A teacher who has spent the last five years consulting on safe schools is Nova Scotia’s first anti-bullying co-ordinator.

Education Minister Ramona Jennex announced this morning that Kathleen Richard will take the position.

Richard spent 20 years in the education field as a teacher and consultant and spent the last five years as a consultant on safe schools in the Halifax Regional School Board.

She says she will lean on years of experience in the classroom, where she frequently supported people who face bullying.

"Bullying has grown from students teasing each other on the playground to targeting someone with an unrelenting stream of intimidating messages and actions," says. Richard. "However, there are solutions that I have seen work that will help bring respect for individuals and safer schools back to our students.”

Richard has also worked with bullies to try to get them to change their behaviour.

The government announced in April it would appoint a co-ordinator to help combat bullying in schools, which was a key recommendation from a task force on cyberbullying earlier in the year.

The position was supposed to have been filled by Sept. 1 but Jennex said earlier this month that the appointment had been delayed because an internal job posting failed to find a suitable candidate.

Richard begins her new job Monday.