 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is Library Commission's weekly online event where we cover commission activities and any Nebraska library related topics that may be of interest to librarians across the state. We have commission staff at your presentations and we have guest speakers as we do today that are dragging, kicking and screaming some time to help us out. We do these sessions every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. They are free, last for about an hour and they are also recorded. So if you're unable to attend one of our live sessions, you can always go back and watch any of the recordings afterwards. This morning, we have typically two people joining us. Gail Roberts, the Library Director at Blair Public Library, is our presenter this morning. Hello Gail. Say hi. Hello. Hello. Good morning. Thank you for having me. What? I said thank you much for having me. Thank you very much for presenting for us. I should talk to us about bullying. I also have here next to me, Sally Snyder. You can go ahead and introduce yourself and say a little bit. Hello. I'm the Children and Young Adult Library Services Coordinator for the Library Commission. I'm the one that twisted Gail's arm. I hope that it's better now, Gail. Thank you so much for agreeing to give this presentation. She talked to the group at the Youth Services Retreat at Carol Joy Hauling last fall for about three and a half minutes and I said, oh please, you have to give this presentation and she very kindly agreed. Thank you, Gail. Well, I only hope I can live up to your expectations, Sally. There's so much to say and so I tried paring it down as best we could. So hopefully we'll stay in our hour. Okay, no problem. Okay, what I'm going to do now is hand over presentation capabilities to Gail. She is going to present from where she is up at the public library. I assume you're doing it from the library? I don't know. I am. Okay. Okay, so we're ready to go, right? Yep, there you go. We see your slides. Can you see my screen? Yes, we do. Go ahead. No, go ahead. I'm just saying we do see you. No problem. Okay. All right. So welcome everybody. Thanks for listening in. Sally did kind of twist my arm at first, but then I thought this is a wonderful way to get some of this information out. So I'm happy to do this and I really, whenever I present and I talk, I really love interaction. So please ask questions or start telling us your personal experiences. That's how these kinds of things and any presentation really come to fruition because that's what we're here for is to share information. And you may have great information that I have not found yet in my experiences. So I would love to hear yours as well. You know, Krista made me think up a title and being the children's librarian at heart, I always rhyme everything. So I came up with spring, summer, winter, fall, bullying concerns us all. And it's true. And I always have to explain my first little slide because I always try to put power into my beginnings. But you know, you always kind of think of this little cartoony figure that I have on the left-hand side where the guy's got his fist up and he's being the bully. And a lot of times people think that's what bullying really is. Physical, you know, I'm going to beat you up. I'm going to punch you in the face if you don't do what I want. Things like that. But really the face of bullying really belongs to these other two kids, the girl and the red and the fellow with the little hoodie on. It's a lot of emotional bullying and a lot of verbal bullying more than just the physical even. And so those are the things that I think we see more often in the library because obviously you don't have too many fights, hopefully, just bursting out at your library. But we do see a lot of the other types. And so that's kind of what really got me into thinking about bullying a lot and those kinds of faces. I always kind of start with the W words, you know, what, who, when, where, why. And so we'll talk about what bullying is and who is bullied. When it happens, where it happens and why does it happen. And you know, again, it's very subjective. It's kind of like it happens more than you think maybe and two more than who you think it should. Of course, you start with a dictionary and dictionaries, I love dictionaries because they give such fun definitions. Bully, of course, first is a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badges and intimidates smaller, weaker people. Gosh darn them anyway. And then to make it a verb, you act the bully toward. So really, it doesn't tell you a whole lot. But you intimidate and domineer. You are loudly arrogant and overbearing when you're bullying. And that's true. To act the bully toward and to intimidate and domineer was my favorite definition because that is what bullying is about. They intimidate you, they domineer you, whether it's verbally or physically. Who is bullied? People of different genders. So like if you have male versus female, that happens at an early age as well as an older age. People of different race. If you have a playground full of kids who are African American and you have two Caucasian, the two Caucasian are probably going to be the bully ones. If you have a playground full of Caucasian and two African American or Native American or any other race, then those two are going to be the ones that are more bullied. If you have a very mixed playground type situation or school or library situation, then a lot of times you will find just whoever the stronger group or clique is. If they are race oriented at all in their cliques, then they will pick on the others. People with handicaps. And handicaps are not necessarily physical, they're also mental and emotional. I'll tell you this little story, I'm always telling stories. When I first started working and I was 17, which is kind of old compared to today's kids, they start early, but I was 17 and I worked on a male site unit and I had a patient who had gotten wonderful new clothes for Christmas and it was our practice to take a black marker and put their last name in it so the laundry would send it back to our floor and they would get to keep their clothes. They were scheduled to go on a field trip to a mall and I was going to put the name in his clothes so that they wouldn't get lost and he begged me and he had tears in his eyes and he was like, please don't do that. But really we want the laundry to get your clothes back to you and he was being very naive in 17 and he was like, no, no, because when you go it bleeds through and when you go to the mall they see that and they just think that you're different and they make fun of you. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I thought that was very interesting that that nice 40-year-old man taught me that lesson and so I started hand sewing little name tags in there so that they wouldn't have marker bleeding through on their clothes and it's true when you go out and you see different groups of malls you do see that happen so it was a good lesson for me to learn. People who exhibit a lot of shyness, a lot of times you'll have shy kids who are new, who have never been someplace before, they are often mistreated or not appropriately greeted and people who exhibit different behaviors just different from me. I don't do that, why do they? Or she always wears clothes from the Goodwill store. You could probably think of many in your head that you've heard. I hear it constantly, mostly from middle school kids who are particularly learning what they like and what they want to do and are forming their groups. This is true of every age group in school and adults. I think we still tend to do some of this as adults. When, where and why? When depends on the age of the person. Again, it can be when they're young, it can be when they're going into a new school, it can be here in Blair we have quite a middle school issue with bullying. It just kind of depends. During school hours, school hours are big times for bullying for children and again in our instance and why I started getting into it was into this topic a lot here in town was because of our middle schoolers. When older and younger children are together, I've seen that a lot in our groups as well and statistics show that older children are apt to bully the younger children. Playgrounds, malls, public places and libraries. Can you believe it? Here we say we always have these safe environments and yet bullying happens daily at a library sometimes. Unfortunately, it's not always visible because sometimes it's on that computer which we'll discuss a little later with cyberbullying, but it does happen and again we've had instances where I've actually removed children from the library because I will not tolerate intolerance and once they learn that, it took about four months and they kind of settle down. Why does it happen? It happens because there's ignorance. A lot of kids don't understand what other kids are going through. A lot of kids don't have the information they need or haven't been taught not to do this. Part of it is power. Bullies need power. They need the need for notice and the need for notice is basically they need to understand, you know, they want you to see them. It's possible that they are not noticed at home, that they have been bullied themselves from adults or from other children in different instances, so they in turn take it out on the others in order to be noticed and to have that kind of persona that they think they need. So it's kind of, you know, it kind of just depends. There's some myth and facts I thought, you know, it is interesting because when I show you the next screen with some of the statistics in it, one of the big myths is bullying is a school problem and the teacher should handle it. You know, we don't have to deal with it at home. Well, the fact is that it is a broader social problem and it happens outside of school, on the street, shopping centers, the local pool, summer camp and in the adult workplace. We just had a conversation about this with a patron yesterday and she said the exact same thing that, you know, kids need to learn how to cope with bullying and not, you know, just like try to stamp it out, but we have to cope with it because you still work with it as an adult all your life, you know. Somebody has taken credit for your work. Somebody has, you know, developed a lunch crowd and not invited you. I mean, you know, again, there's things that happen and so you have to learn to cope with these situations and deal with it appropriately. The myths and facts came from bullying.org and you'll see the address here. It's kind of an interest, a good website to go to. It's interesting. It's got lots of stuff on there. And if you typed in bullying under Google, you would get a million sites but I have a few favorites. One of the other myths then is just stand up for yourself and hit them back. And while there are times that you are forced to do that, it usually makes the bullying worse and it increases the risk for serious physical harm. And so I think that we have to be careful how we address it with kids and when they bring it up to us, we should not say, you know, stand up for yourself and fight back because possibly that could be a bad thing. If I tell someone it will just make it worse and the research shows that bullying will stop when adults and authority and peers get involved and I think that's important to remember. It is not the worst thing to tell someone. And here's that little, oops, let me go back. This is from the Youth Voice Project. Penn State did this project and they interviewed many, many, many, many, many, many kids. And if you go to the Penn site or this particular website, I'm showing you with my finger so in case you can't see me. The Youth Voice Project did a lot of gathering statistics and they did all kinds of charts for different scenarios. I like this one because this is what happens after each strategy was used. So, you know, if they told the adult at home or told an adult at school or told a friend, you can see that 32 to 34% of those situations got better. 50 to 48 had no change, but it didn't necessarily get a lot worse. You had 18 to 29% that got worse. And I think that that's a good thing, at least it wasn't getting worse. Even if it didn't change a lot, some got better and at least they had an outlet that was productive. But if you notice they hit them or fought them, made plans to get back at them, those then 20, 40, 31 got a little better. Not much survived the, you know, no change period, but look at the getting worse. 47 to 49% got worse. And again, that kind of, you know, supports that myth versus fact. It does, you do do better if you tell someone versus, you know, hitting back and striking back or threatening. Because then you're unlikely to increase that volatile situation. Remind myself that it's not my fault kind of hangs in there. Does, you know, a larger percentage of no change walked away, told the person how I felt. Again, those kinds of things where you're telling them to stop or you do nothing, it just kind of increases that getting worse or no change sections. And again, I think that tells us to be very careful how we approach it with them. Are there any questions on any of that so far? Do you have comments? Do you disagree or not agree or agree? It's really hard to talk when nobody's there answering. I find these statistics are surprising to me because I thought that walking away and pretending that it didn't bother you might actually make things better. And look how much, of course, that surprises me. It does. It does. And kind of, you know, because I can listen to my mother in my head saying, just walk away, don't do, but it doesn't make them stop. And, you know, sometimes that's almost antagonistic to them, like you're not giving them value. You're not accepting the fact that they're going to be stronger than you. So, yeah, it is a little surprising. And it kind of gives us pause to reflect on what we've been taught all our lives. Are we ready to go forth? I think so. Go ahead. Okay, we won't multiply, though. We'll just go forth. Why do we care as a librarian? Why do we need to be focusing on this? Why do we need to do this? Well, libraries aren't public place. And bullying does occur within our walls or on our grounds. Probably you're envisioning you're shaking, I'm hoping you're shaking your head a little bit, at least one kid you know that has done something. You know, it's something we have to address when we see it. We stand for equal access to information for all. We cannot tolerate intolerance. We have to, you know, accept everyone. And this has to be a safe environment for them. And in order to keep it that way, we sometimes have to address those bullying issues. I also wanted just to point out that we do have librarians have an amazing power in a child's life. Kind of like the teachers. We have to be careful, you know, sometimes what we're recommending to them to read. We have to, you know, we don't want to interfere with the parent-child relationships. And yet they are our patrons, so we have to, you know, guide them in what they're asking us to guide them in. But we have to be careful. And so, again, we want to make sure not to use phrases like, stand up for yourself. And, you know, things like that could make it worse. But, you know, we want to give them constructive ideas of how to handle it. And we care because our hearts are in the right place. And it's just a necessary thing to always be there if someone is in trouble. Not that we can solve it, but we can listen and send them to the right direction. So what can we do? We can get involved in various projects which connect the school with the library. I think that since I started here in Blair, I started going to the library, to the schools, to the school libraries. At least, I try at least twice a year. And then I have them come here once or twice a year also. And that way they see that we're part of their life. We are, you know, we have all kinds of information for them, and we just, you know, do that a lot. But it also connects me with teachers. It connects me with the administrators. And it gives me a way to contact them if I have any questions or I'm experiencing problems. And if it's, you know, although I can't identify those patrons, I can ask, you know, I have some special ed kids that come in. Could you please explain to me, you know, something I can do to help them on the computers or to help them do this? And if there's, you know, personal issues that I can't resolve necessarily, I might contact them and ask them how they would solve things. And they're, you know, much more apt to respond if they know who I am and have worked with me on anything else. I also get involved in a lot of community things, again, so that we're very visible as a librarian. I have my adult and my children's librarian get very involved so that they know who we are, that we are a safe place they can come to if there is any trouble. They can come in and we will call their parents or take care of whatever, you know, we need to do to help them. During high traffic times for children, like we, you know, the three to five-thirty or six o'clock time where we have kids from after school until dinner, I make sure that we have adult presence out on the library floor, even though we're a small library. And, I mean, we're 6,400 square feet, but I find it goes much easier if I have somebody out there who's handled, you know, out there kind of just knowing about shelving and there to help. And that way we can hear if there's anything going on that we can't have in the library. Provide materials, of course. We're going to provide some quality materials about, you know, real-life situations, nonfiction, anything we can do that, you know, might spur their interest or discussion on the topic. And we're going to include tolerance in our story times. And this started, we never used to do this here. One of the groups, that number one point get involved, one of the groups that I am involved with in Blair is the LiveWise 40 group. And that is, and I have a screen on this later, I'll try not to talk too much about it right now, but it is the 40 developmental asset program. Does everybody know what that is? Maybe? If not, you should. And our screen will give you the information to look at it. I've heard of it, yes. I've heard of it, so I'm glad you have a screen on it later. Yes, we'll talk about it a lot. I'm a big believer in this project. Include, you know, I got involved with that. And one of the other adults, I mean, our little group is kind of the movers and shakers of the community. So we have, you know, the extension office, the chief of police, we have an officer that is assigned strictly to the high school. So he's on that committee. We have the school counselors, things like that, the pastors. What the school officer told me, because we were talking about bullying, and we have concerns, because sometimes bullying can lead to suicide. And so we have concerns that we don't want that to continue to happen. And he looked at me, and I said, well, what can we do for the teens? Because teens don't necessarily want to come in and read a ton of nonfiction, you know, and sit down and talk about these heavy subjects right off the bat. And he was like, well, really, by that time, I think you've lost him. You need to start with preschool. I'm like, really? And so we've had this little discussion, and he convinced me that we should be integrating this into all our preschool and in story times and everything. So I've talked to the preschool teachers, and I worked with our crisis center, and this is the little part that I explained at the retreat, which Sally liked, but I worked at, or I got together with the crisis center, and who sees a lot of bullying and issues. And so they started coming into our story times, and every once in a while, I have them come in, and they read one of the series of great books that I'll show you, and we have the therapy dogs come in, and we pet them, and we talk about how to be nice and things like that, and then we do a little craft or whatever. And so we started just doing that, and then we started little pre-storytime games that involved looking together and learning to be nice to each other and sharing, and then they'll say, remember, Hans, we're not forgetting because we've read those books, and so we just kind of keep doing that. And I've talked with the preschools, and we've kind of integrated some of that information. We've sent it out to them and given them these seeds to plant, and so they've all been kind of working on that too. So it really, his point, though, I thought was very well taken, if you start young, then that helps as they hit that elementary level and they keep getting it. And again, as Blair has decided to integrate the 40 developmental assets into their school curriculum. So the more we started here in the story times and then into the preschools, there have already heard it and are ready to go full-fledged school. And they're hoping that by the time six years passes, the bullying issues will be better, and we won't have the suicide threats that we see now in the teens, which is very scary. So before I end our set, and what we like is the best behavior series, and we use this a lot. It is, hands are not for hitting, feet are not for kicking, teeth are not for biting, tails are not for pulling, and words are not for hurting. And there are some more, there's pacifiers are not forever and things like that, but these are board books, they're very fun, and I'll show you pictures of them very quickly. They're bright, they're quick, they're, you know, I love the, I love the tails are not for pulling because it's animals. And, you know, a lot of times bullying starts with kids with animals. So I use that as much as I use hands are not for hitting. Words are not for hurting is very good. And it's all about, you know, how the two words, I'm sorry, really can help, but we want to make sure we get to where we don't have to use them because we just don't hurt anybody with our words. Kids talk about bullying by Carrie Finn. This is really a fun book, and there's the counselor Sam is the fellow who's working it, and kids will write him letters, and like this one says, dear Sam, my brother told me to watch out for bullies at school. What does a bully look like? And Sam writes back, dear Justin, bullies can be big or small, old or young or boys or girls. Bullies are people who try to make other people feel bad. Nobody should do that, Sam. And it goes on and on all the way through the end, so it kind of teaches them some coping strategies. And then at the very end, it has a little quiz and says good luck taking this. So it's a discussion tool to use with the kids and to use at story times, and we have fun with this book a lot. And sometimes it's fun to take the puppets out and make the puppets being the ones who are writing or have problems with the bullies. And that's kind of fun. Another one is Recess Queen. This is a lot of fun because Recess Queen just rules the rule of the world here. I'm sorry, I just hit my microphone. It's written by Alexis O'Meel, and that mean Recess Queen is constantly bullying on the playground. And finally, she's mean Jean, and nobody said she was not the queen because they were scared. Nobody swung until mean Jean swung, and it goes on and on. And if you crossed her, she'd push him and smush him and lull a pollution. And then at the very end, there comes this little girl who doesn't understand why she's so mean. And so she keeps jump roping and getting, you know, I like ice cream, I like tea, I want Jean to jump with me. Nobody had asked her to play before, so finally she did. And she found out it was really nice to have friends. And instead of being a bully, it's just a lot more fun to have a friend. So it's a really fun book to use at Storytime, too. And of course, there's always the Bernstein Bears and the bully. And there's many, many others as well, and some that you can just take and kind of just convert. I always like to just, you know, the good Curious Georges or the good Arthur or any of just the fun, you know, I love Carmel Wilson's Bear. You know, Bear is scared. And, you know, Bear doesn't like storms, but he's got his friends. And Bear has a new friend and more of the wild things are. I mean, there's so many things you can do that just incorporates, you know, getting along, having fun, being nice to each other. It doesn't have to be just focusing on the word bullying. You can incorporate so many things and still use them, you know, in your Storytimes. Here's the series, the behavior series. They are very fun, very colorful, very bright, and the kids love them and they check them out all the time. I have a hard time keeping them on my shelf, which is a good thing. And then this bullying book, it's not a very good picture. I apologize for that. I couldn't find a clearer one, but the Bernstein Bears and of course the Recess Queen, and she just, she is fun. She's just crazy, crazy girl. Some of the activities that we've done that we're particularly fond of, hand print rates and what we've done, we've had like some Girl Scout troops come in and I've done this with our Storytimes too, our four and five year olds. I have everybody draw their hand, I count however many people we have. So if we have seven, I make them draw their hand seven times. And we use a paper plate and you can either leave the middle end or cut the middle out. But everybody then cuts out their seven hands and passes them around so everybody has one of everybody's hand. And they put their hand on, you know, you make a wreath out of their hands on the paper plate. If you cut out the middle, then you have truly a wreath shape and you can just hang it. And then we all have our friend's hands, you know, and we, you know, share our, it looks like we're holding hands. And then if we leave the center in, then you can write things in like, you know, make a little poem, you know, this is a wreath of our friend's hands. It's something, you know, whatever, or you can just put the date and when you did it or you could put a picture. If you take a picture really quick of all of them together, then you can run out and print some copies, cut it and put it in there. And then they have the picture of whoever's hands they have and that's their friend's wreath. So it's really a fun project. The Caring Chain, which is at Crayola.com, and I have a, I can bring that site up for you. It's a fun thing. It's probably better for a little older group maybe, but you can, they just make chains and they talk about, you know, they list the better behaviors, whatever, but your Caring and your chain is building to stop bullying. And it's kind of a cool thing, kids love to make chains. There's a coloring book at pacer.org and that's a real fun little thing for the kids to do. We print them out and staple them together and give them little books to color. Therapy dogs and pet shelters, talk to your pet shelters. See if they'll come with a couple of their dogs on their walk and the kids can pet them. Again, teaching kids to be nice to animals is the first step kind of, because then it kind of transfers to how you can be nice to people too, but you know, tails aren't meant for pulling and so therapy dogs are great. If you have therapy dogs in your area, they come and they lay down and they let the kids pet them and the kids can read to them or you can read to them while they're petting the dog. It kind of lowers everybody's blood pressure and just brings that very calm, friendly atmosphere in and it's actually kind of fun to do when I don't have the dogs to go home. I'm going to break away from that screen there and I will show you, hopefully. Here's the coloring book. So you can see, is that big enough? I can make it a little bigger. Kids against bullying, speak up and reach out, be a friend. So it's kind of a nice, you know, they just get to learn. And I love that this one's in the library. Together we can make a difference. It's just kind of a nice little thing. And then the Crayola site, that's kind of what the chain looks like. It's like take turns, share, you know, soft voice, whatever, those kinds of things. So emotional bullies use words and gestures to hurt others. Some use physical force, make this caring chain as a reminder of ways to avoid intimidation and how to make friends. And that's a good thing. And it's even actually a really good summer reading project. You know, like you can have kids come in and just make, you know, put emotions and thoughts and everything and you can hang your chain around the library. It'd be kind of fun. And I think, okay, back to that. So does anybody else have any ideas for activities or anything they'd like to share? Yeah, this is Christa back at the Library Commission. Anybody does have any questions? I will, I don't know if everyone has a microphone or not. But I can unmute you. If you do have a microphone, you can go ahead and speak. If not, you can just type your question into the questions section of the interface and we'll see it and read it there. And can let Gail know what your questions are. Anybody have any questions or comments or suggestions of their own? Yeah, actually I have a question. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Who is this? Hi, this is Denise. When we were, if we could go back to that chart that showed the statistics of what works and what doesn't. When you said, I think it was like the third one down, I don't know how to get back to it, but I think it was like the third one that said hitting them back or doing something about it was one of the top things that made a difference. I missed what you said about that. Is that a good thing or a bad thing for them to do? No, it's a bad thing. When they hit them or fought them or they made plans to get back at them, can you see it on the screen now? I'm still loading actually. The red stripes that show that it's gotten worse. Yeah, that makes bullying worse. But a lot of times you will hear people say to people, stand up for yourself, fight them back. Don't be a wimp. Well, this is what happens then. They end up making things worse and they actually can be seriously harmed. We just had a situation. I work at the middle school and we just had a situation yesterday. They'll probably be talking about it a little bit today when I go to work. We had a situation where a young girl who's very, very quiet, she never talks much. She's never in trouble. She is on the honor roll all the time. I walked in the office and she was sitting in a chair and I was just teasing her. I said, are you in trouble again? She goes, yeah. I said, oh yeah, right. You have an appointment or something, don't you? She said, no, I hit so-and-so in the face. Oh. Yeah, and she did. Apparently, what I'm saying is a lot of times, I don't think people realize how much it happens. It had to have happened and happened and happened for this girl to do that. That's what I said to her. I said, well, it was more than just this one time and she said, oh yeah, it's all the time. Well, here's the deal. She's being bullied. Yes, by this particular kid. Here's the thing that I don't understand and I don't know how to deal with is I wasn't in there but I heard from several kids what happened was it was in the lunch line. He said this thing to her that broke the camel's back. She smacked him in the nose and he started crying in front of everybody and everybody clapped. I mean, they thought it was great because this kid is such a pain. So how do you tell those kids that that's a bad thing when there's 100 kids in there that thought it was a good thing? Are you a smaller school? Yes. Yeah. I think that's a hard one because you don't want them to think that that is okay but his behavior was also not okay. I mean, all that time. So he was in the wrong. We all agree about it but retaliation is not right either. He might sneak around and get her from that sometime. Exactly. I mean, that could become then a thing that he does in private because now he's embarrassed in front of everybody and that could have caused her serious harm in the future and what she needs. Go ahead. My other question then is when you see something like that happen say the first time or in the library when I'm in the library. What do I do? She comes and tells me I'm always leery. I never know what to say for sure. What to do. Or she tells me about something that happened somewhere else in another classroom or something. Not just her but I do have kids do this from time to time. I don't even know what the right thing to do is to keep that kid from making it worse for her because that's usually what happens at school. I think that adult involvement piece is what's highly important and for them to know it's not going to go... Your involvement isn't going away today. I've addressed it today and I've done watching. We're going to be watching constantly and we're contacting parents and this is an issue and we don't want it to get worse. We don't want anybody else to get hurt either way. The same thing is taking him. For him, it was embarrassing for her to do that in front of everybody and for everybody to clap. So there's a bigger issue as to why he's doing it. Do you have anybody there that has a program set up to talk and deal with this? I'm sure they will. I just mean for myself in the library what to do. More so like when I... I just don't know you say get an adult involved but if you're involved if you go over there to talk to them to break it up to do whatever you need to do what do you say? I go over and I bring them into my office because I don't do it in front of everybody. But I bring them back and I say have a seat let's talk about this. Here's where the library stands. Intolerance is not accepted. Bowling is not accepted. We have to all get along when we're in these walls. And then I usually ask the person who's been bullied if this is a continual issue or if it was just the today thing. That's the first step. If it's continual then I ask them if we can call our parents. Because I think the parents need to know. And I always assumed it what did make it worse but apparently through your chart here it doesn't. No. I think if the parent... And again then you have to look at the home situation. And we at libraries like at the public library we don't have that kind of information. We don't know how the parents interact with the kids all the time. Parents you never know just because these kids are here six or seven hours and they're not being fed or anything. But others are very, very involved in their kids' life and they would want to know if something were happening. Because sometimes it's a continuation of what's coming out of the school. In your case it might be a continuation of what's coming out at home or a continuation of outside activities that they've brought into the school that comes from the school to other places. Yeah, I'm sure it does. The school having some way to deal with this and I would then encourage you to break it up temporarily and say let's go take this to the counselor and discuss it. I just wish it would have been happening before it got to that point. But I think any exhibit if it's enough that you need to break it up any exhibit of that behavior should go to that. Your program that's set up, your counseling that's set up to deal with it. If you don't have a program set up I would encourage your counselors to get on the ball and get one done. You have a consistent, because as soon as you have a consistent procedure I think those kids are going to follow that procedure. They're going to know that that's what the consequence is. That's not what I've done. I just kind of wanted to know what to say when you just hear one small thing and that's kind of what I do. Usually it's, hey, we're not going to do that in here. Right. That's not what this is about. We don't deal with it. They'll be quiet. I just wondered if that was okay and then if I see it consistently as a counselor or something. Yes. If it's something that's continual or if there's something all of a sudden that breaks out that's much worse than, oh, you're an idiot or something like that. If it's something much worse then you need to have a procedure set up at your school with how to deal with that. That would go to the office. I don't have a problem with the bigger issues. It's just the small things that I don't want them to follow. We have a lot of those small things. It's kind of funny. I have a screen set up on this too but that's the reason I Facebook is so that I can know who's fighting with who. Right. I left them all friend me and then I know who's fighting with who and when they come in I say, okay, you sit at that computer and you sit over there. See, I kind of felt sneaky doing that but that's good, isn't it? You don't let them know. It works. Great. Can I get away from this screen? Oh, yes. No, you're fine. That was good. Again, everybody, we have different ways gosh darn these little fun things that I did that made them harder to get forward. That's what kids do and kids are sneaky too and I apologize for this yellow. I couldn't get it to go away. This is Krista at the library commission. I just wanted to say you're talking about the link there now. All the links that were in here and all these books and stuff when we put the recording up we'll have all those links included so you'll be able to get them very easily from the recording as well. Everyone who goes there. And the PowerPoint will be available as well. Yes. Juvenile books, when they hit that I don't know about you but on the other hand on the other hand after sitting through eight of them with my grandchildren there's a lot to be learned from Junie B. Jones about why you don't put up with this kind of behavior and how it's not okay to be rude and see Junie got in trouble for this and was that nice of those kids to do that and it's not nice not to let people sit by you on the bus and things like that. And by Junie B. Jones I'm just very pro discuss the bad behavior issues. Diary of a Wimpy Kid the same kind of thing and I get a lot of complaints from parents about that book as well and I say the same thing take it as a time to discuss what's wrong with those behaviors that you don't like in that book make it a discussion point at dinner have a Diary of a Wimpy Kid dinner and celebrate the book but you don't like about it do that with your books and it might be fun to have a day at the library where you just have a book discussion with kids books and parents and you find ones that they're worried about and all of a sudden you have to talk about it and have characters act and do a little reading theater with the high school theater or something there's all kinds of things you can do so let's work it out series is really a good series for that age group and how to deal with finding how to deal with bullies, how to deal with insults and what I do for those of you that are at a public library this might be easier but for summer reading like these kind of books I include them on their Wingo games and some of my summer reading stuff so they have to pick them up and look at them at least five in a row to get their Wingo prize and their candy or whatever and so I include different types of books and I make sure that these kind are on there that way they're kind of forced to look at the nonfiction and there's one of them it's how to deal with bullies I have the fighting one also, we like that I think we have the whole series but they're just really nice nice for that age group so parents again have some discussion so they're a good a good resource that's not where I was going teens teens have I can get where I'm at teens have true stories, they love true stories at least the kids in Blair do they will eat those right up I have lots of nonfiction on bullying and stuff and trust me none of it hardly ever goes out only if they're doing a report but if it's a realistic situation fiction or a true story I can get them to read it every time and some of my favorites right now this please stop laughing at us it's one survivor's extraordinary quest to prevent school bullying I've recommended it a lot I've not actually read it but it comes back with good reviews these other two however what happened to Cass McBride I'll be dead are you all familiar with these do you want me to talk about them Cass McBride is a very interesting interesting but it doesn't take long to read it's a great book club look if you have a book discussion going at all Cass is this hippy hippy cheerleader perfect student kind of person and this young man comes up to her and asks her out and she says no very nicely very politely doesn't call him names or anything but then she passes she and her girlfriend have this way to pass notes and it's a little like thing taped under a chair and they always make sure they sit in the same chair so she writes this note that says man can you believe he asked me out I always thought he was gay and she puts it under there and he sees that she put a note there so he went and got it and he read it and then he killed himself and her brother his brother then blamed Cass for the suicide so he kidnaps Cass and he varies her life and he talks to her because he wants her to understand why he's going to let her die and by the time the end of the book comes along he and Cass have become very good friends and they both have discovered that they are victims of bullying themselves and abuse and that's why the brother actually killed himself it was not her and so it was extremely interesting and of course it ends up different but good ending by the time you read this I'll be dead it's the same thing she's experienced Galen's experienced all these years of bullying from all these kids throughout school and she's tried to commit suicide several times and never made it and this time she has found an online group called the completers and it was only for people who are serious about completing the act of suicide and finally she meets a young man who's dying of cancer who becomes her friend and at the very end you don't know if she has completed or not there is a series of questions at the end of the book for discussion again fantastic book good teen read good material, good parent read I encourage a lot of parents to read this book just because it's very prominent online cyber bullying do we all see problems with that yes there's social networking Facebook your friend or your foe along with other things you know I see more bullying through Facebook and it happens right here in my library and that's what irritates the heck out of me but there's nothing I can do about it really because nobody's getting hurt right here nobody's being loud nobody's doing anything and I can't tell them to get off the computer just because they're writing things they shouldn't post but when I get home at night and I read the posts I see that they're saying so and so we're just going to beat her up tomorrow and blah blah blah blah and there's a lot of anger and bullying that goes on and it's mostly girls it's not the boys and so we have developed a little committee in town to kind of look at what we can do to increase education for cyber bullying and invite the parents in get them more involved in looking at what their kids are doing online mean behind the screen and that's a very good teen nonfiction book about you know what you're doing behind the screen can be seen and then teen cyber bullying investigated is written by a judge and he actually this is the consequences because now threatening online you can I think legislation is coming that that will be considered you know personal threats and things like that so even if you're kidding there's no way to know because that print doesn't show emotion and that's a very good book and in a very good topic to start investigating is what is the consequence of what you write online filters do they work I'm sure we all have filtered computers hopefully maybe fond of filters but I do recognize their value from time to time but there are things that are not caught in filters you know you can you can block hopefully some sites in one site I would now encourage you to block or let because that is not like any other social networking sites there's no you know have to sign up you have to be 13 have to do this or that you can make up any name you want sign in and then you just go from person to person to person to person to person and a lot of those people hoping are hoping that you're going to be some young kid that they can show you how to do things with your body you know and or they'll be naked or they'll be you know it's it's not meant to be a children's site but kids are logging on to it thinking it's fun and they're seeing things they shouldn't see and you know it's it's close to porn it's close to porn without anybody regulating it as you can get and I'm sure there's many others out there by now that you know once that starts happening it happens the 40 developmental assets and I know we're running out of time I love this program this particular website is the search institute and that's where the 40 developmental assets comes out this has been written about and boy a magazine and they're encouraging libraries to really look at this program we have a very active group in Blair it has taken us three years to really get it off the ground the first year was a lot of organizing the second year we did receive a regional grant and that went to help pay for different activities that we could bring families together and kids together and increase that asset building the idea came about the research showed that kids that graduated high school with under 21 or under assets were more likely to be involved in risk behaviors drinking, drugs, bullying you know those things that you don't want your kids to do and as adults then struggled to have a meaningful life you know they needed a lot of education and we're going to go through a lot of wrong before they hit the right slide if the closer you got to 40 assets and at 28 you're really sound apparently is the number I think then those kids are the ones that are going to be going to college they're going to have that good work ethic they're going to be doing all those things because they've built up that self confidence and understanding that they need to have a lot of times they don't necessarily kids don't necessarily get it at home and so the more your Girl Scout leaders Boy Scout leaders, libraries all the people that they go see outside of their home connection the more they work at developing these assets the more they will you know keep and grow with and lower those risk behaviors we now our grants that we receive from the region our region here and Blair's got a papillion and we receive about I think $36,000 a year almost 20,000 of that we put into small activities they help fund some of reading they help fund you know muffins with mom, donuts with dads, all kinds of things we send kids to leadership conferences we send them to you know scout activities where they're going to learn skills that they'll need for life and I it's just a wonderful wonderful thing there's federal funding there to help you so if you can get a group going and use it, it's worth it and I'll break away and show you that site I do think it's an important an important site and an important program the search institute and you can always just Google it if you forget you know at any time I'm always doing this because I'll say oh good it's that asset and I'll go Google it for the search institute and there's adolescents child, middle childhood, K to 3 and 3 to 5 and you know there's different subcategories there's external and internal there's support, empowerment so family support, positive family communication, you know a lot of these are common sense things but it's just using that language and reminding yourself to do it safety, boundaries and expectations you know and these are just the little kids, the older kids it gets into a lot of community service things like that, things to do I love this one, playing creative activities every single day, I love it so I know someone said that they wanted to talk about it do you have questions about the 40 developmental assets do you want to visit about it for a while? Gail, this is Allie and you mentioned the funding that came from that and that's because you have a group that's in Blair or near in Pavilion you said that works in Blair and so you need to have a group form before some kind of funding like this would be available, is that correct? Correct, you would have probably in your area and if you don't have one in your area, if you don't have a regional developmental asset group in your area, the search institute can show you where your closest one is but they will help you get something set up and you can also talk other coalitions Washington County coalition is based here out of Blair we had one gentleman who started it and he started it because his son was killed in a drunk driving accident and he saw the need to he just wants drugs and drinking out of the kids' lives and so he really has worked tirelessly at this our regional group is out of Pavilion and they're called the Region 6 group and I think you could contact them and ask them how to start a group they would be thrilled to help they focus on drugs, drinking, tobacco things of that sort and building these assets but they want the risk behaviors to go away while you're building assets that's what they wanted to show we do do some surveying and stuff to assure them that we're moving forward and that gets us our money but once we had our group going and could show them that we were serious then they have a grant funding period we write the grant every year and for the last two years we've gotten about $36,000 which has made a huge difference we hold our health festivals we have we have people come in and talk to the kids we also just sponsor things that we want to hit the grassroots area we want all the scout troops and the 4-H troops we want all those adults who work with kids to use the same language knowing that these are the assets they're building and then that plays into how we get our funding and it's actually easy stuff for the beginning of summer reading this year for our sign-up period we're going to have, I wrote two stipend requests and I think I'm getting, I haven't heard for sure but I'm pretty sure I'm getting almost $5,000 to help fund my summer reading programs and all I have to do is tell them what assets they're working on every time they come and they will work it out yeah that's pretty impressive it is again it takes a little bit of work and organization but it's well worth it and it's worth it again for the kids because they're learning and they're learning that interpersonal skills that they need we're teaching them leadership we don't want them going to the farm parties farm parties are scary you know you throw in all those drugs and take a handful and gosh knows if you're going to live but they think it's fun those kind of things happen the cyber bullying the you know it's just scary now we have the choking game going around we have all these things going around and you just don't want them to be doing those things the more activities we can offer the more skills we can build the better off we are so it's a fun we're over by a little bit of time we're over by a little bit of time here I think maybe you just had a couple more slides left it looked like I believe so basically it's the contact and the conclusion okay yeah you can there it is head forward in conclusion you know what we want to do is provide educational materials a safe place to go be someone that kids can come to if they are being bullied and they need help you know help them find the right person to talk to and just be aware you know the more aware you are and the more they know you care the less they'll do it in your space I think and my contact address I forgot my phone number it's 426-3617 and you can call and talk to me anytime I've become pretty passionate about this I like people to get along and I like kids to be safe so good I thank you for letting me talk your your ears off now thank you very much very interesting and informative especially the myths and misconceptions that people think they've always known all these years yeah it's a surprise it really is so anybody have any final comments or questions or anything Laura has typed in excellent session in the question section well thank you thank you very much thanks for listening and having me everybody have a great day thank you Gail thank you Sally switch back thank you everyone for attending thanks very much Gail that was as I said awesome session the recording will be up later today or tomorrow I hope you join us next time next week for Encompass Live will actually be Sally that's right I hope you're ready Summer Reading Program how hard did you twist your how hard did you twist your arm Sally I had to twist my own arm it was awkward so yes we have that and then after that May 12 we're starting a new series of three sessions about doing surveying of your community your Katherine Breckmeyer here at the library commission is doing that this is the first one we have one each month and then Emily Nimsikan our cataloging librarian here at the commission is going to update us on what's going on with RDA in cataloging we're going to talk with Michael our usual monthly Michael Sowers Technology Innovation Librarian so hope you join us for those as I said this recording will be up as soon as we can get it there and if you do have any other ideas for a session if you want to request one if you want to twist someone else's arm to do one contact me let me know and we can get you all set up with it but don't bully anybody about it no no bullying much everyone bye bye