Long Island author addresses bullying of students with disabilities

East Rockaway author Barry Edwards McNamara explores the bullying of students with special needs in his new book “Bullying and Students With Disabilities: Strategies and Techniques to Create a Safe Learning Environment for All” (Corwin, $31.95).

McNamara addresses classroom and playground teasing, taunting and physical aggression aimed at atypical students. “There is a very limited but emerging body of research that suggests that students with disabilities are more likely to be victims than their general education peers,” McNamara writes. “Why are students with disabilities more likely to be targeted? The most obvious reason is their vulnerability.”

The book goes on to suggest how to create a schoolwide bullying prevention program, detail what every teacher should do and outline intervention and coping strategies.

McNamara is a professor of special education at Dowling College in Oakdale and has a doctorate from Columbia University’s Teachers College in Special Education: Learning Disabilities.

“There’s relatively little specifically on bullying and students with disabilities,” McNamara says. “Most of those kids don’t have access to the typical bully prevention program. These kids are not getting the services they should be getting.”