Welcome to HEAR!
HEAR – Helping Everyone Achieve Respect – marks an exciting new stage in our ongoing initiative to combat bullying in our nation’s schools. Today we launched our new and vastly expanded website, which features a host of new products and value-added services for teachers, school counselors and administrators. In addition, our new site now serves as a comprehensive source for educators, parents and students alike looking to find helpful insight, news and published research on bullying prevention measures and methods working across the country.
HEAR is a series of research-based bullying prevention presentations that combine unparalleled research and best practices with real-world student engagement. Leading childhood education and psychology researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the University of Nebraska—Lincoln have teamed with educational training professionals at Career Training Concepts, Inc. (CTC) to create HEAR. The result is a proven classroom-based solution that teaches students how to identify bullying and what they can do to help thwart this destructive behavior.
Moving Beyond Awareness
The defining principle behind HEAR is the need to move beyond awareness of bullying to actively engaging our teachers and their students in doing something about it. “Awareness of bullying in our schools has certainly grown over the past decade,” noted Richard Weissbourd, Ed.D., Director, Human Development and Psychology Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education, who co-authored the HEAR presentations for students. “Yet, teachers and school counselors still have an urgent need for cost-effective, data-based strategies and curriculum that engage students directly.”
Proactive Student Engagement
HEAR co-author Susan M. Swearer, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist and Willa Cather Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and Co-Director of the Bullying Research Network, agrees. “Visibility alone doesn’t go far enough,” noted Dr. Swearer. “We based our development of HEAR for High Schools and HEAR for Middle Schools on a data-driven decision-making model for responding to bullying among high school students – and it is having a positive impact.”
HEAR for High Schools consists of a 50-minute interactive classroom presentation, 16-page student workbook, training manual, PowerPoint slides, a commitment banner, student survey and other valuable research and reference resources. HEAR for High Schools is presented at no cost to schools by trained members of the National Guard in alignment with the Guard’s core principles and reputation for serving, protecting and defending our communities. Since its inception two years ago, more than 400,000 student workbooks have been delivered to the Guard for presentation to high schools in 46 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
New – HEAR for Middle Schools
HEAR for Middle Schools is a similarly structured bullying prevention program recently developed to address the specific, age-appropriate needs of middle school students. HEAR for Middle Schools is now available at a relatively low cost-per-student as a stand-alone curriculum package, a fully delivered classroom service, or through a variety of curriculum materials and teacher training solutions.
A Call for Partners
HEAR is currently seeking corporate partners to help defray the cost to schools of experiencing the benefits of HEAR for Middle Schools. For information on how to sponsor HEAR for Middle Schools, contact Michael Ares at [email protected].