MARLBORO — Teasing and taunting may seem like part of everyone’s childhood, but the hurt that is caused to the victim early in life can last for years. That was one of Erahm Christopher’s messages to pupils at the Marlboro Memorial Middle School when he visited on March 24 with his presentation “Teen Truth Live” about bullying and school violence. Christopher showed students a powerful video that was filmed by five students of various backgrounds who took a camera into their daily lives. Christopher asked the ...

Here's the latest from the TEEN TRUTH newsroom... CADA/CASL & TEEN TRUTH's SCHOOL SAFTEY ROAD SHOW made a stop in San Diego, CA this month at the 2011 CADA State Conference. The event featured content from all three TEEN TRUTH Films and interactions with TEEN TRUTH LIVE speakers JC Pohl, Michael Sarich, and Stephanie Armstrong. This month's ROAD SHOW also featured a panel hosted by 16-year-old CASL State President Jamal Edwards (pictured above at left) who introduced experts from the US DOJ, CASC, The PLUS Program, Kennedy High School, and ...

Stern and serious stands Michael Sarich. His height and build gives some clue that he could have been the professional baseball player he had planned to become when he was a standout at Live Oak High School. A few steps closer and his glassy, green eyes give some clue to the tears that fell minutes ago. Sarich's chin quivered as he shared his testimony last Friday in Britton Middle School's gymnasium about how he spiraled out of control in the late 1990s as a 16-year-old after his father ...

If you're not making a difference, you're doing nothing. That was the message sent to hundreds of Rancho Cucamonga High School students on Tuesday during a Teen Truth Live assembly. "Our main focus is to have students realize how important it is to tell the truth and not to hold it in," said J.C. Pohl, the emcee of the assembly. "They have the power to be the difference at school, home and the community." Pohl - who admits he's a filmmaker and not a motivational speaker - challenged students to watch and discuss bullying through film footage ...

A teenager’s self-image can be damaged by what they see on TV, read in magazines and hear from celebrities — and from unkind remarks by others. Teen Truth Live speaker Stephanie Armstrong of San Diego gave some good advice last week to seventh-graders at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Scripps Ranch to bolster their self-confidence. “About 70 percent of girls get their idea of a perfect female body from the images they see in magazines,” Armstrong told the 500 students, who had ...

DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. — Ronnie Brown just had to come here, to this sprawling middle school campus about 40 miles north of Miami where 600 kids at an assembly hang on his every word. Violence brought him here. In October 2009, Michael Brewer, a 15-year-old student at Deerfield Beach Middle School, was sprayed with rubbing alcohol and lit on fire in an off-campus incident stemming from a beef over a video game. Over 75% of his body was burned. In March, Josie Lou Ratley, 15, suffered permanent brain damage when he was beaten outside ...

When film producer JC Pohl was growing up, events such as the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two students killed 12 of their peers and one teacher, didn't seem commonplace. Since then, the episodes of campus violence have multiplied. Wanting to understand why shootings kept happening, Pohl and film director Erahm Christopher found five teenagers throughout the United States to carry a camera with them everywhere they went and document a year in their high schools. The footage, raw and honest, became the backdrop for "Teen Truth Live: Bully & ...

DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. – Amid hours of noise, the moment Miami Dolphins running back Ronnie Brown(notes) made a connection with the 600 or so fidgety teenagers sitting in front of him at Deerfield Beach Middle School was defined by an almost imperceptible bit of silence. Brown, standing on the stage of the cafetorium, admitted something he had never openly discussed. He talked about something deeply painful and, when you’re young, potentially embarrassing. The kind of thing a kid isn’t responsible for, but nonetheless can find emotionally damaging. “My parents were incarcerated for ...

MIAMI – In front of an auditorium full of impressionable freshmen and sophomores at Miami-Northwestern High School this morning, Miami Dolphins running back Ronnie Brown introduced his new initiative aimed at curbing youth violence in schools. Aptly titled “23 WAYS To Stop Youth Violence,” this initiative is part of the new Ronnie Brown Project and today’s trip to Northwestern was the first of eight such trips scheduled throughout the season. The next stop for Brown and his partners will be Deerfield Beach Middle School, where an 8th grade girl was beaten into ...