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Education advocates have created a curriculum aimed a preventing bullying in schools. But unlike most programs, this one isn’t meant for the victims – it’s meant for the perpetrators. WNPR’s Neena Satija reports. Cut one: Kids who bully –something else is going on in there. And it’s not good. Shelly Haller is executive director of the Justice Education Center, which created the Bias and Bullying School Diversion Curriculum. Its goal is to change the attitudes of students who may be causing trouble for their classmates by asking those students to consider the impact of their behavior on themselves, their targets, and their communities as a whole. If they can begin to get at what those issues are for themselves, they can begin to manage, and perhaps reduce the likelihood, of even feeling the need to have that kind of behavior in the future," says Haller. The program can take place in schools after classes have finished. In one session, students identify influential people and places in their lives, and the type of connection they have with them – whether strongly positive, negative, or perhaps stressful. Haller says this kind of curriculum goes to the heart of the problem,– the bullies themselves. She believes it’s far more useful than a traditional disciplinary measure. "The worst possible thing that can happen, it seems to me, is to focus on the bullying in such a way as to either expel or suspend that individual without trying to change their behaviors," Haller says. "Because if you do that, the likelihood of them increasing those behaviors, I think, is pretty certain, and you haven’t helped solve the problem." Haller would like to see every school in the state implement a program like this for their kids, and she says she has strong support from members of the Connecticut General Assembly to fund the initiative in the next session. For WNPR, I’m Neena Satija.