bullying

Oregon reaches out to students for better solutions to bullying

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The Oregon Department of Education launched a task force to delve deeper into bullying, and find creative ways to reduce incidents in the state’s schools.

The Advisory Committee on Safe and Effective Schools for All Students involves students, parents, teachers, lawmakers and advocates working together to review and draft policy recommendations schools can use to improve school culture, KEZI reports.

A major component of that effort is to solicit feedback from students across the state about ideas and issues in their schools, and to present the findings to the State Board of Education, lawmakers and the governor.

Oregon Department of Education director Colt Gill told the news site students are the ones who will ultimately change the dynamic in schools to prevent bullying, and it’s important to listen to their perspective.

“The way we formalize it at the educator level when we’re always stepping in and solving these problems for them doesn’t prepare them to be able to solve these problems on their own, both in school and once they’re in the workplace, as well,” Gill said.

The Advisory Committee on Safe and Effective Schools for All Students also wants to collect data from schools to track how early identification and intervention practices can address bullying before it escalates.

Much of the work, Gill said, centers on acceptance, and teaching students to embrace diversity.

“School is the one place when we’re all together, and we need to learn to respect one another and value what each person brings to the school,” Gill said.

Grandmother Jan Savelich told KEZI she’s encouraged by the focus on acceptance.

Savelich said she believes in “teaching our kids to love one another and to be kind in spite of our differences and maybe learn to love people because of our differences too.”

Researchers with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia examined some of the root causes of bullying as part of a broader look into character education in a variety of different schools.

In “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of the findings, researchers noted that parents are skeptical about the ability of schools to address moral dilemmas, in part because educators would rather avoid hot topics.

“This failure to provide a fully developed and broadly coherent moral message was partly due to public school teachers’ reluctance to opine on controversial issues,” editors James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson wrote, adding many refrain from “providing serious direction on what was right and what was wrong.”

The work in Oregon and elsewhere to better understand the perspective of parents, teachers, students and others on issues like bullying and online harassment will undoubtedly help to shape a more coherent and uniform response to the problems plaguing schools.

Another step in that direction is the state’s Safe Oregon campaign, a free tip line service for public and private K-12 schools designed to give students an anonymous way to report safety threats or possible acts of violence.

The SafeOregon.com website also offers resources for schools, students and parents working to make their communities safer.

Lakeway Police Chief Todd Radford wants parents, school officials and others in his Texas community on the same page to fight against bullying.

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“As we have seen across the country, bullying is no longer just a matter for the school to address, but an issue that requires collaboration to overcome,” Radford wrote in an editorial for the Austin American-Statesman. “Society is ever changing and the way we deal with the issue of bullying must be ever changing.”

The biggest change, as Radford pointed out, is traditional bullying has evolved with smartphones and social media to become a problem that can plague students 24-hours a day, on or off school grounds.

He cited research that shows one in seven students in K-12 schools are involved in bullying, either as a victim or perpetrator, and an estimated 160,000 students skip school each day to avoid harassment. More than half of students witness bullying at least once a day, and about 35 percent face threats online, Radford wrote.

The impact on the victims, schools and families can be devastating. Suicides, extreme stress, diminished learning ability, physical illness, and mental scars lasting into adulthood are not uncommon.

Texas and other states have passed legislation to make it easier for students to report bullies and launched campaigns to encourage victims to speak out. In Texas, for example, laws mandate that schools must create policies to prohibit bullying and harassment, allow parents to transfer their kids when they’re bullied, and outlines discipline and interventions appropriate for various grade levels.

Parents play a key role, as well, Radford wrote.

“Parents need to continue to be active in monitoring the social media sites that their children are visiting, and what content is being posted on their social media sites,” he wrote. “Parents can have conversations with their children about these issues related to bullying and ensure they are not having any problems.”

If they are, students and parents can contact school or police officials to intervene, according to the police chief.

“Simply put, it is never acceptable to ignore bullying,” Radford wrote. “We must stop it or continue to deal with its aftermath.”

Radford’s call on adults throughout the community – from parents and guardians to police, school staff and lawmakers – to work together in the fight against bullying is a critical component of effective character education.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, pointed out the link between schools and the community in “The Content of Their Character,” which dissected how a variety of different high schools approach character education.

“How a school is organized, the course structure and classroom practices, the relationship between school and outside civic institutions – all of these matter in the moral and civic formation of the child,” Hunter wrote.

It’s a theme that’s also echoed by StopBullying.gov, a federal website devoted to bullying prevention.

“When adults respond quickly and consistently to bullying behavior they send a message that it is not acceptable. Research shows this can stop bullying behavior over time,” according to the site.

“Parents, school staff, and other adults in the community can help kids prevent bullying by talking about it, building a safe school environment, and creating a community-wide bullying prevention strategy.”

Students draw on their own experiences to create new ways to fight bullying

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While many victims of bullies feel helpless to change their situation, others are using their experiences to find creative ways to crack down on the problem.

Mashable recently highlighted four teens who experienced or witnessed bullying and decided to do something about it: Natalie Hampton, Sanah Jivani, Peyton Klein, and Tori Taylor.

The site reports:

After taking time to recover from the severe bullying she experienced, Hampton built an app called Sit With Us that helps students find new friends with whom they can share lunch. Jivani, now 21, had been bullied for having a hair loss condition known as alopecia and founded International Natural Day while in high school. Klein noticed how students who spoke English as a second language were excluded and discriminated against, so she launched an after-school program to promote tolerance and friendship called Global Minds Initiative. Taylor, who’d experienced bullying, fought to bring a peer counseling program to her high school. 

Susan M. Swearer, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, explained that the inspiring stories are important because it shows other victims of bullies “there’s a lot students can do on the individual level.”

Mashable interviewed each of the four students to talk in-depth about what inspired them to speak out and connect with their classmates about bullying, as well as the process they used to bring their projects to life.

The site also offered valuable advice to students who want to make a difference in their schools, such as how to craft an effective message, recruit influential people, and work with school officials to integrate student-led campaigns.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote about the importance of addressing the specifics of each school’s moral ecology to create personalized solutions to bullying and other issues.

In “The Content of Their Character,” a summary of character education in a wide variety of American high schools, Hunter wrote:

We can only care for the young in their particularity. If we are not attentive to and understanding of these contexts, we are not caring for real, live human beings, but rather abstractions that actually don’t exist at all.

Swearer points students who want to develop an anti-bullying campaign to inspirED, a website by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence that offers resources, process, events, projects and activities to help students make their schools a better place.

“At inspired, we believe that young people’s voices matter,” according to the website. “Our free resources, designed by teens, educators, and SEL experts, empower students to work together to create more positive school climates and foster greater wellbeing in their schools and communities.”

The initiative – a partnership between the university, the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, and Channel Kindness, a project by the Born This Way Foundation – contends 75 percent of students in high school are tired, bored, or stressed out, while 88 percent claim they want to feel happy, excited and energized.

InspirED “was created to bridge the gap between how high school students feel and how they want to feel,” according to the website.

SafeVoice smartphone app lets NV students report safety issues anonymously

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School officials across Nevada are launching a new smartphone app that allows students to anonymously report a variety of safety concerns to the proper authorities.

Students in Carson City and elsewhere were greeted with posters for “SafeVoice,” an app designed by the Nevada Department of Education that’s designed to give students an anonymous way to report threats of violence, self-harm, drug use, bullying or other problems, KRNV reports.

The notifications are then forwarded to the Department of Public Safety, which evaluates whether police involvement is necessary and alerts school officials.

SafeVoice debuted in January and is currently in about half of the state’s schools. Over the summer state officials received about 2,700 tips, with use expected to increase as students head back to class.

“Every tip is important. Every tip is evaluated by the Department of Public Safety and pushed through to the school,” Nevada DOE Safevoice coordinator Sarah Adler told the news site. “While it may seem frivolous to us, it may add a piece of information at the school level that connects with other pieces of information, and now we start to put a picture together about vulnerable kids.”

SafeVoice is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year, and students can report issues they’re struggling with both on and off school grounds.

Richard Stokes, superintendent of Carson City schools, told KRNV he hopes the app empowers students to take action to improve their school communities.

“We want students to speak up for their friends and themselves to stop bullying, support students in crisis, and above all, prevent school violence,” he said. “When it’s not possible to come to school leaders directly, we want students and parents to use SafeVoice.”

KRNV notes that Nevada law requires all school to eventually implement the program, which affirms officials are focusing on what most parents consider a top priority: safety.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, explained why a unified message centered on issues of character are typically the most effective when he wrote about such matters in “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideas and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

The Nevada DOE website SaveVoiceNV.org offers more information for parents, students, schools, law enforcement, community members and others working to improve student wellness and prevent violence and other negative influences on learning.

The site also provides links to helpful resources including internet safety pledges, the “Bully Free Zone,” and other information on physical needs, safety, belonging and self-esteem from the state’s Office of Safe and Respectful Learning.

UT students create ‘Be Strong’ to take lead on mental health, bullying issues

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At Utah’s Olympus High School, students are taking the lead to combat bullying and mental health issues like anxiety and suicide.

The school’s student body launched an initiative to start the 2018-19 school year called “Be Strong,” and it’s aimed at creating “safe spaces” for the Salt Lake City students to discuss important issues including bullying and mental health in a supportive environment, KUTV reports.

“I know the affects of bullying,” Be Strong student leader Keziah Mayer told the news site. “I have 10 other officers who work with me and we come together at forums once a month.”

The forums rely on experts to come in to speak with students about mental health issues, how students can seek help, and the close connection between those issues and others like bullying.

“We’re going to have a lot of speakers come in and talk about anxiety awareness,” Mayer said. “I know that a lot of people who suffer from anxiety take it out in … not the best ways. And I know that can lead to bullying.”

Other efforts are as simple as challenging students to say “hi” to a new person every day, said Ian Jones, student body president.

“You hear stories of kids saying ‘hi’ to each other in the halls and it goes a long way,” he said. “So, simple things like that, to counteract the bullying that goes on.”

The group is reaching out to parents to speak with their kids about bullying, and promoting free resources like the SafeUT app – which allows students to report bullying anonymously. Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley told KUTV he expects Be Strong will prove effective than other anti-bullying efforts, simply because the message is coming from the students themselves.

“Frankly, students listen to their fellow peers a lot more than they listen to their adults,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot more in the last few years of them taking on these roles of anti-suicide, anti-anxiety, welcoming, anti-bullying messages.”

The Be Strong leaders are working to establish new habits and traditions at Olympus that focus on kindness and empathy for peers struggling through life’s challenges, which sociologist James Davison Hunter points out in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education” is critical for prompting people to take action.

“What empathy we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person,” Hunter wrote. “But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when, nor how.”

At Olympus, one of the major avenues for action is the SafeUT app, which “is a statewide service that provides real-time crisis intervention to youth through texting and a confidential tip program – right from your smartphone,” according to the website, which is run through the University of Utah.

“Licensed clinicians in our 24/7 CrisisLine call center respond to all incoming chats, texts, and calls by providing supportive or crisis counseling, suicide prevention, and referral services,” according to the site. “We can help anyone with emotional crises, bullying, relationship problems, mental health, or suicide related issues.”

Back-to-school rally draws community together for backpack give-away, lessons on school safety

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Alachua County Public Schools’ annual backpack give-away has a new theme this year: “See Something, Say Something, Do Something.”

The Florida school district’s 19th annual Stop the Violence/Back to School Rally at Santa Fe College centered on a new program for area schools this year that officials hope will help students respond to emergency situations, and active school shooters, in particular, The Gainesville Sun reports.

The event – sponsored by People Against Violence Enterprises, Alachua County Public Schools, Meridian Behavioral Healthcare, as well as other area businesses and community groups – introduced students to the ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evade) method to keep them safe, with the promise of additional training for students and staff during the first week of school.

“We are going to teach your kids to fight back as a last resort,” Andrew Davis, a school resource deputy with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office told those who attended.

Officials doled out 2,500 backpacks filled with school supplies, and shared information about school calendars, supply lists, free- and reduced-price lunches, and after-school opportunities. But Gainesville Police Department Chief Tony Jones said a major goal was to compel students to do the right thing, and inform police if they’re aware of threats to their school or classmates.

“I want you to be safe this school year,” he said. “If you see something, say something.”

“This lets us set the stage for stopping violence in schools,” school board chairman Gunnar Paulson told the news site. “What could be more appropriate than talking about this right now?”

Parents who attended seemed to agree, with some recalling how the event made an impact on them as youngsters in the school system.

“I’m here because it’s important to teach our children about how to stop the violence in our schools and neighborhoods,” said 29-year-old Julianne Williams, whose two children will attend Lawton Chiles Elementary School in 2018. “I probably came here every year when I was in school to get backpacks, and now I’m bringing my children.”

The August rally drew many students and parents, as well as a wide variety of local leaders, from elected officials or those running for office to school leaders, parent-teacher groups, school vendors and others.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, pointed to the importance of school practices and connections to the community in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education in a variety of different schools.

“How a school is organized, the course structure and classroom practices, the relationship between school and outside civic institutions – all these matter in the moral and civic formation of the child,” he wrote.

The ALICE Training Institute website offers additional details on the methods this organizations uses in K-12 schools to prepare students and staff for the worst.

“Families and communities expect schools to keep their children safe from all threats including human-caused emergencies such as crimes of violence,” according to the site. “In collaboration with local government and community stakeholders, schools can take steps to plan and prepare to mitigate these threats. Every school Emergency Operating Procedure should include courses of action that will describe how students and staff can most effectively respond to an active shooter situation to minimize the loss of life, and teach and train on these practices.”

 

Major League Baseball and ESPN team up with No Bully program to “Shred Hate” in schools

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Major League Baseball is working with ESPN and the San-Francisco anti-bullying organization No Bully to “Shred Hate” in schools across the country.

MLB and ESPN launched the “Shred Hate” program at the 2017 X-Games that included teacher training and interventions in 35 schools in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis, along with several others in Colorado.

The initiative is designed around strategies developed by No Bully, such as student “solution teams” and non-confrontational conflict resolution, to help schools drastically reduce bullying incidents, detentions and other misbehavior, the Washington Blade reports.

The goal is to make it “cool” to oppose bullying, through public service announcements from famous athletes like gay skier Gus Kenworthy.

“We go in and we train the staff how to interrupt conflict and bullying in a very non-confrontational way,” Lynne Seifert, No Bully’s program coordinator for Shred Hate, told the Blade. “And we do that by using their social vision or their social contract.”

Students are also treated to visits to MLB stadiums to meet players like Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner, and Billy Bean, a gay former MLB player who now works as the league’s Vice President for Social Responsibility.

ESPN touted No Bully’s “interventions to prevent and stop bullying and cyber bullying in school and after school programs” as highly effective in reducing conflicts and guiding school leadership to “lead school culture change” by incorporating parents.

“The school joins with parents to prevent student bullying and cyberbullying through building a culture where every student is accepted for who they are,” according to the No Bully website.

Bean told the Blade the results from the first year of the Shred Hate program included an overall average attendance increase of six percent in the 35 participating schools over the previous year, as well as other encouraging “across the board numbers.”

“And they have decreased school suspensions by 50 percent,” Bean said. “They had a total of 175 detentions last year in those schools and they were down to only 47 this year.”

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, notes the importance of a cohesive message in forming character in students in his book “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideals and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

Teachers, parents, and school officials can find more information about the No Bully approach at NoBully.org. The website features several anti-bullying campaigns, testimonials and other details about how the program transforms school cultures.

According to the No Bully website, Most schools discover that a partnership with No Bully pays for itself through new enrollment and retaining students that they would otherwise have lost because of bullying.  

Students work as anti-bullying ambassadors to encourage classmates to report incidents

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Students at Witham, England’s Maltings Academy in Essex are taking action to confront bullying, and they’re focused on creating new, anonymous ways for students to report incidents.

Six students in year nine recently formed an anti-bullying council to work as ambassadors to encourage students to report bullying incidents through school staff. But the students also want to open up other ways their classmates can highlight problems without exposing their identity, the Clacton Gazette reports.

“Of course, (students) can speak with their teachers, but the ambassadors want to be able to offer alternative, anonymous ways to report problems that they also feel comfortable with,” said Mark Skinner, head of year nine. “The focus is not just on preventing bullying in school, but looking at the problems young people face online.”

The ambassadors will work with the whole student council to develop the anti-bullying strategies, a process that ultimately benefits all students, Skinner said.

“It is giving them some responsibility and it is great to see them so caring of others,” he said.

“The year nine students felt it would be beneficial to involve students at an early stage, so they are consulting with their peers and staff as to what approaches would work,” Emma Baker, head of Maltings Academy, told the Gazette.  “For example, they are thinking about how they can incorporate technology,” she said. “It’s great to see the students involved and raising awareness.”

Students and staff at Maltings are addressing the particular circumstances at the school with the new bullying reporting tools, and the focus on online bullying zeroes in on specific issues facing the school and countless others schools.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, noted how that engagement plays an important role in developing strong character in students.

“We can only care for the young in their particularity,” Hunter wrote in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education work in a variety of schools. “If we are not attentive to and understanding of these contexts, we are not caring for real, live human beings, but rather abstractions that actually don’t exist at all.”

Teachers and principals interested in a whole-school approach to bullying that also targets specific aspects of the problem can find a vast array of resources from the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program.

The program offers free webinars, online courses, program implementation, and guidance on securing funding, all focused on reducing existing bulling, preventing future problems, and developing better relations between students.

“All students participate in most aspects of the program, while students identified as bullying others, or as targets of bullying, receive additional individualized interventions,” according to the Olweus website. “The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is designed to improve peer relations and make schools safer, more positive places for students to learn and develop.”

TX schools partner with Sandy Hook Promise to launch anonymous bullying reporting app

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Students in Houston, Texas schools will soon have new, anonymous ways to report bullying, an effort spawned by a state law focused on fighting bullying online.

Texas lawmakers approved David’s Law last summer to ensure the state’s public schools “have the authority to address cyberbullying that occurs off-campus,” according to David’s Legacy Foundation.

The law requires schools to notify a bullying victim’s parents of an incident within three days, as well as the parents of the aggressor. The law gives schools the authority to expel students who encourage others to commit suicide, incites violence or releases indecent images of another student, and promotes mental health education and use of counselors to resolve student conflicts and bullying.

David’s Law also requires schools to include anonymous ways for students to report problems with bullies.

The Houston Independent School District is complying with a new tip line, website and mobile app that will allow students to report incidents of bullying without the stigma of going to the school office or approaching adults or police.

“The main thing is you’re providing students voice,” HISD’s head of student support services, Anvi Utter, told Houston Public Media.

“You’re providing them a safe place where they can talk about things that are happening at school, that’s outside of school,” Utter said. “And students will know that they’re being heard and that there’s going to be a response to this.”

HISD’s anonymous reporting system is provided by the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise, created in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Connecticut in 2012. Utter believes that while the new approach will ultimately reduce bullying in schools, she suspects it will initially create more reports by allowing students to voice their concerns from the shadows.

“I actually think there’s going to be an increase in our bullying reporting because this is anonymous,” she said.

The system also reflects a unified approach – from lawmakers to counselors in schools – for dealing with students who prey on their classmates.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, notes in “The Tragedy of Moral Education in America”:

Moral education can work where the community, and schools and other institutions within it, share a moral culture that is integrated and mutually reinforcing; where the social networks of adult authority are strong, unified, and consistent in articulating moral ideals and their attending virtues; and where adults maintain a ‘caring watchfulness’ over all aspects of a young person’s maturation.

To date, nearly 3 million people have taken the Sandy Hook Promise – “I promise to do all I can to protect children from gun violence by encouraging and supporting solutions that create safer, healthier homes, schools and communities.”

The national nonprofit offers a variety of programs and resources for educators and parents, from suicide prevention, to safety assessments and other guides to help prevent violence in schools and to reduce and eliminate harm to young people.

 

‘Roots of Empathy’ brings babies into classrooms to help students understand emotions

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Educator and author Mary Gordon believes babies are the “Roots of Empathy,” and her nonprofit by that name is reducing bad behaviors in classrooms across the globe, with help from those who can’t help themselves.

Gordon launched Roots of Empathy in Canada more than two decades ago to expose K-8 students to babies as a means of helping them understand their own emotions and empathize with classmates. The program includes 27 lessons centered on monthly visits from a parent volunteer and their infant, supervised by a Roots of Empathy-trained instructor, Nation Swell reports.

“What we do know and what teachers know is that the children really do learn to understand the alphabet of their emotions,” Gordon said. “And even better, they are able to talk about how they feel.”

Over the last 22 years, Roots of Empathy has expanded to 11 countries including the United States, driven by both anecdotal evidence and research showing its powerful impact. One study suggests the program can cut the number of students picking fights in half, while another highlights reductions in “difficult” behavior and increases in positive communication and social behaviors.

University of Missouri researchers in 2005 wrote Roots of Empathy shows “particularly strong evidence for its potential to reduce aggression and violence,” according to the news site.

The Seattle school district first adopted Roots of Empathy in 2007-08, and more than 15,000 Seattle students have participated in the program since its inception.

“Roots of Empathy provides a unique way to bring out compassion and tenderness in students,” Nancy Smith, a third-grade teacher in Seattle’s Olympic Hills Elementary, told Seattle’s Child in 2015. “For kids, Roots of Empathy is a respite from the day-today realities of school, and helps them deal with the difficulties and challenges in their home lives, as well. The visits are a breath of fresh air, giving kids a break from the work of academic learning and interactions with peers.”

Gordon said the program is designed to take a proactive approach to bullying and other student discipline issues.

“It’s not medicine, it’s vitamins, and we all need vitamins,” she told Nation Swell. “If you offer a universal program, you head off a lot of trouble, and it’s a benefit that we head off aggression and bullying.”

“This is our solution to building a caring, peaceful and civil society; through children,” Gordon said.

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, discussed the importance of addressing specifics of each school’s moral ecology to created personalized solutions to bullying.

“We can only care for the young in their particularity,” Hunter wrote in “The Content of Their Character,” an analysis of character education programs in a wide variety of schools. “If we are not attentive to and understanding of these contexts, we are not caring for real, live human beings, but rather abstractions that actually don’t exist at all.”

The “universal program” offered by Roots of Empathy involves broad lessons for all students. Other programs like the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program take a similar all-inclusive approach, along with lessons targeted specifically at victims and perpetrators of bullying.

“Because the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is not a curriculum, its core principles, rules, and supportive materials can be adapted for use by any program that children and youth attend on a regular basis, such as after-school programs, camps, or community youth programs,” according to the Olweus website. “All students participate in most aspects of the program, while students identified as bullying others, or as targets of bullying, receive additional individualized interventions.”

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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