Dozens of school districts in the area use the Olweus Bullying Prevention program to combat bullying among students.

The program calls for school officials to define bullying behavior to students and then take swift action to respond when it occurs and provide education to help prevent it.

Now two local districts -- Mt. Lebanon and Penn Hills -- are piloting an enhancement to the program that includes a character education component aimed at turning students into good citizens and empathetic colleagues who will be less likely to engage in bullying behavior.

Two other districts piloting the program are Neshannock Township in Lawrence County, and Westmont Hilltop School District in Johnstown.

"Connecting character education with bullying prevention helps us to build children of good character in public education," said Amy Whealdon, a guidance counselor at Markham Elementary in Mt. Lebanon School District.

The character education component is offered through bullying prevention kits provided by the Heartwood Institute in Regent Square and funded by a Highmark Healthy High Five grant of $207,505. The grant money will fund the production and distribution of the T.R.U.E. Respect Bullying Prevention kits created by Heartwood and for the evaluation of their use in the districts. T.R.U.E. stands for Teaching Resources for Understanding Ethics.

Heartwood co-directors Lisa Dickun and Rebecca Gamble said if evaluations at the schools show the kits are a success, they will seek funding to make them available to other districts as an enhancement to existing bullying prevention programs or as a stand-alone program.

The Heartwood kit focuses on seven character traits: courage, loyalty, justice, respect, hope, honesty and love. The kits include books written from the perspectives of students involved in various bullying situations along with flash cards, called T.R.U.E. cards, that have inspirational messages related to one or more of the character traits. The cards have notes to help teachers lead classroom discussions about the sentiments expressed in the sayings.

The kits have been in use since fall and, while official methods will be used to evaluate if they are successful, anecdotally, teachers and administrators said they have seen improvements in student behavior in recent months.

"We have seen changes. Students are saying 'Don't pick on that student.' And we are seeing improvement in the everyday getting along in the classroom," said Sandra Barker, principal of grades five and six at Linton Middle School in Penn Hills, where the Heartwood kits are being used in fifth grade.

Phillip Woods, principal of Penn-Hebron Elementary in Penn Hills, said he finds the storybooks in the Heartwood kits to be especially helpful in the weekly bullying discussions held with the fourth grade.

Among the stories is one in which a girl's best friend becomes her worst enemy and works to exclude her from their peer group. Another is from the point of view of a bystander student who doesn't know what to do when bullies repeatedly target a boy in his class. Another book chronicles the experiences of a young girl from a poor family who is ridiculed because she wears a patchwork coat made from rags to school. There are also stories aimed at breaking down racial and socioeconomic barriers and misconceptions.

"The [Olweus] bullying program is on-the-spot intervention of what's going on right now," Mr. Woods said. "The Heartwood curriculum lets you take it outside of the box. In our circles when we discuss bullying situations in the school, we say don't use names and don't point fingers. But when we use a story, we can point to a definite incident in the story."

In Mt. Lebanon, Dianne Evangelista, a fourth grade teacher at Markham Elementary, finds the T.R.U.E. cards to be helpful.

"I'm especially a fan of the T.R.U.E. cards because they have great cartoons for the kids to see, and the quotes are on a higher level that really gets them thinking," Mrs. Evangelista said.

She said her students enjoy passing the cards around during their weekly discussions.

"These meetings have become a culture of going back to the basics of how to be a good citizen," Mrs. Evangelista said.