[stomachmonkey]

Girl acted tough, but Mom was tougher
Temecula 12-year-old who was suspended is punished by carrying a sign saying, 'Don't Be Like Me. Stop Bullying.'
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
May 18, 2007

She's taken away the cellphone, she's banned the television, but when her daughter was suspended for bullying a classmate last week, Ivory Spann felt a new punishment was in order: public humiliation.

After checking to see if it was legal, Spann forced her 12-year-old daughter, Miasha Williams, to spend the last four days in front of several Temecula schools carrying a big sign saying, "I Engaged in Bullying Behavior. I Got Suspended From School … Don't Be Like Me. Stop Bullying."

"I felt I needed to do something that would make an impression," Spann said.

It may have done the trick.

Miasha lugged around the handwritten sign from Great Oak High School to Temecula Valley High School to her own Erle Stanley Gardner Middle School and ended her "sentence" Thursday. She displayed the placard in the mornings when kids arrived at school and in the afternoons when they left. At each stop she was surrounded by somewhat baffled students. Sometimes she looked sheepish and embarrassed, other times as if she was enjoying the spectacle.