STANDING UP TO BULLIES—Crestview Elementary School students, from left, Claire Weatherstrom, Sania Boyd and Nick Franco try to stack up cups representing the ways to avoid being bullied during The Bully Game with John Abrams at the school on Jan. 7. Abrams brings the interactive assembly to schools nationwide. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers Learning can often be fun, but can a subject as serious as bullying be taught in a way that’s fun as well as informative? That was the goal of an assembly at Crestview Elementary School last week.

About 400 students in grades kindergarten through six attended last Friday’s event designed to teach students about bullying and ways to prevent it.

Hosted by John Abrams, creator of The Bully Game, as the assembly is called, the event had the kids cheering, giggling and, at times, screaming with delight. Three lucky students were pulled out of the crowd to play contestants in the game-show-style assembly. Even a few teachers got up on stage to participate.

SILLY GAMES, SERIOUS SUBJECT—Crestview Elementary School student Claire Weatherstrom tries to catch the twisting, flying toilet paper as John Abrams uses a leafblower to spin it off the roll and into the air during The Bully Game last week. The assembly helps kids identify signs of bullying. IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers The father of two teenagers, Abrams said the ultimate goal of his one-man show is to make a better life for students.

During the hour-long assembly, Abrams defined bullying, in simple terms, as causing someone to get their feelings hurt or to get physically hurt. He also told kids that the best way to protect themselves from a bully is to hang out with a friend.

He then introduced bully-prevention concepts, including teasing versus taunting, chatter versus gossip and witness versus bystander, through magic tricks, comedy and games. Abrams gave the student contestants scenarios and they had to “buzz in” with the correct term.

“Chatter is when you’re talking to your friend. Nobody’s getting their feelings hurt,” Abrams told the youngsters. “Gossip is a whole other monster.”

Abrams also made a distinction between tattling and being a good witness: Tattling is telling on someone just to get them in trouble and being a good witness means telling on someone to get someone else out of trouble.

His overall message to the kids was that building a bullyfree school means no more taunting, no more gossip and being a good witness.

“If you see someone getting bullied and you join in or laugh at them, you are just as bad as the bully,” Abrams said.

After the show, Abrams said in an interview that teaching this vocabulary is the first step in combating bullying because it gets students and teachers on the same page and it makes it easier to identify and talk about the problem.

“The biggest comments I get are on the telling (as a good witness) versus tattling. Because not only do teachers not know really how to clarify it, kids of course don’t know and parents don’t know. So once we clarify that, all of a sudden the kids go, oh I should tell or no maybe I shouldn’t tell because it’s just getting someone in trouble.”

Third-grader Lily Oh said she thought Abrams was “ really funny.” But even though the show kept her and her classmates laughing, they were learning, too.

“I learned what a bystander is and not to be one, (but) to be a witness,” the 9-year-old said. “I also learned that being a tattletale is different than being a witness.”

Crestview principal Theresa Garner said Abrams gave the students as well as her staff “concrete tools” for identifying bullying and dealing with it.

Crestview PTA President Pam Dean agreed.

“I thought it was a great message and I thought he really got it down to their level,” said Dean, whose son Alex attended the assembly. “Hopefully it will stick. Hopefully it sinks in.”

Abrams created The Bully Game about five years ago and has performed it all over Southern and Central California.

Formerly a struggling actor, Abrams needed to find a way to make a consistent living—something acting in commercials didn’t provide. As a result, he started a magic show with live animals, which was successful but hard to book at schools. So he asked school officials what they wanted.

“I would travel to different schools and I’d ask the PTA person, the principal, I’d say, ‘What’s the biggest problem in your school?’” Abrams said. “So I came up with The Bully Game. Because every PTA person, every principal, every teacher was saying bullying.”

In the morning’s first assembly, with fourth-, fifth- and sixthgraders, Abrams tackled more serious issues—such as cyber-bullying— than he did with the younger kids.

“ What’s happening on Facebook and Twitter, that’s becoming an even worse epidemic than what’s happening at school,” Abrams said after the show.

Unfortunately, the Internet also creates a gray area with regard to who is responsible, he said, since the repercussions are felt on campus but online bullying usually starts at home.

Abrams also shared with the older kids some hard-hitting statistics. For example, if a person consistently bullies throughout elementary, middle and high school, they are 10 times more likely to go to prison by the time they’re 25.

Middle school is statistically when bullying peaks, Abrams said, and the best way to combat that is to start teaching anti-bullying concepts early on.

“If you start in elementary school learning these concepts and these ideas, hopefully it will carry on into (middle school),” he said.

Garner said that, as a new principal, one of her goals is fostering a positive school climate with a focus on treating others with kindness and respect. She said The Bully Game assembly ties into that message.

“It’s just about getting kids aware and building that positive school climate,” Garner said. “We know it’s out there. . . . We’re being proactive. Before it becomes a problem, we’re making sure we address it.”