Bessemer, W-M learn about importance of not bullying

BESSEMER - A group of Bessemer and Wakefield-Marenisco students took a break from classes Friday to learn about an important topic, the problems associated with bullying.

The day's events centered on author Jim Lajoie's visit to A.D. Johnston High School in Bessemer.

Lajoie wrote the book, "No One Would Listen," which he described as, "A fictional work ... based on real life events.

"It happened to me, it happened to my children and things that I've seen," Lajoie told the Daily Globe. "I wrote it it really as a way to get into schools, have schools read the book and then be able to sit down have a discussion and engage kids about what the issues are, what they're dealing with and how they can deal with them."

The book centers on the character Johnnie, who is bullied by different people. Lajoie talked to Bessemer's seventh through 12th graders, and Wakefield-Marenisco's high school students. He discussed both the experiences of being bullied and bullying others.

"The message we're trying to get across is more; 'Be kind to one another,' how to recognize bullying, what to do about it, find a safe haven of someone you can talk to ... about bullying," Lajoie told the Globe. "The bigger message is, bullying has become a huge, huge problem in our society with the advent of cyber bullying and all the social media. And I don't think it's acceptable to just allow it, to turn your back on it.

"As a society, we have to be part of that solution and part of that solution is to recognize it and act upon it."

Both when talking to the students, and after, Lajoie said middle and high school are often very difficult times for students.

"For kids this age, they're going through a lot as an adolescent. There's a lot of emotions they're fighting through, they're going through puberty and all those life changes that happen," he said. "So for them, it's not real easy to talk about bullying."

Today's social climate also doesn't make it any easier for students to be nice to each other, Lajoie said.

"Everywhere we turn around, there's negativity - whether it's on the national level, on the state level," he said. "How do we expect kids to act as adults and do the right thing when adults are not setting the table for appropriate behaviors?"

Since Lajoie, who is from Negaunee, wrote the book in November 2015 not only to raise awareness and empower students to address the issue - but also to make teachers and other staff aware of the seriousness of the problem.

"It's created an awareness among teachers and support staff about the hurt that's going on with kids. I've done presentations where I've had kids breakdown in class crying, I've had kids come out and who have said things in class about how they've been bullied ... that they've never talked to anyone else about," Lajoie said. "It's allowed the schools to now recognize who needs help."

Along with Lajoie, the day featured a variety of ice-breaker activities designed to help students find common ground and see they aren't alone with some of the issues they face. The events were run by some the students in Bessemer's peer-to-peer classes.

"I hope they take away the strength to be able to help others they see being bullied," said senior Ciara Novascone, who has been in the classes for three years.

She credited her teacher, Jamie Stiffarm, with organizing the event.

Stiffarm said the event came out of the classes' work learning about disabilities and how to help those with disabilities.

The students also form peer-to-peer partnerships with some of the disabled students to help them academically and socially.

The classes also do a lot of work learning about autism and advocating for autism awareness, including right a book about an autistic student last summer.

It's the connections with the other students that draws Novascone to the classes.

"(I love) being able to help the other people around (me); because before coming into the program, I didn't realize all the problems that were going on."

The work with disabled students led to the district using Lajoie's book, as Stiffarm explained her classes were inspired to bring up the issue of bullying up after hearing about the case in Chicago of a special-needs person being tormented by a group of people that made national news recently.

"A higher population of special needs students are bullied than in the (general student body)," Stiffarm said. "We still have bullying across the board, but we have a higher percentage of special needs students who are bullied."

Stiffarm said she learned about Lajoie through Ironwood Carnegie Library Director Lynne Wiercinski and decided to have him come to the district based on the student response to reading his book.

She hopes the students who listen to Lajoie learn the importance of forgiveness and thinking of others.

"I think of all the things I would like the students to learn is: If you do mistake, work at learning from it.

"Work at understanding others, you might have one perception of how it might be; but it might be a completely different perception for another individual," she said.

The day was funded through a $2,920 grant from the Great Lakes Association, according to Stiffarm, which will also be used to finance future events.

A.D. Johnston principal Dan VanderVelden said he was pleased to see the students come together for the day, especially between the two districts.

"I'm really pleased with everything. I think what's really nice is that we have the Wakefield kids here with our kids and there's some bonding going on that I'm noticing," VanderVelden said.

He plans to survey the students after the event to see how they think the district should move forward after the event.

"We'll move forward with that and see what we learn from that data, and look at next year (to) see if we're going to do this again next year - what changes we might make to it and things like that," he said.