You’re Not Helpless

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

When it comes to bullying in schools, teachers are on the front lines, and it’s hard for them. We wanted to connect directly with those teachers that are desperate to help their students but struggling with how to help.

According to their research, the years with the biggest spike in bullying were during middle school. We reached out to a dozen middle school teachers across the country to understand what it’s like to see students bullied and how it feels to be a teacher in the classroom where a student is being bullied.

Based on those interviews, we wrote a script synthesizing everything that we heard from the teachers we talked to. We wanted to portray in the video that we understand the teacher’s struggle, and that they’re not alone and not helpless. By giving an emotional connection, it would give enough motivation to learn from the report.

In order to reach teachers with key insights on how they can help prevent or stop bullying, we decided to create a visceral PSA combining an emotional teacher’s narrative with original choreography and rotoscoped animation.

We worked with a local choreographer and dancer, Lauren De Vera, to draw up a vision surrounding dance.