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This teacher lectures from the 'bully' pulpit
Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/05/03
By BRIAN PRINCE
MANAHAWKIN BUREAU
EAGLESWOOD -- Bullying isn't just about one child beating up another. It can be as simple as cutting in line, or hurting others with words instead of fists.
This is the message that Merrill McCubbin brought to Eagleswood Elementary School yesterday in a presentation, "Bully You, Bully Me, Let's Learn to be Bully Free."
For the past eight years, McCubbin, whose company -- MerMan Productions -- is based in Norfolk, Va., has been visiting schools around the country doing as many as 15 shows a week. His goal is to get people to understand not only what bullying is, but what they can do to counteract it.
A bully is someone who does mean things to people who look like they are weaker, he said. There are two types of bullies: the major bully, who is violent, and the more common minor bully, who makes fun of others.
"A lot of us are minor bullies," McCubbin said.
When it comes to thwarting bullies, there are several options, McCubbin said. One is for people to know and believe in themselves, he said. Appearances, he stressed, are only skin deep.
"Some of us are short; some of us are tall," McCubbin said. "Some of us have light skin; some of us have dark skin. (But) on the inside, we're all very much the same."
He urged pupils -- even the bullies who want help in stopping their behavior -- not to be afraid to approach an adult for help.
There is a difference, he said, between tattling and telling. Tattling is what a person does to get someone else in trouble; telling is what a person does to get someone out of trouble, he explained.
School Superintendent Deborah Snyder said she was glad the program touched on that.
"One of the toughest things I think for kids, is what to do when they're a witness," she said.
The presentation provided one example of what not to do as a witness. In a skit called "A Day in the Park," one pupil is sitting in a park when he is attacked by a bully who steals his candy. When a third youngster sees the bully approaching another child, he runs in the opposite direction and does not return or call for help.
Trying to talk things out seldom hurts, McCubbin told the pupils. But his solution to the worst-case bullying scenario was a bit more dramatic.
Dashing off stage, he screamed, "Help!" at the top of his lungs.
"There is one thing adults hate more than doing their taxes -- the sound of children screaming," McCubbin said.
Adam Sharkey, 11, said he enjoyed the show because McCubbin combined humor with a positive message. The 11-year-old said that he, like many pupils, can relate to the presentation.
"I've been the victim of minor bullying," he said. "Some kids in my class have called me names."
Snyder said, "People technically think of just the really mean kids who beat them up (as a bully), but there are other forms of bullying that are more subtle."