Think back to when you were in elementary school or high school. Now flash forward to the present. Were you bullied back then or are you currently being bullied?

Decades ago, I was a shy 6-year-old and the youngest and smallest in my second grade class at Cumberland Elementary School. I had just transferred in from Charlestown, Ind., and I had a teacher I loved, Miss Dorothy Maggard.

Before and after school, however, I was bullied by Margaret Ann, and I was terrified of her. No one would ever come to my rescue, not even my sister, because they were afraid of her, too.

That Christmas my family managed to buy me some little red leather mittens with white fur. To receive such a gift was a rare event, and I was so proud to wear them when school resumed in January. On the first day back, Margaret accosted me on the bridge that leads from what was old downtown Cumberland to the elementary school, ripped my mittens off and threw them in the river (I can still see that swift January water taking my new mittens away). I began to cry. Margaret Ann shoved me up against the bridge siding, called me a crybaby, and walked away, laughing.

My brother, a handsome and smart little boy, two years my junior, was bullied, too. One day I saw John Doe* (five or six years older than my brother) trying to drown him in the Cumberland River. I shouted at him, and John let him go.

Another day at the Central Baptist Church, I jumped on the back of Bobby who was at least two years older than me and who was tormenting my brother. I screamed, “You leave my brother alone!” Of course, Bobby just shrugged, and I fell off his back as the crowd that had gathered watched.

For this second incident, my brother was angry, not with Bobby, but with me. His scrawny sister had come to his rescue

Did either of us tell any adult about the bullying? Of course, not. We were humiliated, embarrassed, and we were abiding by that strange code of silence that surrounds bullying.

So what are we to do with the problem of bullying?

One partial answer might be a volunteer project I’ve recently begun with 11- and 12-year-olds, peer theatre. I familiarized myself with the concept and then made a list of topics I thought might be of interest to kids of this age. Then, I asked some young college students I teach to make suggestions to add to my list. They came up with a dozen or so, and the list grew to 45 topics that covered everything from divorce to dealing with chronic illnesses such as asthma.

I put my group of sixth-graders into four teams, gave them the list and told them they could use anything on the list or come up with their own topics. From that rather long list, each of the four teams independently selected bullying as the topic that most interested them.

Educational objectives are important even in volunteer work, and peer theatre is a fascinating educational concept in that students learn to work as a team by creating characters; exploring characters’ motivations; writing a script; enacting the script with costumes, makeup, props and minimal scenery; presenting the play to kids their own age; and then leading a discussion with their audience about their reactions to the play (Who’s responsible here and for what? Which characters do you identify with and why? How might the outcome have been different? What behaviors would have been necessary to have a different resolution? What would you do if you were in a similar situation?).

In addition to team building, language arts development and ethics, peer theatre’s goal is to present the opportunity for those involved to explore options for behaviors, to contemplate choices when faced with difficult situations, and to examine the consequences of those choices.

I meet with these kids every two weeks or so, and I’ll write a column from time to time on what the experts say about bullying and what these sixth-graders who bully or face bullying have to say about the topic. After all, they’re experts, too.

* This John Doe still lives in Harlan County, and all I’d need to do is use his first name, and many in the criminal justice system would recognize it immediately.