Columbine led to book on bullies

When bullying problems come up at East Midvale Elementary School, school psychologist Paula Ashcraft knows who to call.

Herself.

Paula and three peers are the authors of a scholastic helpbook published last summer called "The Tough Kid Bully Blockers Book."

The book's pages are filled with strategies on how to deal with kids who taunt, tease, torment, push, shove, hit, belittle, extort lunch money and terrorize the playground.

Every kid has met one, or will meet one.

Mrs. Ashcraft's message is simple: no matter how big or threatening bullies might appear, they can be blocked.

Paula Ashcraft doesn't look like the kind of person who is going to take on bullies. No Clint Eastwood glint. No Hillary Swank swagger. She's petite and not much taller than many sixth-graders. She describes her height as "5-3 but feisty."

It's the feisty part you have to watch out for.

A sign in her office sums up her worldview: "Everything I learned in life I learned on the playground."

She's been involved in elementary education for 30 years, the last eight at East Midvale, but it was an event that occurred 10 years ago this April that dramatically directed her focus to the problem of bullying.

"Columbine just haunted me," she says, referring to the tragedy at Colorado's Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, when two students killed 12 other students and a teacher and wounded 23 more before killing themselves.

The shooters had been bullied and were now turning the tables on the bullies — permanently.

"Studies show that 70 percent of school shooters have reported being bullied themselves," says Paula. "That really impacted me."

Not long after Columbine, Paula and Julie Bowen, a colleague at Cottonwood Heights Elementary School, which has since closed, started collaborating on how to nip bullying in the bud.

"We were running into so many kids who were targets of bullying and didn't know how to handle it," says Paula. "We needed to do something to help . . . ."

Their research and strategizing was later combined with input from two more educators, William R. Jensen and Ginger Rhode, to produce the "Tough Kids Bully Blocker Book."

The book has all sorts of useful tips and strategies.