Bully - The Movie

[gaea]

Bullying although yes affects the lgbt community it also affects those that are not lgbt, i did however find that article interesting.

[Soon]

BREAKING: White House Endorses Safe Schools Bill and Student Non-Discrimination Act

[Scuba]

Excellent!! Thanks for the post!! Good news for sure

[gaea]

I encouraged my friend to take her son to see this movie because her son is a great kid he is 13 and he gets picked on at school I told her how very moving this film is and that i think it would be good for her and her son to see it.

I'm going to find out today if she took him and what she thought about it.

[cara]

This movie is finally coming to the little theater near my apartment. I will be going to see it, for sure!

[cara]

Finally saw Bully today. Glad I went and equally glad the message is becoming louder and more insistent. I was teary-eyed through the entire movie. The Assistant Principal who talked down and showed the pictures of her new grandchild to the hurting parents? She was an idiot. And now everyone knows! It disturbed me that the only non-white child who was bullied that they featured was also in prison/psychiatric care. I am curious how and why they chose to feature each of the students they did. By and far the biggest take-away I got was that adults don't have the tools, education, care, or concern needed to help make this bullying epidemic go away.

Just as an addendum: As a kid, I got my fair share of verbal teasing and harassment on the buses because I went to an alternative elementary school program that happened to share space with the district's special education programs. I took three different school buses each day both ways, but thankfully lived in a neighborhood with some kids who were in the same program. We sort of banded together when the other kids would start in on us. My older brother was also in the same program and did get physically attacked sometimes by other boys at the bus stop. I am appalled that bus drivers aren't able to do anything to stop physical harassment on their buses. Mine would have pulled over and not moved until the bus was quiet and behaving properly. (Just like the mom says in the movie!) Also, bullying isn't just a problem in the U.S. I think it's pretty bad in the U.K., too. The first night I set foot in Scotland, I witnessed a large pack of children chasing after one boy who was about the same age. They knocked him down right in front of me and beat him up using their fists, feet, and belts. I was told by the responding police officer that bullying like that was very common.

[gaea]

Sharing a Link
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/05/s...g-gay-student/

HANOVER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Jared Swank had a great time at his senior prom last weekend, but the happiness turned into disgust when a teacher he trusted showed a video of him dancing with his transgender date to students in her classroom on Monday.

Swank, an 18-year-old senior at Hanover Area High School, has been openly gay since the eighth grade, and he has suffered bullying and ridicule from both teachers and students at Hanover Area the entire time he has attended the school, he said.

Jared Swank. (Times Leader photo by Clark Van Orden.)

“I was very, very hurt,” said Swank. “I was upset by the fact that she was showing other students, because most of them are males and straight people don’t like to hear about gay people, so they’ll sit there and make fun of them,” he said.

He said the teacher should “absolutely not” have shown the video in class.

“She told me that she wanted to show her daughter, not the entire school,” Swank said in an interview at the NEPA Rainbow Alliance offices in Wilkes-Barre on Thursday afternoon.

And Swank said it’s not the first time he has been bullied at the school.

“I’ve been made fun of by teachers who have said things. It’s just an ongoing thing and I’d like to see other students not have to go through this. One of my friends got expelled not long ago for (his reaction to) being called gay. It’s just ridiculous that everybody has to go through this,” Swank said.

His mother, Dawn Mendygral, said that in one instance, a district employee asked Swank “if he had any rainbows in his backpack.” A rainbow is a symbol of the gay community.

In another episode, Swank was wearing pink eye shadow and his teacher went to the next classroom and invited students over “to show the students that he had pink eye.” In a third, a teacher threw a notebook at him to draw his attention and the wire cut her son’s finger.

She said football players pelted her son with lollypops at a parade, students threw stones at him in gym class and roughed him up a bit in the halls. She reported each incident and was told they would be addressed, but she was never told how.

Mendygral, 41, of Hanover Township, said that in the latest incident, the teacher asked Swank and his prom date, 16-year-old Selena Leyc, who attends Lake-Lehman School District, if she could take a short video of them dancing, using her iPhone, to show her daughter.