Recent research shows that punishing students who bully is not enough and that we must begin every child’s education by establishing relationship skills and building empathy among students. October is National Bullying Prevention Month and all month long on the Heinemann blog we’ve been sharing blogs, resources and articles from Heinemann authors Lester Laminack and Reba Wadsworth. In 2012, Lester and Reba co-authored the book Bullying Hurts.



Bullying Hurts is not your same-old anti-bullying guide. Lester and Reba show how read alouds can be used as a powerful way to neutralize bullying behaviors and create community in the classroom. They also detail the Layers of Essential Understanding.

We’re breaking this podcast up in two parts, part one is with author Reba Wadsworth. We started our conversation on how to work towards a classroom of kindness, everyday.

For our blog series Bullying Hurts click here.

Their new book Writers ARE Readers: Flipping Reading Instruction Into Writing Opportunities is out now.

See below for the transcript of our conversation:


Reba:    That is 1 of the things that I think is missing so much in education today. Our teachers are just being driven toward testing data to prove that they're doing what they need to be doing.

    They launch into the academic part before they really start to build that community among the children. One of the ways that I think is the easiest thing is just the way we model and the way we, as the adults, treat each other as adults and treat the children. Do we treat them with kindness and respect?

    An easy way to do that, to model it, is to do it through our read alouds. There are wonderful books out there now. Since we wrote the book, there's just been numerous outstanding books that teachers can use as a launching pad for the discussion that follows.

    We don't have to label them and put them into 1 of the layers. Just to build that culture that children understand that bullying and trying to disrespect other people doesn't get us anywhere. We've got to build that culture from day 1 throughout the day as often as we can.

    One of the things that's so detrimental is this system that so many teachers are required to use now. You may not been in classrooms lately to see this, but when teachers are required to look at negative behavior and by looking at the negative, we're going to see the negative. When a principal demands that you do that, it really makes it even more difficult for a teacher to build that culture of kindness.

Speaker 2:    I want to go back a little bit. You mentioned read alouds. They are such an important part of your book, Bullying Hurts. Why are read alouds so vital to the process?

Reba:    First of all, a read aloud, Lucy Calkins said, "The single most important thing that you can do in a day is to read aloud to your children." By doing that, you are showing them fluent language. You're exposing them to rich vocabulary and to story. If you pick your read aloud carefully, it does that plus it gives kids the language to talk about and to notice bullying, the situational kind of thing.

    I was reading aloud last week to a group, a new book that had just come out about a little boy that was so envious...