Melrose Alliance Against Violence Branches Out to Teach Bullying Prevention

After working for more than a decade to educate Melrose residents about bullying, domestic violence and abusive teen relationships, the Melrose Alliance Against Violence (MAAV) will offer workshops about those issues in Middlesex, Essex and Suffolk counties.  

To celebrate the opening of The Center for Education in Violence Prevention, the alliance will hold a free event on Tuesday, Sept. 20 in Saugus to demonstrate the different workshops staff members do for students, teachers, parents and health workers, with the hope of attracting new clients. Megan Kelley-Hall will also read from Dear Bully, a book she co-edited that consists of essays from 70 young adult authors who have been bullies, bullied and bystanders to bullying.

Since the Massachusetts Legislature passed an in 2010, the alliance has conducted 20 bullying prevention trainings in Melrose and 16 in surrounding communities, said Executive Director Rebecca Mooney in an e-mail. The trainings have reached 280 parents, 212 staff members and 3,830 students, she said.

A workshop for school staff, parents or other groups costs $400, Mooney said, and one for students costs $500 and includes wristbands with the message, “Just One.” Mooney said that MAAV staff members try to get across to students that it sometimes takes only one person to stop an act of bullying, by not laughing at it, for example. 

Teaching students about bullying 

During a workshop with 150 or so students, MAAV staff member Alice Wadley doesn’t just stand up and give a presentation in front of a group tucked quietly in their seats. Instead, she asks a lot of questions to engage and learn from children and teens.

“I think it’s the back and forth, the interaction of the questions, that makes it successful,” she said.

She might break the ice by asking the group what they think about using the word “gay” in a derogatory sense to describe something that annoys them or that they dislike. After talking about it, Wadley will show a public service announcement about the 13 teenagers who committed suicide in 2010 after their peers teased them for being gay.  

“Those kinds of statistics really stick with them,” she said.

Wadley also gives workshops for parents so that they know how to tell if their child is being bullied and for teachers and school staff so that they know how to spot bullying during recess or lunch.

“Bullying is always going to be a challenge,” she said. “But we’re taking the first steps, just like the first step we took in sexual harassment and equal rights was to say ‘Hey, this isn’t OK, and we need to stop it, and these are some things we can do to make it better.’”

The information session happens Tuesday, Sept. 20, at the Christopher Dunne Visitor Center, at Breakheart Reservation, in Saugus, Mass., from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. 

Those who RSVP for the session may enter a drawing for a free prevention workshop for students, staff or parents at their school.