http://raisingmaine.mainetoday.com/blogentry.html?id=18196

By RAYE TIBBITTS, Raising Maine Contributor

Maryam Mermey is not afraid of bullies.

When we think about bullies what emerges in the popular imagination is something of a cross between Nelson from "The Simpson's" and Binky Barnes from PBS's "Arthur." Bullies are big, come from rough homes, and torment other children for pleasure. Most of all, bullies inspire fear in their victims, and while we all may not willingly identify with the "bully" character, we all know what it means to be scared.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, "Bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power or strength. Often, it is repeated over time and can take many forms."
Those forms may include teasing, taunting, threatening, exclusion from social groups, cyber-bullying and physical and sexual violence.

Still, Mermey is not afraid of bullies. In fact, Mermey has dedicated her doctorate work to using the expressive arts in a bully prevention program that is making a difference in Maine communities.

While most bully prevention programs focus on creating a school environment that does not tolerate the behavior and progressive consequences for the perpetrators, Mermey's work has taken her down another path into theater, music and art.

"Most programs look at the problem from the outside in," Mermey explains.

The Department of Education asserts that to reduce bullying, "it is important to change the climate of the school and the social norms with regard to bullying. It must become 'uncool' to bully, 'cool' to help out students who are bullied, and normative for staff and students to notice when a child is bullied or left out."

But for Mermey, the problem of bullying must be addressed from the "inside out AND the outside in." By creating a safe environment where kids can try out the triangulated roles of victim, bully and witness through role-playing games and structural collage, Mermey approaches the issues around bullying with "no blame and no fault." Her guiding question for kids is: "Do we use our power to help or to hurt?"

Bullies, in Mermey's program, are people, too.

And she finds that in the context of the expressive arts, kids are attracted to discovering what that kind of power feels like.

"In all my many walks of life, I have learned that there are three kinds of power. There is the power of rejection, which is at the core of bullying, and feeling rejected is the most harmful form of suffering," Mermey explains. "Constructive power takes targets out of the reach of bullies and invites them into something else."

In the book, "New to the Forests of Selay," Mermey has written a myth to accompany her program. Two albino deer experience the rejection of other deer when they move to a new home. A black crow uses his constructive power to encourage them to dance, which the bully deer find entrancing. Rather than tell the typical tale in which the bullies are somehow punished for their behavior, the book involves the targets, the deer who witness the bullying and stand up to it, and the eventual enfolding of the bully deer into the activity. Instead of the narrative hinging on consequences, the bullies in Mermey's story experience a transformation within themselves that allows them to identify with the targets, isolate their own feelings and make different choices about their actions.

The third kind of power is the transformative power of art. "We all have power to help or to hurt and the expressive arts offer the opportunity to access our power," Mermey says. By allowing kids the chance to play the bully or the witness or the target in a structured and guided program, Mermey hopes to create the kind of inner mindfulness of one's own feelings and the feelings of others that will allow kids to make good choices when they encounter bullying in real life.

Mermey says, "I am giving them tools so the next time they get into a situation of someone hurts me, I'm going to hurt them back, or someone hurts my friend, I'm going to hurt them back, that flight or fight response gets short-circuited (by what they learn in the program)."
In our popular culture, it is hard to believe that the Nelsons and Binky Barneses of the world could ever not be the bully, but if they met Maryam Mermey, they just might find themselves reaching deep inside for the hurts that inspire their great needs to hold power over other children.

"We are," Mermey explains, "attracted to our own healing."

And that healing can come from immersion in the expressive arts.