BY IAN McCALLUM
Times-Journal Staff

     When Bruce Langford teaches elementary students to stand up against bullying, his medium is the message.
And when the Thames Valley District School Board teacher brought his musical message to Southwold Public School on Monday, it marked his 100th school visit in the past year.
Langford, with the assistance of sister-in-law Jenn Langford, relies on a live radio program interspersed with original musical compositions to instruct youngsters on how to deal with bullying..
Working as a hop-looking, smooth-talking disc jockey, Langford assures his student audience there is something they can do about bullying.
The move from full-time teacher at New Sarum Public School to radio announcer has been an easy transition for Langford who operates A Time For Music, his musical production company.
“I’m on a full-time leave from the board in order to work on this program,” explains Langford who bases his message on first-hand experience.
“As a teacher I see that some students sometimes are getting picked on and they don’t know how to deal with it. And sometimes I didn’t know what to do to help the students. And in doing research I made the decision to really get into this and I spent the entire summer (in 2003) working on the program.”

      Langford wrote all the songs and script and developed the entire concept of a radio program geared to a live student audience that participates in the production.
“I’m a DJ and we’re broadcasting live from ATFM (A Time For Music) and we take callers on the program so we have role playing with the students as part of the program. We also have a music video and I’m playing piano live.”
He has customized three different presentations geared to elementary school grade levels.
“The main message is that every person in the school can do something about this situation (bullying). When they see something going on they can do something, whether it means reporting it to a teacher or speaking up. When I put this together I thought it has to be exciting, it’s got to hit them.
“The program has been so successful, Langford admits it may be some time before he removes his headphones, turns off the microphone and returns to teaching full-time.
“We’ve already been asked back to a number of schools that we went to last year. They wanted us to come back with the exact same program even though I’m developing a new program.”
Langford will return to Elgin on Nov. 18 when ATFM visits McGregor Public School in Aylmer.