Glen Cove's Finley Middle School Collaborates with Tilles Center in Innovative Program to Combat Bullying in School and in Neighborhoods

Laura, Glenda, Nick and Otter are students at Glen Cove's Finley Middle School. They are among the approximately 30 eighth graders involved in “Sticks and Stones,” a most unusual workshop that addresses the epidemic of bullying that is being reported all across the country, and examines the impact of bullying on children's lives, whether they are the victims of bullying or are committing bullying against others.

Laura and Glenda are deeply engaged in the activities of the workshop, mostly writing about their feelings and discussing the feelings of others. However, both said that they have not experienced bullying first hand.

But Nick and Otter know just how damaging it can be to become the target of bullying. As Otter, who is Asian, explained: "It totally threw a monkey wrench into my life. The name calling and shoving affected everything."

And Nick, who describes himself as "a sort of a geek," said he became a target of bullying when he was a fifth grader.

Sticks and Stones was initiated and is being supported by Tilles Center for the Performing Arts on the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University as part of its extensive Arts Education program. Lyle Cogen, a multitalented actress, songwriter and teaching artist, was commissioned by Tilles Center to develop a theater piece that comes right out of the lives of adolescents, using their writings and feelings as core material. Cogen has been working with this group at Finley for several months, guiding the students in performance activities and in writing poems and monologues that explore their feelings about differences and about bullying.

Sticks and Stones is a work-in-progress that will be showcased at Tilles Center in late March 2008 for an audience of educators and students who will critique the work and its effectiveness for student audiences. Once complete, Sticks and Stones will premiere at Tilles Center in December and then tour Long Island schools and nationally.

Vicky Cohen, an English teacher at Finley Middle School, pointed to the fact that the Glen Cove school district is highly diverse; she said that Lyle Cogen's teachings and the writing activities she has led have served to celebrate that diversity. Speaking of the importance of the school's proactively addressing bullying, Nomi Rosen, Glen Cove's director of fine arts, said that bullying "has become a critical issue in the lives of middle school kids, here in Glen Cove and across the nation." She explained that the Tilles Center program is providing us with "an opportunity to express creatively an issue that's a deep and painful part of the lives of youngsters.”

Posted: February 19, 2008