When she was nine years old, Shira Blumenthal, founder of the nationwide anti-bullying movement, #HatNotHate, was a self-described, chubby girl with short frizzy hair, buck teeth, and very little confidence. At the start of fourth grade, she had two friends. “They were a little cooler than I was, but that didn’t faze me,” she writes on her website, hatnothate.org.

 

Then, there was another “cool” girl in her class, who, she wrote, was friends with everyone, boys and girls, and who always wore a bra strap headband, which she told other kids her mother had invented. Blumenthal said she can’t remember the first time she was bullied by the girl, but she continually made fun of her hair, her weight, her looks, her style, and zeroed in on her for just about anything, until it all became too much.

 

“All I can recall is the amount of crying I did after repeated episodes,” she wrote. “She turned classmates against me, and I felt worthless. When she picked on me, none of the other kids ever stood up for me, and I remember feeling so lonely.” A visit with her mother to the school principal caused the situation to escalate and eventually, Blumenthal ended up leaving the school. While she subsequently made new friends and the painful memories faded, the scars remained.

 

Twenty years later, in 2018, Blumenthal decided to create the Hat Not Hate campaign, after seeing a then, 9-year-old girl who was being bullied but who decided to speak out about it.

 

On Thursday, Feb. 11, the bubbly, smiling founder and activist was at P.S. 294, Walton Avenue School, in the Mt Eden section of the Bronx to make a donation of 500 of the organization’s signature, blue knit hats to students. The aim was to bring awareness to an issue, which according to the National Bullying Prevention Center, affects one in five kids across the country.

 

The school’s principal, Nicole Perkins, and second grade teacher, Elisa D’Aguanno, who was the driver behind the initiative, were outside the building, located at 1425 Walton Avenue, to accept the donation, along with a handful of kids whose parents had provided authorization to be interviewed.

 

Though they were a bit camera-shy in the end and didn’t say much, the kids seemed excited by the occasion, happy to receive the hats, and they also seemed to take in the message imparted by Blumenthal, who looked each one in the eye, and told them they were seen, they were heard and they were loved.

 

One little girl, who seemed, perhaps, to be wearing a religious headscarf underneath her knit hat, seemed a little more shy than the others and, later, kept close to Blumenthal’s side as she spoke with reporters.

 

The #HatNotHate campaign had forged a close relationship with the school’s staff through D’Aguanno, and when they expressed an urgent need for warm hats for their students during the cold winter months, it was a win-win situation. A number of the students live in shelters and were also in need of warm clothing. The #HatNotHate campaign saw an opportunity to help them, while also spreading a message of solidarity and anti-bullying awareness.

 

October marks National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, and the blue hats are usually donated to schools to coincide with that month. However, school closures amid the pandemic upended the normal routine.

Lion Brand Yarn Company, where Blumenthal serves as a brand ambassador for the last five years, helped launch the Hat Not Hate initiative, while the concept itself was conceived by Blumenthal. The idea was to get knitters and crotcheters to knit and crochet blue hats and donate them to the cause. Blue represents awareness and solidarity, and is the color to wear in support of bullying prevention. To date, more than 32,000 wool hats have been collected for this year’s #HatNotHate campaign, with an extended goal of 100,000 for 2021.

 

The Norwood News asked Perkins how the school got involved with the campaign. She said D’Aguanno has a business where she crochets and knits and through those connections, she was led to #HatNotHate. “Ms Deguano asked me if she can sponsor P.S. 294 to launch this program with our kids,” Perkins said. “It’s such an important initiative and I was like, ‘Yes!’”

 

She said the second and fifth graders are going to pilot the program. “We figure, our second graders, they have a couple more years before they graduate, so this will be a great initiative for them to push through the school in the upcoming year, and I hope to continue a connection with them, and they can really wear their hats with pride, showing that they are a part of this anti-bullying program.”

 

Perkins continued, “The fifth graders, they can wear their hats moving forward into middle school, and they can always remember that as they’re going into this new phase of schooling, that’s not what we want to do. We want to make sure we treat people with respect and talk to them with respect.”

 

Asked about specific state and city policies and guidelines for schools in terms of how to handle bullying, Perkins said, “There is a DoE [Department of Education] program which we call, “Respect for All,” for which Ms D’Aguanno is the liaison.”

 

She said they also had additional initiatives where they educate kids about not bullying people based on race or other reasons. “That’s part of our building safe design,” she said.

 

We asked Perkins if bullying is a serious problem at the school and if kids, generally, come forward if they’ve been bullied. “You know, being, at first, I was assistant principal here, and now, being a principal, we had had instances but the thing is, sometimes students feel like a one-time occurrence is bullying,” she said.

 

“In those instances, it wasn’t really bullying. It may have been just a verbal type thing, like a name they didn’t like, or they said something about what they were eating or something like that. Once you explain the term, what bullying is, my students usually realize that that’s not the case.”

 

Perkins said they explain to students that a person can, perhaps, say something mean one day, but that bullying is an ongoing issue that is something different.

 

“So, it hasn’t been an ongoing thing thankfully, not too much here at P.S. 294,” she said. “The ongoing incident is something that, as soon as a child says that, or uses the word ‘bullying,’ it has been my mindset to always investigate, have a mediation with the children, talk about it, have a mediation with the parents, so that’s something that lives within P.S. 294.”

For her part, D’Aguanno said that because she is a teacher, she has to help children feel safe, feel empowered, feel loved, and know that if they are bullied, they have options, and don’t have to use their hands. “Our school is very open, and we do a lot of communicating. We have wonderful staff and psychologists, and we really work with the kids and meet them one on one, and have play groups and talk groups.” she said. “So, if there is an instance, we handle it right away, but I would say our school is definitely safe.”

 

The National Bullying Prevention Center (NBPC) has found that bullying can result in depression, alcohol abuse and even suicide in some people. One in five “tweens” (9 to 12 years old) has been cyber-bullied, has cyber-bullied others, or has seen cyberbullying, while 49.8 percent of tweens said they experienced in-person bullying at school, and 14.5 percent of tweens shared that they experienced bullying online.

 

Meanwhile, 13 percent of tweens reported experiencing bullying at school and online, while only 1 percent reported being bullied solely online. Among students aged 12 to 18 who reported being bullied at school, 15 percent were bullied online or by text.

 

Reports of cyberbullying are highest among middle school students, followed by high school students, and then primary school students. The percentages of individuals who have experienced cyberbullying at some point in their lifetimes have more than doubled (18 percent to 37 percent) from 2007-2019.

 

NBPC also found that when students were asked about the specific types of cyberbullying they had experienced, mean and hurtful comments (25 percent) and rumors spread online (22 percent) were the most commonly-cited. The type of cyberbullying tends to differ by gender. Girls were more likely to say someone spread rumors about them online, while boys were more likely to say that someone threatened to hurt them online. Those who are cyberbullied are also likely to be bullied offline.

Speaking at the event, Blumenthal said she never wants another child to feel the way that she did as a child. She added that because the hats are soft and warm, they may also bring an extra level of comfort and warmth to a bullied child when they put one on.

 

“While every kid may not be bullied, there is bullying happening all the time, whether we want to see it or not,” she said. “I always say that there’s always someone in a room that has been bullied, witnessed bullying, or been a bully, and I just hope that with these hats, we can bring light to the issue.”

 

Blumenthal added that there’s no better feeling than receiving something that is handmade. “I hope that these kids are going to feel that and hopefully they’ll tell their friends, and their friends will tell their friends, ‘How do I get one of those blue hats?’ So, that’s my dream. That’s my wish, and Elisa heard me, and the Walton School accepted this concept with open arms.”

 

Information on New York City’s “Stomp Out Bullying,” program can be found here: https://www.stompoutbullying.org/.