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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

ASCD Inservice: "Tell Me How to Fix This" The Bully Project,

ASCD Inservice: "Tell Me How to Fix This"

"Tell Me How to Fix This"

AlexThe Bully Project, a new documentary from filmmaker Lee Hirsch is a heartbreaking look at on-going violence and harassment that plagues school communities. Over the course of the film we meet

  • Alex (pictured), whose daily abuse from peers stymies school officials who can't seem to offer much beyond shake-and-make-up solutions.
  • Kelby, shunned by her community for coming out as gay, adults and students alike make school unsafe for her.
  • Ja'meya, a 14 year-old behind bars for pulling a gun on her tormentors.

But the motivation for The Bully Project is most acutely illustrated by the kids we don't meet – seventeen year-old Tyler Long, eleven year-old Ty Smalley, and hundreds like them – who took their own lives in response to relentless bullying. Their deaths are the tragic effects of a dysfunction readily acknowledged to be everywhere, but nowhere in particular.

It's like alcoholism, said Tyler Long's mother in a Q and A following The Bully Project screening in Washington, D.C. "Until