October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and one Northern Illinois University conference is giving teachers some resources to do just that.

NIU will host "Bullying: How Teachers Can Respond" from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14, in the Holmes Student Center on the school's DeKalb campus (click here for directions on the school's website).

At the professional development conference, administrators, teachers, and staff members can earn CPDUs and learn how to can best respond to the issue of bullying in their schools. It's a first-time collaborative effort between the external programming offices of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the College of Education, according to NIU.

Speakers will include:

• Dorothy Espelage, associate chair of the Department of Educational Psychology, Child Development Division, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Espelage specializes in bullying, youth aggression, and peer harassment; recently authored a White House Brief on bullying among LGBTQ youth; and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, CNN, CBS Evening News and Anderson Cooper 360.
• Debbie Perryman, a U46 teacher and former Illinois Teacher of the Year whose daughter was a victim of bullying.
• And four faculty members from NIU: Jon Crawford, assistant professor in the Department of Leadership, Educational Psychology and Foundations; Toni Tollerud, Presidential Teaching Professor of Counseling; Amy Luckner, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology; and Molly Holmes, director of the school's LGBT Resource Center.

-- Emily McFarlan, Readers' Reporter