt. the first is that we consider the multiple identified that are students possess and how the

intersection of these may or may not be a plague during a given situation. i love the student earlier he suggested he was in an organization called intersection. as oughters we ought to talk about it. not only is it okay to talk about lgbt issue and multiple identified but educators should. it helps to validate the student. to consider this student's experience. i don't think i have ever come across a hispanicless bee began role model. it makes me sad. and a little bit because i would like to have a role model to be look up in a sense, i mean, everybody should have a role model. i just feel like i don't have somebody who necessarily identifies with me. i love how that student sort of changes that sort of notion of identifying with somebody. she wants somebody to identify with her. and finally, if i leave you with nothing else today, please, don't ows the student.

this can have severe even tragic consequences. there's a special note here, though, that can seem to contra dit the other tips i've shared. with contacting parents or guardians. it's important to use the legal name and the pronoun in this case were assigned at birth unless the student specified otherwise. we risk, again, outing them. in terms plaintiff preparing educators students, it's important that we not handled their incident differently from other types of incidents. our pots and procedures should apply across all types of bullying incident. it is the care for the student that need to be you anemic to the student. it's important to learn what it moons to be an ally and try to be the person who sports and stands up for the rights. and lastly, it's important to be

prepared to make immediate accommodation if needed for transor gender nonconfirming student. of course to the extent old they [inaudible] they should be included in the group that corp. response corresponds to the gender identity. any student who has a regardless of the underlying reasons should be provide the access to a single user restroom or changing area. but this is important, no student should be required to use such a space because they are transgender or gender nonconforming. the finalist has to do with how we respond and a restatement of some of the tips i made earlier. as with all students it's important avoid assuming know -- assume know what they are experiencing. instead we need to ask students what they need or want.

we should not assume or any way suggest that the student's identified is the issue. again, it's the bully that is the problem. we should try to take the position of a supportive ally and confirm that the bully's behavior was wrong and will not be tolerated. finally, we should let the student know that creating a safe space for them and everyone in the school is a priority. so in closing, we know that in many schools students do not receive the support they need or deserve. 80 percent of lgbt student when a teacher or staff member witnesses lgbt bullying that do little or nothing to stop it. most do not bother to report the experiences because they don't expect to receive effective help. the most common experience of those report is that nothing happens.

bless bless factor in the quality of the student's life. it comes down this. one supportive adult can safe a life. six or more can change a culture. we know how to do this. again, we need to do what we know. thanks. >> thank you, robert. [applause] we're going turn to george. he is a professor and endowed chair in the school of education at the university of connecticut. his research and practice includes school-wide positive behavior support. behavioral disorders. organizational management, classroom and behavior management and school discipline among other thins. among the various positions george held are classroom teacher, program director, and

applied researchers among others. he is currently the codirector of the u.s. office on special education programs center on positive behavioral interventions and supports. director of the university of connecticut center on behavioral education and research he's the coinvestigator on state implementation and scaling up on evidence-based practice. george is going to be addressing the needs and challenging that students with disabilities face in the bullying context. george? >> thank you. good afternoon, everybody. i'm really privileged and honored to be here. i dorl appreciate you spending your afternoon with us and learning about the topic we're concerned about. i have been a special educator now for the probably the last 40 years or so. i'm pretty old. i'm not very patient. i don't have a big heart. and so forth. but i really am interested in the topic about bullying

behavior and kids of disabilities. it is somewhat of a change for me to address however, because we're thinking about kids as being somewhat unit dimension unidimensional. they have many dimensional. i think about a student with whom i used to work with who happened to a spanic latino background, who had autism, a learning disability, had mental issues and happened to be gay and was having issues that we're talking about in the particular session. it's hard talk about one particular area at the time. and it's probably much about diversity and strengths and challenges we all present. but what identified like to do is spend a little time on the topic called disables and i'll spend a little bit of time focusing ons observations. i want to give you information to think about and finally some recommendations where we might go next. i think one thing you'll notice when we start going through the content. there's quite a bit of overlap what you have heard over panel

members discussion as well as what bob and i have described. i'm going go through quickly. you can replace the word disability with other kinded of label and come up with other recommendation. bear with me as go through. i want to give you observation from the word of disability and professional education. second i want to give you things to think about and the context where you come from and lastly some suggestions on what you might think about doing next when you leave. here i'm a researcher i spend half of my time doing research. and what i do with that research is try to understand the phenomena that we're trying to fight solutions for as well as come up with intervention. i want to give credit to the wide body of researchers who do quite a bit of work in the area of special education. and helped me put the observation together. i want to smears the body of research by saying a couple of things. one thing you shawbting about

the kids, youth, and so forth who might have a disaict in the wide range deaf, blinding with emotional disturbance they have two or three times more likely to engage, be the target of, or both of bullying behavior. and i'll come back to address that in a second. you also need to do the disability is not a single dimensional kind of challenge. it's actually many kind of features of disability that create a difficult con text to understand how bullying bullying is manifested. you need to disability is a behavioral issue for some. those with serious emotional distance. there are others who have physical disabilities that causes become targets of certainly kinds of behavior. we have also kids with dainlt who have nonobservable kinds of disadvantage that cause difficulties. kids can with serious learning

disability. i want to unsome is obviously some not so much. some is flex. you need to know that the manifestation -- bully behavior is different across the levels. some kids carry that throughout their school experience. some develop as late onset it affects how we think about sport. i also want you to think about another consideration or observation that talking about bullying and somebody mentioned it this morning being a bully behavior as being learned. i think it's important thing to consider, facility, kids walk in to the learning experience with certain predispositions inspect think case that's disability. we know some kids come into the world, with disabilities, physical disabilities and mental disabilities. and the disabilities put them at risk for being targeted as well

as being kid. we know there are kid who out there who have autism and other developmental that make it difficult for them to identify signals and seens out there about when bullying is occurring, and how they might respond. we also know those kids don't respond very well to the queues in the environment and solutions what they're experiences was of those neurological or other disabilities. and n my world. if i have a special of working with kids on behavior disabilities or social emotional disturbances those are the kids who in addition to school-based mental issues have behavioral difficults that interfere with their ability to socialize. as a result of that a target of bullying behavior or being accused of being engaging in bullying them when it might be fact a manifest station of the disability. i want you to know that kids with disability oftentimes end

up being targeted as well as being recipients of bullying behaviors of the behaviored disorder and learning disability and end up in disciplined systems. i was talking to somebody this morning about kids in the juvenile justice something. 60 to 0eu% inside the juvenile justice system have disability. most of those are learning disability and behavioral disorders. we have the compound i want you to thought about what you think about disabilities. to sum that up a little bit. what i'd like you to think about using disability generally is helpful. you have to think about within i disabilities those things that observable, nonobservable, and those things that are tbhaiferl man guestation of the disability. also think about why do kid with disability engage with bullying behavior or why they are targeted. in the world i work within we're interested in knowing about the motivation behind the behavior

either victimization behavior or bullying behavior. you made it. and you're not -- that's great. welcome. it means i don't have to go so long. and that we want to understand the function of motivation behind kids. fourth major consideration is much of the work we do in the world of disability is making sure the kids acquire and become fluent at the social kill that's allow them to be better at handing situations which they are receiving bullying behaviors or having different ways engaging kids or adults so it isn't perceived as being bullied themselves. the last thing before i move into suggestions is think about the notion about context. where bullying behavior occurs where kids are being victimized and so forth it has a lot to do how we select intervention and use the motivation behind the mars. we know that kids are members of

social networks. we know they engage in behavior in the neighborhood as well as in family and schools. we know how schools and classroom functions as a whole varies depending on the state, whether or not rural victoria's vs urban. solutions. i want to leave you the observation section there's a lot of things to consider when you think about disability. is it a general education, special education system, is about observable vs nonobservable. is it learning problem versus a behavioral social emotional problem. it about the label or the person themselves that we're worried about? is it a single or multidimensional problem as well as similar con terks on what kids are displaying. now i want to show the picture off mainly because it took me a long time to make it. about complex the problem is. i want you to think about kids

who are the target of in the world of disability. i want you to think about kids who have emotional behavior. who are initiating bully behavior. i'd like you to think about the bistandard who might happen to have autism and the ability to respond to what they are seeing. i'd like you to staibt the staff general education, para professors and so forth who are interacting. i'd like you to think about there are many kids who are quite capable of learning how to handle those situations. there are some kids who need help, and there are some kids who have significant disabilities that make it very difficult for to acquire some of the strategies. we would like them to apply. the same is true with the staff. the ability to implement some of the practices as well as the kids with the bystanders. if you look at the pictures, the red zones means kids who need high intensity support to be successful. or staff members support to be

self-ask. the green zone area the kids who do pretty well and don't need a lot of support. the reason it's important because we tend to come up with universal intervention. the problem, however, this is you need to go oo. there's an interaction between the elements. we have staff members who are not fluent with intervention working with kids with high needs. we have kids with very capable being able to intervene as bystander working with kids who have lease likelihood of being able to respond to that. it's a complex problem of how we interact with the interventions. so let me move on a little bit to conclude with a little bit of what to do with this. i want to leave you with the common something you already know about which is we know what does not work. i want us to walk away with the

idea of kids with disabilities and stayingway from using label as a way to generate solutions. there's not a solution for working with kids with learning disability. there's no a solution for kids with behavioral issues. there solutions about the kids the kips of things kids bring to the table. excluding kids to separate looms alternative program, has not been a successful way of helping kids with disabilities in the confection of bullying. we know that blaming families for kids disabilities just like the for the lgbt issue. it's not as helpful to label families as part of the problem of come up with solutions as for punishing kids, zero tolerance politician within restitution. very ineffective statries for working with kids with dainlts or any group we're talking about about conference. i want to argue that you think big about the solution.

thinking school wide thinking about important teach of social kids to all kids and kids with disabilities. i want you to think about kids with disability being successful and responded if they receive supervision if they have environments that work for them and so forth. i'd like you to walk away with the idea the clubs, school environment. training all staff on the given procedure are going to be effective for most but not for all. for some kids we need something separate. let me conclude with, one more picture. i want you to think about the picture for example weab how we think about the bullying problem. this is picture of a sign that i i experienced in sydney, australia. on the sign it's graffiti hot line. the sign was put up to inhibit gray feety writing.

isn't that interesting. we put up a sign to inhibit it for kids whom we like if to the biggest effect on it are the least responsive to it. we have the universal intervention put in place trying to help the kids who have the most significant problem behavior, if you will. what we find is the kids who need the most of the least responsive to the intervention. in the world of disability, we have individualized education programs because the kids need something extra to be special. we put in place universal because we think it's going to be helpful. we need match the intervention to the nature of the problem. what's going to be useful for all is not going to be useful to the kids who are chronically victimized. it's not going to be the kids who engage in the chronic bully behavior. we need to think about what the interventions look like. a quick short story to finish

off. we fled to think about multitiered intervention. which is what we're using in the world of dpaibility now. i want you to understand most interventions work well for most kids. we have some intervention that needs to be intensified for the kids who need a little extra. it doesn't mean dainlts it has to do all the communities we're referring to at the particular conference. all questions is important. we need to have positive school-wide environments that are safe as our director has indicated the first lady of maryland indicated and so forth. we also know we have to have something for specific for the kids with more great needs. i want you to think about the importance of an integrated model. what it looks like for the particular kid who has been victimized, if you will, she has some specific needs. she has areas which she requires high intensity supports she has

other areas we does well work. in the work we do we have to capitalize on the strength areas and individual lose for the areas that are more specific. malcom has been identified as being a bully. he needs help on anger management and problem solving. we called him a bully. i want to have you walk away from the conference by saying he's not a bully, he has two areas he needs. the anger management problem solving. he has other areas he does well in. good at cooperative playing and peer interaction and so forth. we overcharacterrize kids. he has multiple dimensions with strengths as well as challenges. to finish off, i would like you if think about what we need to focus on are effective interventions practices, we have to use information to guide our decisions data, have to make sure we have the best systems to

support the implementation of the practices, and we need to be clear about what the outcomes are. in my world of disability, it's making sure we have the best individualized intervention for those kids based on their data or level of functioning, and how well we support them within the special education process. .. >> that professional development has to be high intensity and ongoing. otherwise we're going to fail with these interventions that we

call bully prevention strategies. and i'll leave you with this picture which is we need to be thinking about multitiered models. we do that in the world of disabilities, i argue we need to do it in new worlds of disability, kids of color and so forth. and so i've started out with this notion of disability, i want you to think big about how we think about systems. appreciate the time. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, george. finally, to our much-anticipated third panelist who's a trooper, right? all she went through to get here. she's the director of the educational equity program at the asian-american legal defense and education fund or aaldef. she works on anti-immigrant harassment in schools, access to bilingual education, language

access, post-9/11 and gang profiling and school integration. she has collaborated with immigrant rights, religious and lgbt group toss advocate against harassment in public schools. she was the director of policy and civil engagement at youth leadership institute, a community-based youth development nonprofit. she's also been a staff attorney at the asian law caucus in san francisco, and she began her legal career in commercial business litigation at the san francisco office of morrison and forester. kim will be talking about the particular needs and challenges that students from immigrant backgrounds face in the bullying context. >> great, thank you so much. and, again, my sincere apologies for being so late. i was delayed, as you were probably told, about an hour and a half on the train. so i'm very, very happy to be here is and to have made the presentation just in the nick of

time. also i want to let you know my powerpoints are more just kind of notes of my presentation, they're not nearly as impressive as george's. but let me first start by telling you a little bit about myself and my practice and then, um, as i'm going through the points in the powerpoint, i will intersperse stories about my practice and things that have happened to my clients and community groups that i've worked with that relate to these issues that we're going to be talking about. so i have worked from bullying and harassment cases ranging from large civil rights investigations by the department of justice, actually, against several large urban high schools, south philadelphia high school in philadelphia a few years ago as well as in lafayette high school maybe about ten years ago now in brooklyn where large groups of asian and other immigrant students were harassed and

bullied over a long period of time, um, which the school officials just completely, um, ignored. and in some situations created policies that actually were, fostered this behavior and per pitch waited the harassment. i've -- perpetuated the harassment. i've always worked on individual cases of harassment between different students that have just escalated where there was, um, racial or anti-immigrant issue underneath. i've worked on post-9/11 profiling and harassment issues, and i've also worked, um, on advocating for policy, policies at the local level in new york city that define harassment and set forth a procedure for responding for harassment. previously to this policy we had created, we only had the discipline policies to the deal with cases of harassment and bullying. and as you can imagine, having a

punishment-only response to these issues doesn't go to the underlying problems that we've been talking about in this panel and earlier. um, i just want to start by giving you a quick summary of the different themes that i want to hit upon in the presentation. and so one is that harassment which is a type of bullying, we'll go into the definition later -- there's different definitions that have been put out, but essentially it's, um, bullying that is based upon an innate characteristic of the victim motivated often by prejudice or by a sense that the victim, you know, is less likely the fight back and is a good target, and often it's based on these issues we've talked about today, status, stability, sexual orientation, race, religion and is so forth. and it posed the particular problem because it affects not just the individual victim, but

the entire community around it. particular issues relating to immigrant students are that they may need interpretation and translation just even to report their, um, their -- what happened to them and to be able to communicate appropriately what happened to them. i've worked on a number of cases where the, um, victim was punished instead of or in addition to the, um, to the other student who was the harasser because he or she simply couldn't get their point across to the school officials. there's also underreporting of incidents based on lack of knowledge by the students who often are new immigrants or even if they're not, if they're limited english proficient, they may not know what the school policies are, they may not have relationships with, um, school officials to be able to, um, have that relationship of trust and go to someone that they know if something's happened to them until something very serious happens. and parents for younger kids

particularly may not know, they may come from cultures where, um, they don't realize that they have the right to advocate in this way for their kids, or they may simply, um, not speak english, and the school may not have appropriate language access for them to be able to communicate their concerns. and finally, in the cases where there are undocumented families, i've run into cases where they are afraid to even report the case for fear that, um, their immigration status will come to light in this. so i guess to start, um, to think about why are immigrant students at risk of harassment in particular? like some of these other special populations that we've talked about. and i think that it's based on stereotypes of immigrants as weak and unlikely to fight back, as, you know, perhaps not speaking english in addition to actually needing interpretation and translation in many cases even if they do speak english,

they may be seen as not being able to express themselves and as not having, um, those social connections to be able to defend themselves. and in the case of asian immigrant students who, which is, of course, the population i work with at the education fund, these stereotypes are compounded by racial stereotypes of asians as smart, yet quiet and unlikely to make a fuss. and we find those stereotypes sometimes make asian students who aren't immigrants also likely to get harassed or subject to harassment. and in other cases they're seen as being immigrant even if they're not because there's this overall stereotype of them in this way that coincides with, um, with stereotypes of immigrants. and as i mentioned, of course, english language-learners may need translators to report incidents, so in the some

situations in addition to being unlikely to report, they may actually be unable to report incidents because whatever procedure the school has to bring, um, incidents to their attention may not be very accessible to them. and so, and what i think makes immigrant students, um, a likely target is a combination of actual bias against immigrants, um, because they're new, they're different as well as a perception of weakness based on these issues that i just described. um, as i mentioned before, bias-based harassment harms the entire school community, not just the individual victim. bias-based harassment relates, as i was mentioning earlier, to an actual perceived characteristic of the victim such as race, immigrant status, sexual orientation. i say actual-perceived because, for instance, in the post-9/11 profiling, um, and harassment matters that i've worked on sometimes kids get made fun of

as terrorists or muslims regardless of whether they are or not. either way it's extremely problematic, but both of these identity issues come into play, and same with immigrant status. students may not be immigrants -- may not actually be immigrants, but they may still have someone say go back to china or mexico or wherever they're perceived as being from. and there's several ways that anti-immigrant harassment harms the entire community. one is that, um, most specifically it has an impact on other people that share that same, um, trait upon which the student is being harassed. so if a chinese immigrant student is being told go back to china, that's going to have an impact on the school experience of chinese immigrant students and even staff who come from that ethnic background. it also effects, obviously, the overall intergroup relations at

the school as these things are happening and aren't being addressed. if it's just being addressed as an individual conflict between two students, um, it's not addressing the impact on the feeling of tolerance at the entire school, and it also has the potential of perpetuating negative stereotypes. and the school has to specifically address these harms on the school climate as well in addition to, um, the underlying incident. another issue as i mentioned before is language access for victims who are english language learners or even, frankly, people who may no longer be designated as english language learners but who may still, maybe people who speak english as a second language, they may prefer oral interpretation for the post-incident interview or for later testimony. um, they may prefer to write any written, um, statements that they need to in their own

language, and i've done situations where even students who, um, are fairly, um, conversant in english will use the wrong, um, the wrong word or will misstate something because they in a situation of stress they may have forgotten or they may not be able to fully express himself or herself. i had a situation last year where there was a student who, i think, was asleep for, like, 30 minutes after an incident or, you know, fell asleep or passed out a little bit, but then he said he was out for, i think it was three hours, i forget the exact amount, but it was a much longer period because he wasn't quite -- he'd gotten some of the words mixed up. so it's important to make sure that students are able to communicate about these things, these incidents in the language that thai most comfortable in -- that they're most comfortable in. and notices also to be provided to parents and students before the incidents happen so that

they know in a situation of stress when that happens, they can take advantage of that. we talked a little earlier about underreporting of incidents by immigrant students. lack of language access. a lot of times even when you're in jurisdictions where there's a language access regulation as there is in new york city where i live and work, um, one of their state language access laws, a lot of times these laws don't fully trickle down to the local school level. so, for instance, you know, the school district may have, um, an interpretation hotline, they may have a bank of interpreters at the central office, but, um, there may not be an effective way of letting individual community members, students, parents or teachers who sometimes may want to help but may not know these services exist to provide for english language learners. and, of course, this stands not just in incidents of bias-based harassment, but across the board

for other things that may happen where these students need support. but particularly in these incidentses where it's important for the school to intervene immediately and find out what happened and provide whatever support, um, needs to happen and potentially do course correction, whatever needs to be done to the other student that's involved, time is of the essence, and if students don't know how to report it effectively and absolutely right away, there could be problems. also lack of parental education and knowledge of their rights in addition to the language barriers, there could be differences between the education system or cultural barriers where the family came from where parents aren't aware that they can come and make complaints, where -- i've heard a number of situations where immigrant parents are kind of afraid to challenge the system if they come from a society where they're used -- where the model is that they kind of entrust their students with the school district, and it's not common to complain about things that happen.

they may not be as impressive about making sure the school follows up and does things than parents of other cultures. finally, undocumented families. generally speaking, i mean, i think, you know, it's hard to say, um, never. but i haven't really heard of a situation, um, where victims, um, who are not themselves charged with any, um, wrongdoing be it, um, discipline or a criminal situation had their, um, their, um, their immigrant status reported -- or their undocumented status reported by a school to the immigration authorities. but i have run into situations where families are afraid toen report because of that, and i think that it's important for school districts to make clear that if you come, if you come forward about an incident of harassment, that they're not going to have that type of information revealed.

um, a couple of quick recommendations. um, one meaningful across cultural community learning, some of this goes to professional development like george mentioned, some of this goes to meaningful diversity initiatives that promote intergroup mingling between students, but sometimes these programs, i think, if they're not done well can, um, run the danger of throwing together students from different backgrounds. immigrants and the would-be harassers together in an unsupported environment. and i think it's really important to find the right programs that work, that have the right track record and faculty who really understand these issues to be able to support community building. nonpunitive responses to low-level incidents before they escalate, i think this is really, really crucial. i have heard so many student groups and clients across the country tell me that, you know, part of the problem that -- part of the reason that incidents,

um, escalate to the degree that they did in, say, lafayette and schools that my office worked on large investigations, a part of the reason that incidents, the anti-immigrant harassment escalated to that point and part of the reason that there was such an atmosphere where, um, such hatred was tolerated was that there was no response to more minor incidents. like verbal harassment, um, verbal comments. and i think what's crucial is to have a nonpunitive response early on to make clear to students that, hey, that's not allowed, we don't do that in this school. and teachers or staff members can say that, but they need proper training on how to respond to that because a lot of times i've found even if it doesn't get to the point of a large doj investigation and numerous injuries, it'll escalate to a point where a particular individual student gets harassed by another student who perhaps has been, um, you

know, saying slurs and starting it with low-level incidents, and it's escalating between these two students, and nothing's being done until there's a larger incident, and the harasser gets disciplined somehow or gets transferred or expelled. it shouldn't do anyone any good because that kid had other problems that led to that, and the victim is still as vulnerable to another incident happening. full language access for students and parents, as i mentioned, it may require the passage of special regulations or procedures and part of it is making sure it will trickle down to the school level so that students can take advantage. finally, parental outreach and education to make sure that parents and community members know what their rights are and will pursue incidents when they happen. so with that, i will stop here. >> thank you, khin. do we have any questions from the audience? we have about eight and a half minutes for questions, so if you have them, please, do step up to the mics.

>> thank you for the, for the comments and advice you've given us today. my name is matt, i'm a pediatrician and public health researcher. i live in pennsylvania, and we're very much encumbered now by, certainly, the issue of bullying. but child human rights issues as it pertains to sexual and child abuse with the penn state university and that issue. the question i have for you all in your respective areas of activity, where does the issue of human rights come into play as a fundamental topic for discussion where here in the united states we don't seem to be as progressive in dealing with the issue of human rights in general, but especially child human rights? thank you. >> um, i mean, i'll just start with an initial, some initial

thoughts. i don't know if this is as directly, um, relevant to what you're getting at, but certainly i, um, i think that, um, as a lawyer internationally there's a lot of progress being made on international human rights law. and as you may know, the united states -- across the board, not just in this area -- has been slow in integrating those concepts. so i think that, um, i mean, i'm not an international human rights lawyer, but i think that certainly a lot of the issues we're talking about go to the essential dignity of all students to be able to be comfortable in, um, in their school environment. and not just to be, um, protected from harassment when it escalates to an incident of discipline where the victim gets beaten up and the attacker gets disciplined. all students need, have the

right to a supportive environment that's free of even more minor incidents, and, um, the would-be harassers also are entitled to more support to help them avoid those behaviors. >> i mean, i think that's right. i come from the justice department, so my perspective may not be entirely the one you're seeking here, but certainly there are civil rights laws on the book that address a lot of the behaviors we're talking about, but i think our goal is to prevent the behaviors before we ever get to the point where we have to apply enforcement mechanisms. >> i think, too, you know, if we don't do a good enough job of teaching students about their rights, they're not necessarily accessing those rights or knowing how to sort of assert them. in school settings. so i think as educators we need to do, need to be doing a much better job about educating students about their rights.

>> any other questions? >> i was wondering if robert and khin could talk about how external events -- we've seen in california with proposition 8 and proposition 187 when there is a lot of victimization and demonization of groups on the outside, and then young people come to school, if that has an impact on what you see in the schools themselves. >> do you want to start? >> i started last time, so -- >> you know, i think absolutely historical events do impact that. i think we're, you know, at glsen with the national research we do biennially, it'll be very interesting for us to take a look at this next iteration of the study specifically in california which now has a law that, um, requires schools to teach about the positive contributions, um, of lgbt

individuals. so when we look at california, hopefully, we're going to see a little bit of a difference in the survey results this year. so i think historical, um, events do definitely have an impact upon that. in new york, for example, you know, the passage of marriage equality and what role is that going to play many terms of curriculum and in terms of the way students experience their schools. so, yeah, i would think they would. >> as an initial matter, i think that's absolutely spot on. like how the, um, these issues around these different communities get framed in the classroom before an incident ever happens and before you're even thinking about it as, you know, bullying prevention i think really helps and creates a common understanding of, um, what particular issue's impacting these different populations that'll help humanize members of these populations as well as understand dynamics. but to address the question more

fully, um, you know, the obvious example is 9/11. i, um, ended up starting my project at the asian-american legal defense fund because, um, aaldef had heard about increasing, um, cases of harassment against muslim students and students who looked like they might be muslim. and felt there was a need for, um, for a response. so i think that definitely these things happen and need to be, um, taken into account. >> hi. i'm helen -- [inaudible] from asian-american united philadelphia. i wanted to thank the panel for being able to talk very openly about bias, although i think ken was the one who most specifically, you know, addressed the issue. and i guess one of the questions that i'm struggling with a little bit about dialogue on

bullying is the tendency to lump harassment and bullying and bias issues kind of all in one area. i think last, at the last conference there was discussion from a researcher that talked about how a number of bullying, i guess you could call it, behaviors are rooted in kind of bias-related issues whether it's about bias against people who are obese, biases against people about their skin color within and among racial groups so it's not just one, um, you know, one racial group against another, but it can be biases within racial group. but are there ways to have us think about this in a better way? i mean, i don't know if some of it has been about, well, there's harassment, and then there's bullying. there's the legal definition of harassment, and then there's just bullying. but as khin mentioned, in philadelphia the problem that we had was consistent low-level behaviors that might be termed bullying but were deeply rooted in bias-related issues that were allowed to continue relentlessly

until it escalated into massive physical violence. um, that was schoolwide and repeated repeated and pervasive. and i think that's part of the struggle. so i was wondering if the panel could talk a little bit about how we address this issue around bias-based harassment -- well, i don't i don't want to say harassment because i think that clouds the issue for some people who are lawyers. but, you know, biased-based behaviors versus bullying behaviors. >> george, do you want to take a crack? >> no. [laughter] >> okay. >> you know, your question kind of relates to what was said earlier about kind of responding to the problem, if you will. most of the work that we do has been focusing very much on how to create environments that are safe, caring, respectful and

responsible for all. i'd argue what we do for kids with disabilities is probably true for just about any kid inside these school environments. we struggle like you're suggesting trying to discriminate between those different levels. we find it much more effective to talk about how to prevent that escalation from ever occurring. schools we work with that call us to work with them tend to be schools that are so far down the line it's really difficult to turn them around. and your comment about, you know, is it bullying or harassment, it's probably too late, you know? i think it's a whole lot about how do we create these environments so people are, kids and adults are engaged sufficiently so they can communicate, so that staff members and parents and families who already have a relationship so they can have discussions where these things don't get to the point where they're so difficult to discuss, so difficult to try to resolve. i know that's not answering your question directly, but what we're struggling with is we don't have good solutions when it's so far down the line that

it's now being labeled as bias and gym -- discrimination. we do have a chance of knowing what are some of those precursors to that. >> and i guess, first of all, i want to recognize i'm speaking with helen who's an advocate that we work closely with, and she is with asian-americans united in live philly, and he's wisely stepping away from the light. i think these are really important issues and ones that, of course, we struggle with in this our work. i think, first of all, from a legal perspective, um, you know, and i know we're trying to get away from that in this discussion. but it's not even like there's consistent legal definitions for these terms. so, i mean, i think it's important to use these terms to identify kind of biased-based harassment as, you know, a type of bullying-type behavior, but i think you're absolutely right w