Anti-Bullying show comes to Cheektowaga

CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. – A group of parents concerned about bullying learned about the ways in which bullying is happening and how to correct it at Cleveland Hill Elementary School in Cheektowaga Tuesday night.

“The nature of bullying has changed. We know it’s beginning earlier, students are exposed to a lot more technology, and the students who are being bullied are now responding to it in much more dramatic ways,” said Jeremy Rubenstein of Box Out Bullying.

This national tour is an interactive assembly for students and parents to learn about how kids are bullied in school and ways to resolve it.

“Here at our school there’s very little physical bullying going on. It’s more verbal bullying. So in terms of intervention, we recognized that to address those problems most readily, you need to empower children,” said Cleveland Hill Elementary School principal Patrick McCabe.

McCabe knows this after conducting a bullying survey at his school. He found that bullying most often takes places in areas with the least supervision.”So those places are the bus, sometimes the hallway, the locker room, the playground,” said McCabe.

 Part of the focus is, not just on bullies, but on bystanders and figuring out ways they can more appropriately intervene next time.

“I try to do what I can to educate as much as possible and try to focus on doing the right things and certainly not perpetuating things,” said John Catalino, who has a child at Cleveland Hill Elementary.

During school hours, Box Out Bullying will be holding interactive performances for kids at Cleveland Hill Elementary all week.