The United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties – in partnership with the Innovative Learning Institute and renowned bullying prevention expert Dr. David M. Hall – offers innovative, research-based bullying prevention training for educators to address this growing crisis in our schools.
Through a grant from The Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation, the United Way and the Innovative Learning Institute worked with the Scranton School District, the Scranton Federation of Teachers Local 1147 and the Scranton School Board to offer a bullying prevention program aimed at arming educators with the tools necessary to combat this serious issue. Scholarships were awarded to allow teachers within the Scranton School District to successfully complete a three-credit, accredited graduate course online with Delaware Valley University in Bullying Prevention and Diversity. These courses provide participating educators with the framework needed to implement programs within their respective schools to reduce bullying and aggressive behavior.
To date, 17 teachers in the Scranton School District and five in the Wallenpaupack Area School School District (funded by the John and Helen Villaume Foundation) have successfully completed one of these courses. Participating teachers who successfully completed the course-work were also eligible for a $250 mini-grant to implement a bullying prevention program/activity in their respective schools.
We also worked with Dr. Hall and the Innovative Learning Institute to develop a Bullying Prevention Teacher’s Guide for Kindergarten - 4th Grade. Written by Dr. Nicole Yetter and Mrs. Meg Burke, the guide provides complete lesson plans at each age level and integrates literacy skills into bullying prevention. The lessons are aligned around learning standards to improve critical thinking and positively impact standardized test scores.
To introduce the guide, we held a full-day Bullying Prevention Workshop as more than 20 educators from the Scranton and Wallenpaupack Area School Districts and the Diocese of Scranton attended the workshop led by Dr. Yetter and Dr. Hall as well as Alyssa Walloff, literacy specialist. The Bullying Prevention Teacher’s Guides and the corresponding children’s books were distributed at the workshop and also to each elementary school in the Scranton and Wallenpaupack Area School Districts.