Charlotte nonprofit holds anti-bullying symposium

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By Linzi Sheldon

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Charlotte nonprofit held an anti-bullying symposium on Wednesday to educate teachers, school administrators, parents, and other community members how to prevent and respond to bullying.

Sara Council came to the event to learn how to handle and prevent bullying among her kindergarten students at Elizabeth Lane Elementary.

"Bullying has begun at this age, even earlier," Council said. "It progresses up into cyberbullying, and we're seeing a lot of issues with cyberbullying."

Council said Elizabeth Lane Elementary paid the registration fee for her and three others from her school to attend.

The event was run by Joined in Education, a partnership between the Charlotte Jewish Day School, the Charlotte Jewish Preschool, and the Jewish Preschool on Sardis.

It featured workshops on cyberbullying and identifying and responding to bullying from preschool to high school. National expert Barbara Coloroso was a keynote speaker.

CMS Superintendent Heath Morrision spoke at the kick-off event Tuesday night, which was a presentation of excerpts from the movie "Bully" by its director, Lee Hirsch. CMS also provided substitute teachers to take over the classrooms of teachers who wanted to participate in the workshops Wednesday.

"We have reached out to every one of our schools and invited them to be part of this, and many of the schools have taken up and sent representatives," John Concelman, director of CMS's bullying prevention initiative, said.

He said CMS's program, called "Making It Better," is expanding this year in middle schools.
"It's about empowering the students to take a stance on those issues that are getting involved or in the way of getting them to be successful in the schools," Concelman said.

The director of Joined in Education, Gale Osborne, said the event's goal was to give people skills they could use immediately.

"We didn't want them to have to leave and have to go to their school and say, 'Well, we need to buy this $4,000 curriculum,' because that would never affect change," Osborne said, "and we wanted to empower people."

CMS will present its Making It Better initiative at the National Conference on Bullying in Orlando at the end of February.

CMS officials expect to launch an interactive website with information for educators and parents by then as well.