Violence Prevention
South Philadelphia

Super Pooper Scooper Project
Sharswood

Researching Abandoned Cars
Philadelphia

Transition to Middle School
Philadelphia

School Issues
Perry County

Community Improvement
Cumberland County

School Violence
Bala Cynwyd

Historical Markers, Gladwyne

Safety Problem, Pittsburgh

Community Literacy, Sharon City

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School Violence
Five students at Bala Cynwyd Middle School describe their project on school violence.

So there we were, a bunch of 7th graders listening to a teacher teaching her first year at BCMS of Bala Cynwyd, PA around early February. She told us that she belonged to the League of Women Voters and together with a program called KAT, her past classes had been able to create a difference in their communities. We, of course being energetic 12 and 13 year olds, immediately wanted to jump on the bandwagon. But soon problems arose. We had to do everything by ourselves? Even the idea of what to do? We were not prepared for this.

So we started brainstorming problems that effected most kids our ages. Heavy books? Stress? "Clicks"? Sure, these were all problems that effected us, but we couldn't do anything about them. So back to the drawing board. Prejudice? Cafeteria food? After a few days the early excitement wore off, going to english class was no fun any more, we had reached a mental road block in the first phase. If we didn't find something to do soon, we would have to drop the project.

Then one day, near the end of our energy and enthusiasm, a kid from another class on our team (the whole team, 7-2, was doing it) came up with a brilliant idea. School violence! Where the idea came from was unknown. Maybe the tragedy of Columbine still lingered in our minds, or maybe the kid was recently bullied in the hallway, but whatever it was, the kid was a genius. Here was a topic that effected thousands of kids across the state and we could do something about it.

So we started researching. And soon we found out just how important our topic was. Massive amounts of violent acts were going on in schools everywhere. Thousands of kids felt unsafe. We knew we had to do something.

So we found out just how much kids knew about the topic, and it turned out that it was not much. Together we created a definition of violence. We decided that the more kids knew about the topic the better.

And then it came to us. We would create a day to teach peers about violence and how to prevent it. So a proclamation and resolution had to be written. We started receiving responses from schools all over PA to our pledge for support on the topic.

One school told us about a bill concerning our topic that they were trying to pass that the PA legislature treated with rude indifference, so in history, we wrote to our representatives urging them to support the bill and convince their fellow representatives to take these topics seriously. In science we analyzed data about the amount of crime, the environments effects on these statistics, and other data that would support our cause. We gave a survey out to our school about causes of violence and their feelings on it. In math we produced percentages regarding their responses.

Now we are sending out activity packets to those schools which have agreed to support the cause. The packets include: our definition, proclamation, activities, facts, posters, a video of our discussions on the topics and other things that will be useful to them when they take part in School Violence Awareness and Prevention Day.

On April 10, the date we have set aside for the special day, we are going to Harrisburg. There we will present our findings, opinions, and proposal for the day, to the PA legislature.
You know what? We started the topic half heartedly, but now we know we did the right thing. Team 7-2 of BCMS is proud of their efforts to help make their fellow students across PA feel safer in their schools. Submitted by Aleksandra P.

Hi! I am a student at Bala Cynwyd Middle School. Our school has been working on our KAT project for the last couple months. Our topic is about school violence. Our English teacher, Mrs. Williams, has been working around the clock to help make more kids aware about school violence and prevent further acts of victimization. Most people wouldn't believe that Pennsylvania is ranked number 7 in school deaths across the U.S.A! Most students and teachers don't even know what school violence means.

Well, team 7-2 has composed a definition by interviewing adults on what they think school violence is. School Violence is any form of physical, mental, emotional, verbal, or sexual abuse with the intention to damage, humiliate, intimidate, threaten or invade the personal space of a person or thing. Even six year olds can commit crimes like the event that happened recently with two six year olds shooting one another. Another example is one girl shot her best friend when playing around with guns. Almost everyone knows about the Columbine tragic event. With the one-year anniversary coming up on April 20, 2000 it reminds us of the happenings that occurred in and around that school several times. How can we prevent this?

Our team has been working very hard to create an activity packet to send to schools that would like to receive one. This activity includes a video, puzzles, word searches, newspaper articles, a proclamation, survey, quiz, drawings, peace pledge, poems, essays, statistics, and many more exciting activities involving the awareness of school violence. Our team will travel to Harrisburg on April 10, 2000 to try to pass a School Violence Awareness Day! Our slogan that we constantly are explaining is, TURN OFF THE VIOLENCE, PUMP UP THE PEACE! Thanks to the KAT program, which is sponsored by the League of Women Voters, we can try to make students all across Pennsylvania aware of the deadly outcomes school violence leads to! Submitted anonymously

Team 7-2 at Bala Cynwyd Middle School is working with Kids Around Town to try to put an end to school violence. We will be traveling to Harrisburg, PA on April 10, 2000 to speak with the Pennsylvania Legislature. We hope to convince them to make April 10th School Violence Awareness Day.

As a team, we made a press release, a proclamation, and a definition of school violence. We sent out letters to schools across Pennsylvania asking them for their support. We received 88 letters back. Whoever sends their letters back before March 3 will receive a video made by some of the students on our team and an activity packed filled with many things such as information that we've learned, our proclamation, our definition of school violence, and such activities as secret codes that turn into slogans for our project, and a survey. We sent this survey to the students in our school and based on the information the students wrote down, school violence is usually started by exclusion, teasing, and bullying. We have talked to our school about our project as well as our community. We have been asked to appear in Newspapers and News Shows. When we first started our Kids Around Town Project, we thought we knew a lot about school violence, but we have become experts now. We have been working on this project in all of our main classes. Our main goal is to return from Harrisburg as April 10 being School Violence Awareness Day.

We learned many things during this KAT project, some are: Everyday 100,000 kids take guns to school. Each day 6,250 teachers are threatened and 260 teachers are assaulted. 14,000 kids are attacked on school property everyday. 160,000 children miss school daily because of the fear of school violence. Only 14% of parents talk to their kids about school violence, and only 28% watch their kids while they're online. Most kids have stopped fighting with their fists and started to use weapons more often. Submitted by Lexie S.

Since the beginning of February, my team has been working with KAT to start a School Violence Awareness and Prevention Day. We wrote a proclamation in English class. We are traveling to Harrisburg on April 10th and we hope for this to become the violence awareness day. In Harrisburg we will represent our proclamation to the PA legislature. Myself and my classmates have written a press release and sent it out to several newspapers. We wrote letters to about 400 schools in Pennsylvania and received 88 responses, they are all supporters of our project. To these 88 schools we are sending an activity packet, including a video we made. Overall, all of this work on violence prevention has really made me aware of how much violence there is in the world. I think that Kids Around Town is an excellent way to help kids take an active part in their community. Submitted anonymously

When you imagine a killer, you think of a crazy adult that has just escaped from jail. However, 43.3 percent of gun owners are under the age of twenty-four. You also picture the killer stalking a single victim. However, the number of single killings in school has gone down. Instead there are mass killings of ten or twenty people.

Arrests for violent crime rose three percent from 1997-1998, which proves that juvenile crimes are increasing rapidly. School violence is spreading throughout our nation so much that it is getting to the point where you can't feel safe at your own school anymore. Fourteen American children under the age of twenty are killed by guns daily, twenty-five percent of high school students fear going to school because of school violence. Middle school students are the most victimized; approximately 1,310 children who attend middle school were arrested for bringing guns to school in 1999.

These killings are started in numerous ways. Things such as shoving, hitting, slapping, going on the Internet, and observing crime on TV are all starters for violence. 19% of students report being hit, slapped, or shoved by another student. Only 28% of parents supervise their children when they are online. By the time a person has reached the age 18 they will have observed 20,000 hours of violence on TV.

Violence is surrounding us, and we need to take action against it. Team 7-2 at Bala Cynwyd Middle School is working with Kids Around Town, a program in which kids work together to create a better environment. Kids Around Town is sponsored by the League of Women Voters. We polled students about their definition of violence, and combined this data to create one over-all definition. Violence is any form of physical, emotional, mental, verbal, or sexual abuse, with the intention to damage, humiliate, intimidate, or threaten or invade the personal space of a person or thing. We sent letters to school across Pennsylvania, asking if they wanted to join us in preventing school violence. If they respond before March 3rd, they will be sent an activity packet filled with games, puzzles, a video, and our proclamation and resolution about school violence.

These packets will be used on April 10th, the day that we, as a group, appear before the state assembly in Harrisburg asking them to proclaim Anti-school Violence Day. We received 88 responses from schools all over Pennsylvania. A press release was sent out, and we have been asked to appear on several news shows and in some newspapers. We are going to create a petition, and some members of our team have written editorials to newspapers and magazines.

Other students will present to are our advisories and entire school, the Home and School Association, the Narberth Civic Association, and the school board. We will also be traveling to Harrisburg on April 10th to persuade the legislature to make that day Anti-School Violence Day. As you can see, we have taken a large step towards a violence-free society. Now it's your turn to take a stand. We need your help and support if we want to create an impact. Thank you for your time, we hope that you will think about what we've said and act against violence. Remember-turn off the violence; Pump up the peace. Submitted by Emily B

Team 7-2 at Bala Cynwyd Middle School is working on a project to take a stand against violence. We, the students have been working very hard to make other children aware of violent acts around them. This whole project will have a culminating activity on April 10, 2000 when we travel to Harrisburg to present our ideas to the state assembly. We hope that they will proclaim April 10 as anit-schol violence day in schools across Pennsylvania. And remember... TURN OFF THE VIOLENCE, PUMP UP THE PEACE!
Submitted by Jen G.

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