Ninth grade was the first time I had to deal with a bully. He wasn't much in stature, actually, he looked like me, tall and skinny. But, I was new to the school, I didn't have much support, and he, clearly, had  a mental hold on many of the students in my 6th period class. I had watched him punch classmates in the ribs, put others in headlocks, bend arms behind their backs and steal their personal items. When he wasn't doing that, he was verbally assaulting them. This is something that many kids deal with today. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that half of all children are bullied at some point while they are in primary or secondary school.

It's not often to find a child brave enough to speak out about being bullied. If they talk, they take the risk that the bullying could escalate. But one local teen and his mother said there's too much at stake to ignore the growing problem.

Bryan Patrick Sands, an eighth-grader, said he's been bullied since he first went to Follansbee Middle School and now it's too much to handle.

"Since fifth grade, they've thrown rocks at my head and shoved my head in the fence," Sands said. "Someone's going to kill me or something. I feel like they're really trying to hurt me or something."

 ROMEO AND DYNAMO’S                    

ACTS OF KINDNESS I DID/ACTS OF KINDNESS I SAW

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