Counselor's Corner: Schools work on bully awareness by Nancy Blanchard - posted Thursday, March 7th, 2013 @ 12:00 pm  E-mail Story |  Print Story  One of the hot topics in the school system, also now being addressed in the Louisiana legislature, is school bullying. I personally wish we could come up with another name for it, because a lot of us think of a bully as a big, hulking person who is always ready to fight. This is true to an extent, but in the life of a child, the most harmful "bully" is the one who is capable of causing another to feel worthless or alone. This type of bully lacks the qualities of compassion and empathy. I choose to call this type of person a "meanie." A compassionate person is considerate and kind. We looked up the definition in one of our classes, and it said that compassion is "a feeling of sharing the suffering of another person, and the desire to ease that suffering." We also looked up the word "empathy," and that word was not in the children's dictionary. This is unfortunate, because every person needs to learn and understand the concept of empathy. The definition that we use in working with children is "to understand what someone else is feeling because you have experienced it yourself or can put yourself in their shoes." In my opinion, these two concepts are critical in the lives of young children. ..... For the full story, subscribe to the The Ouachita Citizen's NEW E-Edition!