The Foundation Florida Endowment Foundation for Florida’s Graduates

The Florida Endowment Foundation for Florida’s Graduates operates the Students United with Parents and Educators to Resolve Bullying (SUPERB). SUPERB has a long history of improving school environments through its unique program model, which educates the entire school system (students, teachers, parents) on how to develop an atmosphere of acceptance, thereby preventing isolation and academic disengagement. For many decades, society has been in denial of the emotional and social consequences that children experience due to bullying, accepting it as simply ‘part of growing up’.

Research has proven that this is simply not the case.  This belief that many adults hold minimizes the extreme severity, dangerousness, and pain that today’s children are experiencing in school and in the community. Both the victim and the perpetrator carry emotional scars that inhibit their social and individual development throughout life’s many stages, eventually affecting adulthood. Interpersonal skills in the workplace are critical for reaching career goals.  The program aims to solve these problems in two ways: first, by increasing the acceptance of diversity through exercises focusing on teamwork, knowledge of how different groups contribute to society, and finding common bonds across cultures, and second, through teaching a range of responses to bystanders, victims, parents and teachers on how to handle simple bullying situation before they exasperate, to more serious scenarios.

By the end of the eight week curriculum, students involved in the SUPERB program should achieve the following objectives:

1. Increase ability on the part of the student to generate options for intervention in bullying situations.  
2. Increase youth’s appreciation for cultural differences and common similarities.
   
3. Decrease social exclusion based on economic status, ethnic background, appearances, or talent.
   
4. Increase social skills through improving communication, teamwork, and peer cooperation. 
   
5. Increase the student’s knowledge on how to reduce stress within them and apply self-control.
   
6. Explore “helping careers”, the requirements, earning potential and the meaning of efficacy. 

SUPERB has a partnership with Nova Southeastern University Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences. SUPERB and NSU have executed a formal agreement to provide services and co-own the curriculum.