How to fight bullying? Teach the value of kindness.

Episode transcript

Clay Collins: The Monitor franchise “People Making A Difference” – that’s “PMAD” in newsroom parlance – dates back to our newsprint days. It highlights ordinary-seeming people doing extraordinary things. The template is pretty straightforward, and new writers tend to engage with PMAD as a kind of training ground: Find someone exemplary, do some triangulation to ensure that their good work is indeed difference-making, then go find the heart of the story. 

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Collins: JJ Wahlberg joined the Monitor recently, came up through the intern program, and has landed on our copy desk, where her own difference-making work is now around making Monitor stories clear and consistent in terms of style. Along the way, JJ, who joins us today, wrote a PMAD story about a single mother in California – a composer, conductor, and piano teacher who also combats bullying with kindness. 

This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins. Welcome, JJ. 

JJ Wahlberg: Hi, Clay. Thanks so much for having me.

Collins: Yeah! So the Monitor’s top editor sometimes assesses how our stories deliver, and he called yours and one other that ran the same day “a statement of our worldview that builds our brand and distinction.” So, a California-based senior editor worked with you on this story. How did you [two] find its center as a “compassion” story?

Wahlberg: So my editor, Clara Germani, found Shadi Pourkashef in a local newspaper in Laguna Beach, and learned about her work to prevent bullying in schools. That was pretty much all it took for us to just know that there was going to be some type of story here. As I learned more about Ms. Pourkashef and her program, Ability Awareness Project, it became pretty clear that compassion really was what was driving every player in the story: not just Ms. Pourkashef to give her time and energy to making these presentations, but also the kids to change how they thought about an issue that affects a lot of schools and a lot of communities. I felt compassion in all of my sources. They were all expressing that in their willingness to give their time or talk about a difficult subject or try to be a better friend.

Collins: These PMAD stories really are profiles and they’re about the agency of individuals. They’re not just program stories. How were you able to validate this individual’s work in terms of her success and her prospects of more success?

Wahlberg: For me, the word “agency” gets at the concept of giving someone a fish versus teaching someone to fish. And that was part of what was so striking to me about Ms. Pourkashef. She’s teaching people to fish, if you will. She’s teaching them the value of kindness and then letting them discover the joys of that. One thing that I learned in my reporting was that suicide had taken place, and bullying was involved, in a community that had already received these kindness presentations. At first, I had no idea how this was going to fit into the story. But then I started learning more about how the community responded to this tragic event by putting on what they call the “friendship fair.” The kids and parents came together in such a selfless and thoughtful way to bring some light and love to a community that needed it.

Collins: Hmm. Your subject’s work is really grounded in fostering empathy, also about coming to appreciate and recognize other people’s abilities. I have to say that episodes of this show that have touched on gratitude and connection, the real person-to-person, heart-to-heart values, are the ones that have been really well received. And yours really was a “kindness story,” wasn’t it?

Wahlberg: Definitely. And that was a big focus of my interview with Ms. Pourkashef,  just how she puts the focus on kindness rather than on bullying or even on preventing bullying. Kindness is so impersonal. There’s no room for offense or controversy. It’s one of those things that’s so good that it’s just naturally unifying and that unifying quality played a big role with the Ability Awareness Project. Many students, whether they were being bullied or maybe doing the bullying themselves, find that they can get behind this message of being kinder to everyone.  When I was talking to Ms. Pourcashef about how she approaches giving these presentations, she said: “Well, if I was talking to a school and I say: ‘We provide bullying prevention and education,’ they go: ‘Oh, bullying. No, we have no bullying here.’”

Collins: Hmm.

Wahlberg: But if she says, like: “Oh, we have kindness programs, they go: ‘Oh yeah.’” Because she says they know they need kindness, and there’s something so attractive, I think, about making the focus on the solution, rather than the problem.

Collins: I love that idea of focusing on the good as being where you want to go. And we talked a little bit about this earlier, and I mentioned that in motorcycling it’s a truism that if you look at the pebble in the road, you’re likely to hit the pebble in the road.

So you have a somewhat personal relationship to this subject, right? From a time when you were still kind of grappling with your own identity.

Wahlberg: I absolutely do. When I was in high school, I engaged in some bullying, um, and I found myself thinking about that part of my life during almost every step of the reporting process. In high school I had to overcome a limited view of myself and of what my high school experience could be. And I think a message of kindness is such a powerful antidote to that sense of being confined to acting a certain way, whether it’s out of pride or self-defense or whatever. As I was doing my reporting, I felt how much this message resonated with everyone. In fact, one of my sources told me how one of her friends was inspired to stop bullying after she attended a presentation. And my heart just went out to her, to this seventh grader I didn’t even meet, because I could just tell from how my source was talking about her that she saw something better out there. 

Collins: How did it feel wrapping up this first big Monitor writing assignment, and how did the reporting leave you feeling about the subject that you covered?

Wahlberg: So part of what made this story challenging to write was that it was my first and I didn’t know what I was doing and I had to learn a lot all at once. But at some point I had this idea that it wasn’t my job to come up with a story. I could really rely on what my sources were providing, and just be inspired by that. And that left me in a position to really appreciate what my interview subjects were bringing to the table. One thing that one of my sources said – and this was largely in thinking about the suicide that had taken place – was that we can’t expect a single presentation or a single talk to end all the bullying that’s taking place. But if one presentation inspires one person to stop bullying, the school will feel the effects of that. There are still these moments of progress and compassion that are happening all the time. 

Collins: Thanks so much for being here today, JJ, for the story – and,  in your new role, for helping to keep the work of Monitor writers and editors on point.

Wahlberg: Oh, no problem, Clay. Thanks for having me. 

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Collins: Thanks for listening. You can find a link to the story that you just heard discussed, and more  including more about compassion and more PMADs at csmonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, and produced by Jingnan Peng. Alyssa Britton and Tim Malone were our engineers. Our original music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by the Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.