What does TAG stand for or represent? It sounds nice to have them meet in the morning AND in the afternoon. I imagine it's a good way of starting and ending a school day.

Also, to add to the discussion of good movies related to bullying, Odd Girl Out is a Lifetime movie that came out a couple of years ago. It's excellent for middle school and high school students to see the negative girl bullying that occurs.

We have been enjoying TAG groups, as we call our advisory program, for many years. Our Tag group meets twice a day, once in the morning for about 20 minutes and again at the end of the day for 10 minutes. We meet everyday and TAG leaders take care of the attendance and then get down to a variety of activities. Over the years we have focused on a number of different kinds of themes. We work with students on work habits and organization, goal setting, community service activities, interaction between TAGs has been incorporated over the years. For example for a number of years we put on a Variety Show with each TAG putting together performances. This was enjoyed by the entire community. The culminating event included a performance for parents and community members. Each day has a different focus. TAGs spend one day each week talking about current events. I'd be happy to share ideas with anyone looking for them.
Advisory is a very worthwhile multifacited program that can be whatever your school hopes it to be.

You can find information about the National Stand Up to Bullying Day here: http://standupday.com/. We don't plan to get sponsors and buy t-shirts, but we like the idea of an organized day, which I think we'll end up customizing with our own topics.

I don't know websites, but I know that local Boys/Girls Clubs, or for that matter Girl/Boy Scouts, might be a good place to start. We have used clips from the movie "Mean Girls" and the book "The Girls" by Amy Goldman Koss to stimulate discussions around girl-on-girl dynamics including bullying (we're an all-girls school).
Take care,
Bill

I haven't heard of National Stand Up to Bullying Day. Do you know of a Web site related to this or any other information about it?

Angela, thanks for the wrap-up. It sounds like your NNCW went really well. The idea of getting lots of different groups involved really does spread the wealth in terms of work and organization. We are exploring our own name-calling issues here at school, considering a No-Name-Calling Day (since we didn't have our act together enough last week!) on National Stand Up to Bullying Day. The website you pointed us all to was also really helpful, with lots of good lesson plans. Don't discount the elementary plans, in many cases they can be adapted to a short, advisory period with middle school students.

Bravo!

Our NNCW last week went really well! My goal was to encourage as many groups of people to be involved in some way. Reasoning behind this was two-fold in that it number one gets everyone involved and number two takes much of the work off of my shoulders!

The foreign language department had their students make posters in Spanish and French that said things like "no bullying" and "respect one another." These are posted throughout our school. Our art teachers asked their students to be creative and draw posters with positive words that describe people, after they had already discussed the negative words they hear in the hallways. These are also posted around the school.

Our librarians displayed books in the library that were related to friendships, respect, tolerance, etc. Our phys. ed. teachers put an extra emphasis on teamwork and getting along during classes all week. Student Council played songs like "Where is the love?" and "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" on the morning announcements, along with words of wisdom for no name-calling.

The biggest thing we did was ask each team of teachers to nominate one or two students they think show positive behavior, no bullying, sticking up for others, respect, etc. We rewarded these students with a pizza party with our principal and vice principal, as well as certificates for the I AM THE CHANGE Award. They were so pleased to receive an award for simply being themselves, considering they didn't know the award existed before being nominated. It was a great success! We hope to continue this piece throughout the year.

It is definitely an easy but important event that I believe all schools should focus on, especially middle level schools where bullying is such a huge issue.

Thanks for the great tip, Angela, about "No Name Calling Week" and welcome, Jen! Bill has some great ideas for activities that can accompany really any "theme" week or month. We've had some success with approaching the topic of bullying in our advisories, using activities that each advisory took part in over the course of a month or so. Our sixth grade has also participated in "Mix It Up Day" with mixed results.

Please, please let us know your experiences with these resources and activities!

Hello - I just joined this discussion group - and have been working on our school's advisory program for the last year or so. We just implemented advisory to the students and staff in late October - in order for everyone to get into the year and through with the NECAP testing before we added one other thing to our plate.

I took a look at the No Name Calling Week information - specifically that provided at nonamecallingweek.org - I downloaded the free lessons provided there and plan to use them throughout the year, not just during no name calling week. The lessons seem like they are worthwhile and are current. When putting together a resource binder for our staff last year, we had a difficult time finding good information on bullying that was relevant to the middle school age group. I wish that we had come across this resource then!

I look forward to participating in this discussion group!

We haven't done the "no name calling week" but have been involved in similar, tolerance-promoting activities like "Mix it up day" (sit with people you don't know at lunch), "Day of Silence" (to support gays and lesbians), and so on.

I would think there could be read-aloud texts, extracts from books and/or poems. I'm sure there are songs out there too. Students could also create original work - written and/or artistic - around the theme of the week. In advisory, or some other format, students could share how they got their names and what they mean. There could be skits and/or role-plays, public or within specific classes. I hope this helps!

I recently found some information about the national campaign of No Name-Calling Week, January 21-25. It sounds like a great thing to promote in our middle schools. Do any of you currently have things planned for this year, or have any of you sponsored this week at your school in the past? Any ideas?

From reading material on the Web site, I found ideas such as reading annoucements related to preventing bullying and name-calling, having the library display books about friendship, etc. Any other ideas?

It has been difficult also for me to get my group of 11 eighth graders to participate in a community service project of their choice. I have consistently told them to leave their books and lap tops at the door on Fridays when we have community service so that we may all focus together on brainstorming ideas for a project. They are really unmotivated though. Even when I encourage them by saying I'll reward them by throwing a party after we succeed in making a difference somewhere, they are not willing to do too much. I have not forced them to do anything so far, because I've been trying to make this something they want to do and have it be something they come up with on their own. That has proved difficult, so last week they asked if we could have a party or if we could make some food together. I said sure, great idea, let's bake something to sell as a community service project. They bought into the idea! Now today they have come up to me about 10 times separately all excited about the fact that we will walk around to other advisories and sell the cookies to donate to a charity.

Bottom line... it takes effort and work from the adviser, but if you listen to your students long enough and keep encouraging them they really will get involved.

Our struggles with participation are really with just a few kids who, I think, have decided that it isn't "cool" to participate in things like intramurals when all of our different advisories compete together at silly games, for instance. We cajole and hope that peer pressure will work in our favor, but I wondered if others had strategies for reluctant kids. We've asked this small group (three or four kids, really) for ideas about what they'd like to do, and they are also reluctant to get involved that way. All of our kids attend advisory itself. It is mandatory, but we've never actually had anyone challenge that part of the attendance.

Additionally, our service learning currently takes place in our classrooms, through different projects that fit with curriculum, but we're brainstorming ways to move some of it to advisory, as we struggle with higher stakes tests at the middle level.

In response to kprause on participation...

There is no greater deterrent to youngsters participating than adults who do not participate... I am not accusing you of that, but I am wondering if there are other adults who do not, and the kids are just doing what they see the adults modeling?

-- GLA

Ah... community service... a great theme for TA.

For the last couple of years, middle schoolers at my school have collected lunch room scraps which are collected for compose by a local farmer... kind of a different type on community service, but the dumpster sure smells better (or at least not as bad) since they started.

Anyone else with community service ideas?

-- GLA

Usually students do not have a choice of attending an advisory or there are not other activities scheduled during this time. Usually the best way to engage students is to get them involved. Ask them for ideas and have them make some choices about activities. As k them what condition would need to exist for this to be a "great advisory". Ask them what they could do for community service with an advisory as a basis.

All for now,
Bob