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Teaching Tolerance Addresses Bullying on the Bus

The fall issue of the Center’s Teaching Tolerance magazine features “Bully on the Bus,” an article that explores the problems students experience on their way to and from school and provides suggestions for addressing them.

In the recently released fall issue of Teaching Tolerance, writer Mary M. Harrison explores how the bus ride to and from school can be a humiliating and degrading experience for many children. Paying attention to the problem of bullying on and off the school campus, says Teaching Tolerance managing editor Brian Willoughby, is critical to student wellbeing.

"In too many school districts, vigilance against bullying ends at the edge of the parking lot, leaving targeted students to begin and end their days in torment," said Willoughby. "Our report offers ideas and examples of policies addressing this need."

Among the resources the article, "Bully on the Bus," offers is an anti-bullying pledge for students to sign. By signing the pledge, students make a commitment to treat others respectfully, to refuse to join in when someone is being bullied and to help those who are being bullied.

In addition to anti-bullying resources, the new magazine introduces other ways to promote tolerance.

In her parenting column, Dana Williams writes about talking to kids about tolerance. Being honest, leading by example and speaking out are three lessons Williams says apply in any situation.

The complex and difficult task of teaching immigrant students is described in "Crossing Borders/Border Crossings." Writer Carrie Kilman visited classrooms in Whitfield County, Ga., St. Paul, Minn., and Lewiston, Maine, to examine how students and teachers reach beyond barriers of language and culture in the classroom.

In "Talking Across Boundaries," Camille Jackson writes about social boundaries and ways to overcome them. One of those ways is the Center's Mix It Up program and the annual Mix It Up at Lunch Day, scheduled for November 15 this year. More than four million students participated in the Mix It Up at Lunch program last year, and many others participated in student-centered activities sponsored in part by mini-grants offered by Teaching Tolerance. Jackson writes about the impact some of those activities are having.

In addition, the magazine introduces educators to the second installment of the Center's "One World" poster set and its newest teaching kit, One Survivor Remembers.

Available free to educators this fall, the kit is built around the incredible story of Holocaust survivor Gerda Klein. The kit, which includes a 40-minute film and curriculum guide, tells how Gerda survived a slave labor camp and death march during World War II.

"Gerda Weissmann Klein is an inspiration for all the children we love," said Willoughby, "both as parents and as educators."

The Center's free Teaching Tolerance magazine reaches 600,000 educators throughout the country twice a year.