News : VSMS students hear about local and world-wide impact of bullying

Mark Brown showed students a drawing from a 5th grade girl during his anti-bullying presentation.

Like he has in hundreds of schools across America for the past two decades, Mark Brown stood in the gym at Vinton-Shellsburg Middle School and made students laugh as he talked about watching an animated Disney movie with his adolescent children.

And just like at every other school, Brown made students think, and some of them cry.

Brown brought his bullying discussion to Vinton on Wednesday, speaking to the VSMS student body.

He described the evening when he was watching Disney’s version of “Beauty and the Beast” when he realized that “The Mob Song” about the villagers’ fear of the Beast is something that plays out in schools all over the world, every day.

Brown sang part of that song, then repeated the words:

We don't like

What we don't understand

In fact it scares us

And this monster is mysterious at least

Bring your guns

Bring your knives

Save your children and your wives

We'll save our village and our lives

We'll kill the Beast!

Instead of clubs and knives, he said, students come to school with other weapons: Angry words, mean looks, hateful attitudes.

A native of Jamaica, Brown told the audience the names of three girls who bullied him in school 43 years ago. One of them even asked her brother to beat him. He then asked the students to imagine how their peers would remember them decades later. Bullying, he said, is a problem every place.

Brown shared a letter from a fifth grade girl who had heard him speak. She described how a bully made her feel. He urged the students to understand each other, to reach out to those who are different from them.

Quoting Mother Teresa and Saul of Tarsus, Brown told the students to refrain from saying hurtful things.

“Let no one come to you without leaving better and happier,” said Mother Teresa.

After describing a few of the words and gestures children use to put down each other, Brown made the famous “loser” gesture with his index finger and thumb forming the letter L. He then brought his arm down and said it’s a short distance from that gesture to violence, either through weapons at school, or suicide.

After Brown finished, Principal Shelly Peterson spoke to the students, reminding them that they are in the middle of their Iowa Assessment tests, which are very important for both the students and the school. She told them that only important issues could affect the assessment week schedule, and the bullying issue is very important.

Brown had mentioned an empty chair, a place left vacant by teens who committed suicide after being bullied. Mrs. Peterson told the students that there is such an empty chair in her extended family. She too asked the students to think about how their classmates would think about them when they return for reunions 10 or 20 years after graduation.