The 'Bully Effect' reveals how individuals are making a difference in their communities and all over the country."
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEiadfGehKU&feature=youtu.be
Last year the groundbreaking documentary Bully turned the spotlight on the epidemic of bullying in our schools and its horrific impact on students, earning a controversial R rating from the MPAA along the way. But what happened to the families in the film after the credits finished rolling? It turns out that Anderson Cooper's AC360° followed them and created a followup documentary, The Bully Effect, to show just that.
The AC360° blog says their goal in making the film, which airs tonight on CNN at 10 PM ET, is "to focus on the change happening in light of 'Bully' and campaigns to end intimidation and harassment." As you can see in the trailer above "The Bully Effect reveals how individuals are making a difference in their communities and all over the country."
Part of the "effect" is also Bully filmmaker Lee Hirsch's ongoing dedication to creating an entire generation of students who reject bullying in favor of empathy and action. His social action campaign The Bully Project has set a goal of one million students seeing the original Bully film and being taught new ways of behavior.
The project has partnered with Facing History and Ourselves to create an anti-bullying curriculum that has "tools and resources designed to ignite meaningful dialogue, and prevent bullying by developing a respectful school community." Schools can get both the film DVD and the curriculum for a significantly reduced price of $29.99 if they agree to a common sense pledge:
I pledge to use the Educators DVD and Toolkit to foster a school climate based on mutual respect and tolerance for every individual and to hold everyone in the school community accountable for preventing bullying.
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How can any educator not sign on to that? Indeed, let's hope that the use of the film and the curriculum spread across the nation so that the epidemic of bullying ends with our generation.
Click here to add taking a stand against bullying to your GOOD "to-do" list.