Stop Bullying: How Parents and Professionals Can Support Kids

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re talking about bullying, the impact it has on kids and what we as parents and professionals can do to support kids around this issue. Bullying in the age of the internet has become an even more widespread problem than it was before, and it’s not just impacting older kids. Kids of all ages are affected, and children who are neurodivergent, or have other unique needs, or differences are often prime targets for this damaging behavior. The ways that we’ve traditionally thought about and tried to address bullying haven’t necessarily curbed the problem in substantial ways, and I hear stories in my clinic every week about how this is negatively impacting kids’ mental health, physical health and their overall quality of life. So to help us unpack this issue, and to provide some tangible solutions, I’ve got Rebecca Burd on the show today. Let me tell you a bit about her.

She believes bullying is an epidemic we can end. As the CEO of Create Change productions and the cofounder of Speak Life End Bullying, she co-wrote Speak Life End Bullying, The Musical, an engaging musical featured in secondary schools across the country. Since the first live performance, more than 389,000 students have been impacted. In 2021, Rebecca led her team to turn the production into an on-demand film. Now the fight against bullying happens in any school anywhere, at any time. Today, she’s launching a national movement of moms to become Mombassadors so moms can bring solutions by offering the Speak Life End Bullying film and lesson plans to their local schools. As an industry leader in end-bullying solutions for schools for over 25 years, Rebecca and her team create culture shifts in schools across the nation by teaching students to Speak Life for a lifetime. I love that. We’re going to hear all about it. Rebecca, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Rebecca Burd

Oh, my goodness, thank you so much for having me. What an honor to be here, and to be here with your listeners. Thank you so much.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Well, we were talking before we started recording, and I said, I think this is perfect timing. We’re towards the beginning of the school year, at least here in the US. These kinds of things are on our radar again, after the summer is done. And I think it’s a perfect time for us to be unpacking this and really helping parents to think about how they can get involved around this issue. So I’d love to start with your story about how you first got involved in this. What put bullying or maybe more specifically anti-bullying efforts on your radar?

Rebecca Burd

That’s a great question. This really began for us back in 2001. This was about two years following Columbine, and my husband and I had both been working in the arts and working with youth, at this point for almost two years. And we were just privileged one afternoon to be invited to a meeting with a lot of other people across Long Island, which is where we were originally from, who were also meeting just to kind of talk about some issues that youth were facing. And the topic of bullying was the focus of this particular meeting. And an audio clip was played that day from a gentleman named Frank Peretti. He’s an author, and this was his only work of nonfiction. He had written the story of how he had been horrifically bullied through elementary school and middle school. He had been born with some deformities, and kids had just been ruthless with him. And he said something — now again, we’re going all the way back to 2001, he said some things that at the time, were just not being said. At the time, I think, when we grew up in school, bullying was sort of looked at as a rite of passage. It’s just something you have to go through, you just deal with it. We used to speak to the child being bullied and say, “Just be stronger, you can get through this.” And that’s sort of how we were all raised. And so in this book, Frank raised the question: Are we approaching bullying in the wrong way? Are we not calling it what it is? Because it truly can become abusive in the life of a child and it can actually change the outcome of their life. And he said that if we can begin to talk about it and the seriousness of what it is, maybe as adults, we can intervene and begin to change things. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room. The 30 of us sitting around the table, all adults of all ages. And we got up, we went up to the leader of the meeting, and we said “We can’t just walk out of here, we need to do something.” And he said, “Well, you are the artists. Go do something about it.” And literally, those words change the outcome of our lives. My husband had stories of both being bullied and how his pain turned into him being the bully as he grew up in high school. I certainly sat in the seat of the bystander, I saw it all the time and I didn’t know what to do or how to intervene. And so we both had moments on all sides of the issue. But there’s something that happened that day that planted something in us that said, “This is your mission”, and we went, we met with our very small team of volunteers at the time who were artists, and we wrote the first rendition of what Speak Life End Bullying, The Musical now looks like today. Back then, there weren’t anti-bullying assembly programs really going on in schools. This was an all new thing. And so we just knocked on the doors of some schools and said, “Hey, we’re just a small performing arts company, could we come in? Could we present this for your students?” And slowly but surely, schools started to say yes. And fast forward 15 years later, we were in almost about 370 schools, 375,000 students who had seen us perform live, we had toured 13 times with almost 250 artists that had come in and volunteered from around the globe to be a part of it. We were just launching here in Florida, which is where we live now, and COVID hit. That was a moment where we just had to say, you know what? We need to kind of maybe pause a little and potentially pivot, like most of us had to in that moment. And we just knew that this couldn’t stop. Even if assemblies were stopping, this couldn’t stop. And so we had just made a wonderful relationship with Justin and Taryn Simmons. Justin is the safety for the Denver Broncos, an incredible NFL player who is passionate about at-risk kids. He came alongside us, and we said, what if we were to turn this into a film, like Hamilton was just done on Disney+? And he said, “Let’s do it”. And so he and his wife and their foundation, the Justin Simmons Foundation funded the film. And now we have Speak Life End Bullying the musical done in the most professional way, the way that we always dreamed it could be. It’s kind of like a little mini Broadway production brought to film. And now alongside of that, we were able to work with incredible administrators who cumulatively have over 75 years of expertise in the field working in schools, working with students, and also John Maxwell coaches, just phenomenal, phenomenal humans who built out our curriculum, and it runs right alongside. I’m sure we’ll talk more about that. So that’s what kind of brought us to this moment and brought this to life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, I love it. You became aware of an issue and were like, “How can we be a part of solving this problem?” And I’m really glad you touched on the issue of those of us in the generation of being parents right now, what our experience was of that as kids, because I think that’s so right on. In previous generations, it was this idea of “Don’t be a victim, stand up for yourself, just be tough. Just ignore it.” It was sort of, like you said, a rite of passage. And yet, there’s so much research now. We have such a different and better understanding of that, and the trauma that that creates in the brains of children. We have, I think, a more nuanced and broader understanding of what constitutes bullying than we did back then. And also this understanding that bullying doesn’t just impact the child who’s being bullied, as you noted, it impacts bystanders, it impacts the other kids who are witnessing it, and the bullies, the kids who are engaging in the bullying behaviors are also victims in their own way in all of this. And I think those are things that we have come to understand now, that we didn’t before. But that gives us some opportunities to approach this in a better way, right? So let’s talk about, just to sort of set the stage, around how prevalent an issue this is. Because I find in my work with parents, the majority of parents underestimate how much this is going on, whether their child may be involved in some aspect of that equation. So just sort of frame that up for us. How prevalent is bullying? What different types of bullying are we seeing these days?

Rebecca Burd

Yeah, I think we read a statistic recently that was talking about bullying and talking about the mental health crisis that our students were facing today. And I think the news we have to absorb as adults and parents is that the mental health crisis is here, it’s arrived. We’re in the middle of it with our kids. Bullying has never been more prevalent than it is today, in all forms. Forms that we didn’t even have when we were growing up. With the introduction of social media, the biggest thing we notice — now again, we started in 2001, so we were in schools long before social media was a thing, long before kids were being bullied online. And so what we saw happening with kids back then was that at least at the end of the day, they could hop on their bus, they could go home, they could hide in the privacy of their own bedroom, they could come into, hopefully, the comforts of their own home and their parents and their family. Now, it chases them, it literally haunts them, and they are hunted down, and there’s no way to escape. As long as that phone is in their hand, which most students just do not exist without that phone in their hand in this day and age, they are being chased, hunted, and pursued. And many times, kids are finding themselves caught up in it, whether it’s happening inside a group text, it’s happening on a social media platform, it’s happening in person and then carrying over to those other platforms. It is just relentless and ruthless. And because we’re now seeing it happen behind the screen, there’s a dehumanization on a level that we also never experienced as kids. If a child was going to pursue you in a negative way, he had to do it to your face back in the day. He had to see that human being’s reaction and response. Now a child could get on, say words that he doesn’t even know how they’re landing. They’re just saying them because they’re caught up in whatever experience has brought them to this point. And so I would say that what we’re dealing with today as parents is something that if we are not giving incredibly focused attention to, and that we’re not taking the time to be on our kids’ phones and checking what they’re doing and checking what’s coming in to them, making sure that we’re being vigilant at our schools, getting involved, supporting our administrators, supporting our principals and our teachers to help them, because as much as it’s become a crisis in the sense that as parents, we feel a little helpless, imagine how our schools feel. They’re feeling just as helpless. And if we don’t all get involved, we’re not going to bring the real solutions that our kids deserve and need.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So true. And I think that helplessness, I feel for the schools and that I’ve had parents say, “Well, they’re not doing enough.” It becomes really tricky when these things are going on, on social media, on the Internet, outside of school areas. It becomes very difficult to figure out whose responsibility that is, how to navigate that. I’ve even talked to law enforcement who say it’s very, very difficult. So clearly, trying to address this just from an authoritarian, punitive, like, “Let’s catch who’s doing this and punish them,” that’s not workable for a whole lot of reasons. But especially in this day and age with the internet, that’s just not possible. But I really appreciate you sharing the pervasiveness of this, because I think that’s something that for those of us who were raised in previous generations, it’s hard to wrap our heads around that because our reality was so different. We could escape that. Even things that maybe wouldn’t clearly fall in the category of bullying. I remember some situations just with some catty girls, or some things going on that I wouldn’t call bullying, but that were distressing, that were uncomfortable, that you’re right, I got to go home and get a break from it and process it, and kids now don’t. And I want to say to parents who are listening, I talk a lot on the show in various ways about understanding root causes and contributing factors to symptoms that your kids are having. One of the things far and away that my colleagues and I see when kids, teens, even young adults are presenting with new symptoms of significant anxiety or depression, when they finally develop enough trust in us to open up about what’s going on, it is very common that a story comes out about some type of bullying issue, whether it’s threats or unkind comments online, or there’s all this blocking behavior now that happens. And he said, she said, posting pictures of like all of these things that fall under this category now of bullying that happens online, it’s very common for kids and young people to end up disclosing that that’s been going on, and suddenly it helps bring into focus so much more clearly why they’ve developed these symptoms, and it gives us an opportunity then, to give them the support they need around that. But I think there’s still so much stigma around this. Parents aren’t asking, kids are embarrassed and ashamed or don’t even know how to step up and talk about it, or they’ve maybe tried to go to an adult and it’s been dismissed. And so they stay quiet about it and they suffer internally, and that can show up in all kinds of emotional and behavioral ways. And so I think it’s just so important for adults to understand that.

Rebecca Burd

Yes, I think you brought up an exceptional point, because if we don’t create spaces where our kids feel safe enough to have these conversations, that’s where we’re losing our children. I mean, that is it. That is the truth. I mean, when we’re seeing children lost, whether it’s to suicide, or whether their mental health has decreased to such a point that they’re not even able to pursue the things they love or pursue the future that they want, we’re losing those children because they’re searching for the safety. They’re searching to find a place. Where can I share? Where can I open up? Where can I tell my story and know that it’s going to land in a way that I’m going to receive the help that I really need? We had a beautiful little girl, Sophia, who saw the film about nine months ago. She saw it when we first premiered, it was a friends and family premiere, and she came to it. And we just interviewed her this summer again, so nine months later. And she shared so vulnerably. And what she said was “I was struggling, I was at the point where I was thinking about the fact that maybe it would just be better if I wasn’t here.” And she said, “I didn’t really feel like I wanted to put that pressure on my parents.” She has a very loving home, a very loving family. She said “I didn’t want to put that pressure on them because I felt that I was just being more of a burden.” But she said, “When I saw the film, what occurred to me was that somewhere, somebody knows what I’m feeling. Because nobody would put that story up there. Nobody would tell that story. No adult would have made this happen and brought this to a film if they didn’t get me, if they didn’t see me.” And she said, “When I saw that somebody saw me, I knew they cared. And if they cared, my parents cared.” And so she shared and she told her parents what was truly going on, they got her into therapy, they got her the help that she needed. And nine months later, she is this happy and bright and open and beautiful girl she always intended to be. She’s pursuing things that she’d never pursued before. But the key for her was a knowledge that she was seen, that she was that somebody heard her, that somebody understood her, and that somebody cared enough, that she was not a burden, but that her story mattered. And so I think we as parents, and within our schools, have to be thinking: How are we creating these spaces of safety for our students? And that’s legitimately why this program exists, and why we believe and have seen the effectiveness of it. I’m a parent of three boys. So it’s something I have to think about every day in my own home. How am I creating that space?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Beautiful, I so appreciate you sharing that. I know that that’s touching so many people who are listening. we’re going to get into how what you’ve created is different, and why this is the messaging that’s so needed. But I want to spend a minute talking about the ways in which we’ve gotten this wrong, because I think that there’s parents and even professionals listening who were like, “Oh we’ve been doing the anti-bullying thing. We bring in a speaker every year”, or parents going, “Oh yeah, okay. I’ve talked to my kids about this”, or “My kids would tell me if it was going on” or “Oh, we had a conversation about it once”, and not realizing that how we’ve so often thought about this and even addressed it has not hit the mark. Where do you think we’ve gone wrong in the ways that we’ve approached this previously?

Rebecca Burd

Such a good question. I really believe that most of the time, when we’re seeing bullying take place, when we’re seeing a child come to a place where they’re actually becoming aggressive, whether with their words or their actions towards another peer. I think oftentimes, that is stemming from their own pain. And I really believe, from what I’ve seen in students, that it’s stemming from something I would call survival mode. Kids who walk into school every single day with the thought process of “How do I survive this day?” And so if that means that to survive, to stay at whatever it is, at the top of my group, to keep the status that I need to stay out of the way of someone else’s aggression, that I need to come and almost step on someone else to get one more rung up that ladder, so that I can survive. Not even thrive, just survive and make it through. I’ll do whatever it takes. And so I really, truly believe most kids are not waking up in the morning going, “How am I going to hurt somebody today?” Kids are not doing that. They find themselves wrapped up in these situations where they’re just hurting someone else. And I think that most of the time, because of this survival mode that they’re in, they don’t take that second to pause and say, “How are my words actually landing? How are my actions actually landing? How is what I’m saying right now potentially going to change the outcome of this other person’s life that is standing in front of me?” And to me the key that’s in there, between knowledge and fact, because we’re working really hard as parents, administrators to give them the facts. “Our words matter, your actions matter, they can hurt people”, we’ve said these things time and time again, so they know. So what’s missing between the knowledge and the ability to create an actionable change in their life? To me, that missing piece is empathy. If kids can understand, truly in their heart, how I am actually making this other person feel when I say this and when I do this, and how then that could potentially cause a chain reaction that could bring that person to a place where they might contemplate suicide or they may contemplate hurting or harming themselves. If we knew that from a place of empathy within our hearts, kids would be so much less quick to just survive, to just come out with whatever that might be that keeps them a little bit more on top. It would give them pause, it would give them that moment to think and to process inside themselves. “Hey, would I want someone to say that to me? How would that make me feel if that happened?” And so, why are we getting it wrong? Probably because — and I’m just going to use what one of our students said back to us, a wonderful, incredible senior this year, his name is Brandon. He looked at me and he said, “Rebecca, I think the difference is we’ve had a lot of speakers come through, they say a lot of amazing things. But sometimes when we just hear it, we hear it, we retain it, we think it’s great in the moment, and then we walk out and we forget it. The power of the arts and story does something different. We hear it, we see it, and then we feel it.” And he said, when you put those three components together, you didn’t just do it in the moment. You planted an imprint in their brain”, and I’ve had a neuropsychologist now explain this to me. And she’s like, “Rebecca, this is science, this is what it does, it will legitimately imprint into their brain through the power of that music and that story, and that they will carry with them for the rest of their life.” And that’s the kind of seed of speaking life that we want to plant in students that will take hold for a lifetime. And that is the power of story and the arts. And I think that’s where we could actually get it right.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so true because when I talk to kids around this, we see kids at the clinic who are in the role of being the bully. They know. Intellectually, they know the right thing to say, they know they shouldn’t. We know this on a neuroscience level, when you connect that to emotion, when you embody that in them emotionally, it has a much bigger impact. I love that. And I think the other piece that I would say, just having worked in the schools previously, even still doing a lot of work with schools, but now working primarily outside the school system, I think one of the areas, we’ve gotten it wrong is we’ve relied on the traditional sort of disciplinary structures of school to handle this problem, like, “Oh, well, we’re going to give you detention if you do these things, or we’re going to call your parents or we’re going to suspend you”, there’s going to be some sort of punishment. And we’ve done episodes on the show before, and we’ll keep doing them forevermore about why those traditional disciplinary mechanisms don’t work for changing behavior in any area. But I think we’ve gotten that wrong, of assuming that if we punish this behavior, that that’s going to stop it. And in fact, we know that that’s not true, number one, and number two, it actually is completely disconnected from the real problem, which you just so beautifully laid out, of kids feeling disconnected, of them hurting, of them having their own traumas, of them not feeling seen or heard or cared for. Traditional disciplinary methods do nothing to solve that problem. In fact, in some ways, they make it worse. And so I think that’s another area where there’s been good intentions around using that to stop bullying behavior, and yet it doesn’t have an impact.

Rebecca Burd

Yes. Oh, I so agree with you. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, because we’re discussing this much more in schools in today’s day and age. We’ve talked about the social emotional learning component. And I think we can’t disconnect from the fact that we are emotional beings. So if a child is walking in and using their words or their actions to harm, the first question needs to be, why? Why is that child doing that? There must be another story behind that story. In fact, one of the songs in our show is called Shadow Story, and it’s the story of our prom queen, and she’s kind of a girl who’s super loose with her words. She’s sort of that mean girl character. And in the film, we talk about the divorce home that she comes from, and the conflict that she’s dealing with between her two parents. And the fact that when she walks into school, no one knows this. In fact, she works hard all day to keep up a persona that says “None of that’s happening. None of that pain exists in my life.” And she works so hard to do it. And kids, that is their survival mode, they don’t want to go to vulnerable places where those feelings and emotions surface because they don’t feel safe for those to be out there. And for other people to see them and hear them. And so as adults, we have to step in and A: How do we teach them how to see and feel and open up to one another in a way? Because when we get curious and when we have that opportunity to say, “You know what? When so and so said that to me, maybe that wasn’t about me. Maybe when they said that to me, that was about something they’re going through.” A, that helps us to get to a place to offer some forgiveness much more quickly, and B, that helps the child to not let it land and sink into their soul and take ownership of something that has nothing to do with them that was never about them to begin with. And so it’s on both sides of the issue. We’ve got to help those kids who are suffering and in pain, going through these things and it’s coming out sideways on their peers. And then we’ve got to help the kids it’s coming out sideways on to say, “Okay, let’s stop for a second, let’s walk through the process, have some curiosity here, and see if maybe that can’t lead to a better understanding”, and then working into those children, all children need this, whether they’re bullying or being bullied, a deeper understanding of self. And then getting to know themselves better, because the more they know themselves, the more when someone says something that they know, “Hey, that’s not me, that’s not who I am.” They’re not even going to let that land because they won’t receive that, because they know who they are and aren’t. But our kids are struggling through all of these things, and we have to address this from an emotional standpoint in a way that meets them internally, not just in a mental capacity.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That’s so true. And this is making me think about how I want to speak to this issue of kids with various types of disabilities or special needs, because I know a lot of parents listening whose kids fall in that category, who are really struggling with this bullying issue. I’m interested in your perspective on this, my observations that over the last 20 to 30 years, we’ve made good progress with helping kids understand more of the traditional disabilities, the visible disabilities, and that we need to accept people, it’s not appropriate to make fun of people’s disabilities. I see a lot of initiative and awareness in schools now around linking the general ed students with special education students who are more obviously disabled, kids in wheelchairs, kids who are blind or deaf, kids with very significant, obvious cognitive impairments. I think we’ve made some progress there. Where I think we are way, way, way behind the eight ball though, is with all of the kids now who have what are called invisible disabilities. Kids who are maybe diagnosed as autistic, but don’t have the obvious significant cognitive impairments or other issues, and so they’re just seen as being weird or odd or whatever, or kids who fall in all types of realms where they are having struggles, they maybe don’t fit in the typical box, maybe it’s a mental health issue, maybe it’s a neurodevelopmental issue. Kids don’t see an obvious disability, and so they become targets because we haven’t generalized that messaging that no, this doesn’t just apply to people with obvious stuff. This actually applies to every single human being. It’s not just about being nice to the kid in the wheelchair. This is about empathizing and understanding and being kind and supportive to everyone. Because to your point, we don’t know what’s going on in the life of that other person. And so I think we’ve made some progress in that one area, but it has not generalized across the board, at least not in my observation. I’m curious what you think about that.

Rebecca Burd

I would fully agree with that. We, in our experience of being hands-on in schools over so many years, I mean, I have such a space in my heart for special needs. My niece and my first cousin, both are special needs, both of my uncle’s are special needs. I have special needs in my family, it has just been a part of our daily life. I have grown up in an environment where we are all the same. There are no differences that divide us, only things that make us each unique and bring us together. And so my heart beats for kids that are going through these things, especially invisible things. And I’ve had neurological issues myself, and so to everyone else, I look perfectly normal, but I know on the inside, there’s a lot of brokenness there. And so I have had to learn myself, how do I navigate that as an adult with other adults? Because you’d be amazed, even adults, if I trip over words, or I stutter, or my neuro system just sets off in a weird way, even an adult will bring it right up and say it out loud. And I go, “How do I deal with that?” And so I think that is why, as we kind of cultivated, what do we want to do, if we’re going to go into schools and we’re going to talk to kids about this issue, we could spend all day telling them what not to do. Or we could take a moment and instead inspire them, that they actually have so much more control than they ever knew they did. And why don’t we exchange what we shouldn’t do for what we should do? And what we should be doing is learning how we can speak life, speak words of life, have speak life actions in the little teeny things we do all day long. Assuming that every single person we meet has a story we know nothing about. Because if we can make a natural assumption that when somebody approaches me, even if they approach me in anger, even if they approach me in a way that’s really hurtful, what if I reverse that conversation immediately, and I give them something back that’s actually something life giving? Now, they could just keep coming at me, that could absolutely be the outcome. But there’s a chance that I could turn that around and I could change it. And even if that person doesn’t know how to respond back to me and kindness, either way, in that moment, I have made an impact, not just on them, but on myself. Because when you start speaking life, when you say this is my MO: I don’t care if someone’s going to come at me with negativity, I don’t care if somebody is going to be in that space. I’m just going to choose life in every situation, I choose to speak something that’s life giving. If I choose that, regardless of the response, the world around me starts to shift and change because you’ve changed the energy. You’ve completely changed everything that’s happening around you. And so I think we’re not going to get this right, especially for kids that are dealing with invisible things that you cannot see, until we start to empower kids to understand that you have control here, that the power to change your school, the power to change your life actually lives with you, one person at a time, one moment at a time, one conversation at a time. You get the power to have a life shifting effect on the people around you. And that alone is powerful for kids to take hold of. And I feel like after 2020, if there’s one thing I’m feeling from both adults and kids alike, is a powerlessness. It’s a helplessness. They had everything taken from them. They had school taken from them, they had friendships, they couldn’t see their own families, some of them. So we can speak to kids today and say “The power is yours, it’s in your hands to change your world and to change what’s happening around you.” They need to know how powerful they truly are and what lies within them to make a significant impact in their world.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so empowering and as you’re so just powerfully speaking about this, it strikes me: This is about so much more than just what goes on for kids with bullying. This is really how we change everything in the world. If we want to really substantively get to the root of doing something about the issues that we have with violence, in general, with school shootings, with so many things that go on, what you’re talking about is really at the root of how we start to shift culture around that. It’s so powerful, and I love the focus on helping kids know what they can do, not what not to do. Here’s what you can do. I’d love for you to give an example or two, of when you talk about speaking life, what are some examples of that? Give an example of what that looks like, either from the musical or just in general, when you teach kids to speak life into situations, give an example of what you’re talking about.

Rebecca Burd

So one of the things we always speak about right at the end of the production, there’s actually a 12 bit challenge that comes right at the end of the film, and we are so honored and privileged that Justin Simmons actually gives that challenge from the NFL stadium to our students. So for all of you out there, some of you parents probably like “Oh, my son’s not going to like a musical. That’s not his thing.” Well, let me tell you, girls and boys alike have loved it. But what I will say is that having an athlete who’s so accomplished and so kind come in at the end and speak these powerful words is life altering for kids. But one of the things that Justin says at the end of the film is: If you have influence in your school, and you know where you have influence in your school, you have a choice every day. How are you going to use that influence? Are you going to use that influence to maybe get yourself up a couple rungs of the ladder? Or could you look around and look at that child that’s sitting alone, or look at that person that you know could just use an arm around the shoulder or “Hey, man, how’s your day?”, or just even a simple hello and use their name. Because when you just take the simplicity and the power of learning someone’s name, and then using it and kindness, you have no idea how that will land on someone that you’re passing down the hallway, who maybe goes, “Oh, they don’t know my name. I’m invisible. No one here knows my name. No one here sees me.” When you take the time, and you take your own power, whatever that is, if you’re great on the athletic field, look around and say “Who’s struggling? Who’s having a hard time? Who could I stay 10 minutes after practice and just give a little bit more of my energy?” That’s speaking life. If you’re academically amazing in math, and you sit next to a peer who struggles every single day, how can you reach across and say, “Hey, how can I help you with that problem?” Instead of making that child feel less than because maybe they haven’t achieved like you have in that particular area. We each have something. Thankfully, we were each born with beautiful gifts that are unique and different. What if we took those gifts and used the power of those gifts to speak life through our actions, through our words, through a moment to someone else? When you walk down the hallway, and you see that someone looks beautiful, they have a brand new outfit on, they took a moment to do their hair differently, instead of thinking it, say it. Say it out loud to that child because you don’t know that may be the day that they are at their end. Sometimes children need hope for just one more hour. Your words could be the hope that they need for just that hour. So don’t ever quantify a small compliment, or a small act of kindness, saying it doesn’t really matter. It matters more significantly than you could ever know. Most of the kids that we speak to who are now young adults, or fully founded adults, professionals, will tell us that the moment that shifted their life was tiny, to anyone else that would have been insignificant. My husband tells the story that it was two teachers at two moments that said one significant thing to him that literally shifted the outcome of his life. It cost them nothing. And it radically changed who he became.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, absolutely. And I just am thinking about so many times when kids have come into the clinic here after school just so excited that somebody asked them to play on the playground, or somebody noticed them at lunch and came and sat by them, or used their name. For kids who don’t get a lot of that connection for whatever reason, it has a profoundly positive impact. Let’s talk about how this rolls out in schools, because I think we’ve got people convinced that wow, this is a powerful way of approaching this. And you’ve got this program and this infrastructure built now to get this out to more people. Talk about how the program itself works, and then how people can get involved.

Rebecca Burd

Yes, so we are so excited because I think the thing we heard from schools time and time again was, how can we get you in, and when you’re a live production with 30-40 people to put something on, it was tough. We could only get into so many schools. And so for us, this just opens up a world. I mean, legitimately, this program could be in 1,000 schools on the same day. And so it is all built out. It all lives inside a digital portal that we call our Red Locker portal. Red Lockers is kind of what people know us for. And so it lives within our Red Locker portal. Inside that portal, we have built in basically a preview, a premiere and a post section. So the school is given 30 days of content leading up to the actual premiere day of the film. Everything you can imagine is in there: The counselor guides, the teacher guides, your staff meetings, your calendar of how to set it up. We are making this, for a school, a no brainer. Teachers do not have to intensely take on something extra. Our teachers have enough. This is all built out for you, easy to bring in, it’s easy enough to bring into an entire school. In fact, we’re rolling it out right now in the Martin County School District right here in our own county. And they’re rolling it out from a superintendent district level. So this is set up in that way. So beyond that, there’s our premiere day. That premiere of that film can be done in any way the school wants to do it. They could do it in the privacy of separate classrooms if they feel that will work better for the students in a smaller venue. Or they can do a big assembly, get a big LED wall, get an incredible screen and premiere it like a big film. We have seen both be equally effective for our schools. Following that premiere, our students and our parents get access to something we call our student locker portal. Inside that portal, the film goes home to our families for 30 days afterwards. So students can pull that film up on their phone anytime they want and watch it again. Our goal is that kind of that fandom of seeing these characters and falling in love with them, that kids will want to repeat and watch it again and again. Now it can come into the home, parents can cast it to their Smart TV, they can sit with their children, and they can watch it together. Now what we really believe this program can do is do exactly what we talked about at the very beginning: If you want to save space, if you want an opportunity to ask your kids the important questions, but you don’t have to bring that up. And even if you did bring it up, you are just going to get the “Mom, I’m good. Leave me alone.” If you’re worried about that, this is a moment where you sit and it’s all done for you. By the end of that film, you’ll look sideways at your child and say, “Hey, was there a character that really stood out to you? Do you ever see that happen in your school? Have you ever felt like so and so felt in the film?” It’s all laid out for you to have those important conversations. And we’ve literally teed it up for you in such a way that emotionally, your kids are at a point where they’re going to be ready to talk. And honestly, if they’re too emotional to talk, that’s going to tell you a lot as well. That there’s something going on there that they need that extra attention to kind of dive deeper and find out. So it’s formulated for the families, it’s formulated for home. Also in that student locker portal, we’ve got the making of the film, we’ve got cast interviews, so they can dive in a lot deeper to it and get to know the characters. We also have a link to all the ways they can download the score from the film, so they can listen to the songs on repeat. They were professionally done by a Nashville artist, and we painstakingly pored over every single lyric in every single song, because every one of the matters. And then back in the school for the next five weeks, the next five days, the next five months, however the school wants to roll it out, we have five lesson plans that coincide with each of the five songs. There’s something in there called Lyrics to Life. And so we dive right into those lyrics with our students. We ask our students the important questions of what did they gain? What did they learn from each of these characters? And our four characters in the film represent four different spectrums, from everything, from our bystanders, to our bullied student, to a child that’s contemplating suicide. I mean, it’s all in there. And so we start to ask all these fundamental questions that lead to the points of why bullying takes place, for every part of how a person may enter the issue. And so we really get down into the nitty gritty of why does this take place? And why does this happen? And in doing so, empowering them to understand themselves better, empowering them to use curiosity to understand that everyone around me is going through something, and allowing them the power to also understand what their words can do and how can we create, and I love that you use the word culture shift, because those are our words. Our goal through this program is to kind of take a huge view of the whole school, and we empower the schools to show it to every single one of their students within a 48-hour period, because what we want to do is we want to raise the bar. If this was acceptable language yesterday, it’s not acceptable today, if this was an acceptable action yesterday, it’s not acceptable today. And we want to actually create a culture shift within that school speaking life. And we have actually heard kids do it in the hallway. A kid will say something to another kid, and it lands wrong, and the other kid will look at him and say, “Oh, remember the show.” That’s all they need, because now they’re all speaking the same language. They don’t have to say, “Hey, don’t say that”, they don’t even have to go there. They can say “Remember the show”, and immediately, everyone’s brought back up to that bar of, hey, you know what? That’s not acceptable, we can’t say that, we can’t do that. And it is basically a digital end bullying solution in a box that is all ready for the students and will go home to our families. Because if we are not dealing with this issue at home, then we are not truly going to impact our kids in all the areas that they need our attention, our time and our energy.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So true, such a 360 comprehensive solution. What ages do you recommend or what grades do you recommend this for?

Rebecca Burd

So we have seen so many incredible programs built out, especially on the elementary school level. So when we came to the industry, even in 2001, we noticed that there was a huge gap for our middle and high school students. A lot of the schools were having to kind of age up some of these lower curriculums. And honestly, I will tell you, from this many years of middle school, high school students, you’re not going to get any pity claps. You’re not going to get any pity “Wahoo’s”. If they don’t like it, they’re going to tell you. And so if we’re going to engage our students, we have to engage on the same level they’re being engaged on YouTube, the same level, they’re being engaged on all the platforms that have their attention right now. And so this is literally a Netflix level production that’s going to capture their attention. So it is 100% built out with the thought process of a middle school/high school student in mind. Now we have seen it be incredibly effective. We will always want to go off of our data. So based on our data, we would say that from about a fourth grader, so probably around maybe a 10ish year old, 8-year-old, up until, honestly, there’s no limit. We’ve had 70-80 year olds watch the show and have tears stream down their face, because honestly, when we’re adults, these wounds have lived there a long time. And so I don’t think you can age out of it. But we recommend schools that are mainly Middle and High.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You’ve got this mombassadors program. And while we’re wrapping up here — this is so powerful, I can talk to you about this for days. But I want you to share with people how they can get involved in that, because I think there’s probably a lot of people listening going, “I want to get this in my kids school or in my local district” You’re building out this mombassadors movement. Talk about that, and how people can get involved and can bring this to their local area.

Rebecca Burd

Yeah, so we talked about back in the very beginning, this feeling of helplessness. When I sat down with moms time and time again, it is the common feeling when we walk our children out to that bus and we waved goodbye for about eight hours, we feel incredibly helpless as to what goes on in our schools. And I just want to empower you as moms and parents, and dads, we’re not leaving you out, you can be dadvocates and come on in on this and be a part of it with us.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love it! Mombassadors and dadvocates. That’s awesome.

Rebecca Burd

So we just wanted to focus. I know a lot of our moms are the ones that on a daily basis are walking into our schools, dealing with these issues when our kids are walking through these things. And so we wanted to empower moms with a real solution. We want you to feel like when you go into that school and you have to approach your administration, I encourage you: Do it in the kindest way possible. And when you do it, I want you to feel empowered with a solution, not just with, “Hey, here’s a million problems that I know you know exist. But here’s something that will not only help my child, but will impact more kids than just my own.” And that’s the power of being a mombassador, is that we truly can make an impact beyond our own children with a program like this. And so moms, we want to empower you to take this program to your school, make it your own. If two years from now, nobody has any idea who we are as a company, and thinks moms produce this, we are thrilled for that to happen, because our goal is that students get this program. And so we can spend tons of money on marketing and try and do all these things so schools know, or we could say, “Hey, moms, we’re all searching for solutions. Here’s a solution. Walk it into your school, be an advocate for the program.” We have actually built out a little Mom Resource Portal. And so we will give you access to that through the links here at the podcast, and you can hop into that portal. Inside there, you can do one of two things: You can actually access materials to send email straight off to your school about the program. You could walk the program right into your school. We’ve given you everything there. You do not have to do the heavy lifting. We’re simply asking you to just connect us. If you can set up a Zoom call, something like this, where we can just present it to the person who makes those decisions at your school, and know that most of your schools have funding for programs like ours, whether it’s a mental health resource funding or bullying. We also hit a lot of other issues within the production that funding can exist for. But if your school doesn’t, or they’ve already spent the funding, but they’re still interested, moms, we can get involved in setting up some PTA fundraisers or other things as well to help fund these programs. Businesses, I’m telling you here in our county, businesses hop on board in a second if they know they can help positively impact the mental health of our students. So we want you moms, please get involved. And honestly, your time is valuable. And so we want to just give you a little gift. If you’re able to help us to get this into your school, we just want to give you and your family $250. Just a little thank you to say thank you for your time. I hope you can use it for the holidays or something super special for your family that you guys can do together, because we just want to say thank you, because we know even just a little bit of time to do something like this is valuable time in a mom’s life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. So tell them where the website is? Where can people go to get more info?

Rebecca Burd

Yeah, so moms, you can go to our main website, to speaklifethemusical.org, you can look for the little mombassadors link right there, that’ll take you into all the information, or you can go straight to the portal, which is at mombassadors.org and hop right in. When you sign up for that portal, we’ll drop you into all of our contact info, usually one of us will reach out to you directly to find out how we can partner with you, how we can help in your school and in your area. So all the information as far as the program itself, if you wanted to share it with your school, does live right there at speaklifethemusical.org, including our trailers, you can hop on and take a look and get a real feel for what the film has to offer.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Thank you, I know so many people are going to want to get involved. I’m so impressed with what you have done with this. I think this truly is the direction that we need to go to shift the culture around this, not just for our kids, but for our families, for our communities. So I very much appreciate all the effort that you put into not only creating the musical, but now getting it out there in the world, and I appreciate you being here today to talk with us about it. Thank you.

Rebecca Burd

Oh, thank you for having me. It’s such a pleasure. And parents, we just want to partner with you. We want to do everything we can to help you, to resource you with everything you need to see our students have what they need to be successful and create successful futures. Because we know when we start, like you said, creating this culture shift, we are literally changing the outcome of their lives and helping them achieve the dreams and the goals that they have.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Beautiful. Thank you. And thanks as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.