HELP US WIN! TEEN TRUTH Needs Your Help! We've just been accepted to compete for a $100,000 Pepsi Refresh Project grant that will help us bring TEEN TRUTH LIVE to 60,000 students in Canada. Voting is now open to the public through August 30th. Help us win by CASTING YOUR VOTE HERE! (www.refresheverything.ca/teentruth) TEEN TRUTH is also supporting 4th grade teacher Emilie Robichon's Saint Simone Apotre Elementary School proposal to bring a stop-motion animation film project to her class. To help the school win a $5,000 grant, VOTE HERE! Share these links with everyone you ...

TEEN TRUTH Film Wins National Award! We're excited to announce that our film, TEEN TRUTH: BODY IMAGE & SELF ESTEEM, recently brought home the Bronze during the 31st Telly Awards! Congrats to the cast and crew who worked so hard to bring this film together. We would also like to specially thank our supporting organizations: The Efrain Anthony Marrero Foundation, The Taylor Hooton Foundation, The Kristen Watt Foundation, and Hopewell

The girl’s parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J. Punish him, insisted the parents. “I said, ‘This occurred out of school, on a weekend,’” recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. “We can’t discipline him.” Had they contacted the boy’s family, he asked. Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together. What about the police, Mr. Orsini asked. A criminal ...

STOCKTON - To his friends, his family and the children in his neighborhood, Daniel Ausborne was a protector. "If he heard someone was getting picked on, he'd go take care of it," said Phil Campos, Ausborne's friend and first employer. Ausborne, 18, had been bullied for years, targeted for his learning disability, said his mother, Lars Kitcher. That treatment followed him through two high schools, and his death in May, after a shooting at American Legion Park, was just that, not a dispute between taggers, his friends and family said, but the ...

Elk Grove Unified School District teachers gave overwhelming approval Tuesday night to a two-year contract that included a pay cut, nine furlough days, an increase in their medical co-pay and the suspension of an annual bonus from lottery funds. There was 89 percent approval for the contract, said Tom Gardner, president of the Elk Grove Education Association. In return, the district agreed to cap class sizes in kindergarten through third grade at 24 and save 210 teacher and librarian jobs. "We have a history that we work cooperatively with our administration," Gardner said. "We don't have an interest in bankrupting our district. It's ...

NEW YORK – Next fall, when millions of kids tune into Cartoon Network to watch Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo and other favorites, they'll encounter something new — an ambitious campaign to enlist them as foot soldiers in the fight against bullying. Unlike many bullying programs, this one is geared toward middle school, where experts say bullying is most common. It also targets not bullies nor the bullied, but kids who witness bullying, giving them appropriate techniques to intervene. "There are specific strategies young people can learn to make a difference in their schools and communities," said Alice Cahn, Cartoon Network's vice president of ...

A 14-year-old boy in Concord, N.H., claims he was bullied into getting a tattoo on his buttocks May 10. His father tells the local paper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, that bullies at Concord High School threatened to beat the boy if he didn't submit to the tattoo. According to the father, the boy has attention deficit disorder and has been habitually bullied by older students. The bullies allegedly told him they would quit harassing him if he got a tattoo showing the outline of a male sex organ and offensive terms. If he refused to get the tattoo, the father tells the ...

THAT kid who turned your son’s second grade year into a tear- and bruise-ridden ordeal. The anonymous twit who sullied your daughter’s name on Formspring. Your own fifth-grade tormentor, circa 1979, gone but never well enough forgotten. Bad seeds, all? Or perhaps just anxious? Eager to win approval and affection? Two studies out this spring look at bullies’ motivations, inner workings and, yes, feelings. The first, “The Darker Side of Social Anxiety: When Aggressive Impulsivity Prevails Over Shy Inhibition,” finds bullies in a surprisingly sympathetic place. According to the authors, Todd Kashdan and Patrick E. McKnight, psychologists at George Mason University, ...

Bullies beware. Step foot on La Mesa Junior High School’s campus, and you’ll have to deal with guidance counselor Steve Paterson. For the last five years, Paterson has been the bully prevention coordinator. He’s launched a series of efforts that teach kids ways to identify bullying and, ultimately, help them to stop it. “(Students) can just feel free and know that people are here who will help them,” eighth-grader Emily Schroth said. Students like eighth-grader Schuylar Permann, the school’s difference-maker, is part of the school’s Safe School Ambassadors program, which trains kids on how to safely intervene during instances of bullying. Students sign a bully prevention ...

Sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson has spent the past seven months in a self-imposed solitary confinement of sorts. For 210 days, the avid sailor skippered her 34-foot yacht, the Pink Lady, around the world, a feat few others, let alone teenagers, have accomplished. But on Saturday afternoon, her solo trip ended in dramatic fashion as tens of thousands of cheering spectators and hundreds of boats turned out to welcome her home to Australia's Sydney Harbor, according to CNN affiliate Nine News. "I haven't seen a person for almost seven months and suddenly there's just people everywhere -- you know, faces, so much color, so much ...