ROSSFORD – The experience and techniques of dealing with bullying were presented to
district students Friday not through a lecture or a film strip, but through a
play.
The play, "New Canadian Kid", written by Dennis Koon, and performed by
students from the Rossford High School Drama Club, explores issues of bullying
in a school setting. In the production the main character, Nick, and his family,
move from the fictional nation of "Homeland" to Canada, where he has
to deal with a number of issues, including making new friends and dealing with
bullying.
The play, presented throughout the district Friday is also scheduled to be performed
at the Educational Theater Association’s State Theater Conference at Centerville
High School in March.
Throughout the production, the "Canadian" children speak a form of
gibberish, simulating the bewilderment "Nick", played by Justin
Maluchnik, feels in his new environment.
"Remember," his mother, played by Emily Cuprys tells him, "you’re as
strange to them as they are to you."
He eventually befriends "Mencha," played by Dotty Morris, but runs afoul of
"Mog," a bully played by Steve Everitt, who even goes so far as to
write offensive graffiti on Nick’s home.
"Every chance he’d get he’d call me names," Nick laments to the audience at
one point.
"I’ve dealt with bullies before," he tells his mother. "They’re
everywhere. Even Homeland. Picking on people is an international sport."

Eventually, Nick learns to deal with Mog, both by himself and with the help of
Mencha.
"Sometimes we just ignored him. And sometimes we just stood up to him," he
says.
By the end of the play, Nick and Mog have arrived, at least, at a little
understanding.
While the play and the performances were often humorous, the message was a serious
one.
"I think it’s very typical of the kind of bullying going on worldwide, not just
in our country," said Holly Schmidbauer, principal of Indian Hills
Elementary School, one of the sites for Friday’s performances. Each classroom
was given a study guide to go along with the play, and break-out discussions in
each classroom were to be held to talk about what the students saw.
Rossford is among a number of school districts in the area that are working on
recognizing and preventing bullying behavior – a subject that has grabbed
headlines and garnered national attention following much-publicized incidents of
hazing and cyberbullying that, in some cases, have cost the lives of young
people across the country.
As with the Perrysburg, Lake, and North Baltimore districts, Schmidbauer said that
Rossford is implementing the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, developed by
Dr. Dan Olweus of the University of Bergen’s Research Center for Health
Promotion in Norway, and noted as "the most researched and best-known
bullying prevention program available today." The program involves not only
students and their classrooms, but also their communities in the anti-bullying
effort on a number of levels.
Indian Hills itself is utilizing what they call a "Pride Matrix," a system
of expectations in the school that is expected to stop bullying behavior from
happening.
Schmidbauer said that the play was a great opportunity for grade schoolers to see
high school students that they look up to act out the bullying incidents and how
to deal with them.