INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

26 APRIL 2004
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ADOLESCENTS

Stopping bullies

More than just the kid who steals lunch money, experts target school cliques, name-calling and even gossip. Painful elementary school memories still linger for Rebecca Helwick, now an eighth-grade pupil at Divisadero Middle School. She remembers the name-calling, the exclusion and the pain. She remembers the bullies. “One time a girl pulled my hair,” Helwick said. “It made me feel terrible, and I was afraid to tell my mom or anybody.”

For years, bullying has been part of going to school, a rite of passage of sorts. Anyone, 8 or 85, will likely have a story — a bully crushed their glasses under foot, a bully stole their milk money or a bully beat them up after school. Rebecca Helwick, now 13, is not alone.

It's a nationwide problem, targeted this year by a $3 million public awareness anti-bully campaign launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in March.

And local schools are joining the effort as officials worry that bullying can have far greater consequences than previously understood. Some experts link bullying to tragedies like the shootings at Colorado's Columbine High School, where two students killed 12 others and a teacher.

Visalia schools have also joined the effort. Golden Oak Elementary launched an anti-bullying campaign March 5. And Divisadero, Pinkham Elementary and Union Elementary will launch the campaign next year. Tulare elementary schools teach respect as part of the Character Counts! program and have policies against bullying but don't have any specific programs to target bullying.

More and more, education professionals are getting rid of the age-old acceptance of this rite of passage and say it shouldn't be accepted, it shouldn't be tolerated and it shouldn't happen at schools.

“It's a problem everywhere and we have to do something about it,” Anna Gomez, assistant principal at Divisadero, said.

School poll
When Divisadero polled its students earlier this year, 24 percent said they were bullied once or twice in the previous two months, a figure that's on par with the national average. “Bullying poisons the educational environment and affects the learning of every child," said Dan Olweus, the author of "Bullying at School,” the anti-bullying program Visalia schools are using.

Divisadero Principal Cindi Costa admits that bullying is difficult to control, but so district administrators asked for schools to take part in the pilot program, Costa signed up Divisadero. “This will give kids a safe place to go and a way to deal with it,” she said.

Officials say the biggest obstacle to combat bullying is to get children out of the mindset that telling an adult is not “tattling.”

Already, Divisadero pupils are playing the parts of bullies and victims in pupil-created skits, which are being videotaped this semester. They will be shown to pupils next year. In the videos, situations show just how one should act in a bully situation. And one of the stars of the show is Helwick, the girl who has since learned to stick up for herself. “It breaks my heart to see people hurting like that, just because they might be a little different,” Helwick said.

Divisadero language arts teacher Cheryl Merriweather said the videos will help target bullies. “The focus is on bullying and why it's bad,” Merriweather said. “When kids are saying bullies are losers, it's not their parents or their teachers saying it, so it has more of an impact.”

Part of the campaign includes teacher and staff training and an educational assembly that teaches students that bullying is not OK and should be reported. It gives students the skills to deal with bullies and the responsibility to report them. At Golden Oak Elementary School, an anti-bully mascot was chosen — a bullfrog— and El Diamante High School cheerleaders wrote and performed an anti-bully cheer.

What's bullying?
One of the things students learn is that the definition of bullying has changed. It goes beyond stealing lunch money and includes how groups of children form packs to exclude others and even gossip.

Kathy Palencia, 13, said she remembers being excluded when she was told she couldn't sit at a table during lunch. “We sat at this one table, and these girls got mad at us. They tried to sit on us, too,” Palencia said.

Part of a teacher's goal in the program is to teach pupils that typical name calling, pushing and shoving can be painful, but excluding others can be just as damaging. “Bullying can be dangerous for the victim. It really damages self-esteem,” Judy Walston, principal at Golden Oak, said. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, children who are bullied are more likely to be depressed, lonely or anxious. They can also have low self-esteem and think about suicide.

Eloysa Segura, a Tulare City Elementary School District psychologist, said bullied children can come to her with emotional and physical scars. “It can cause them to have fears and not feel safe at school,” Segura said. That is not conducive to a secure learning environment, she added.

What education can do
Tulare schools work to provide counseling and teach children to gain control over the situation. Many believe that more needs to be done nationwide. “It is a public health issue,” said Kevin Ropp, a press officer with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “In 2001, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that bullying is a significant public health problem for young people. As we looked closer and spoke with experts, we learned that 30 percent of American children in grades 6 to 10 report that they have been involved in moderate or frequent bullying, either as perpetrator, the victim of bullying or both.”

Anti-bully campaigns can lead to better school attendance, a safer school atmosphere, fewer suicidal thoughts and less school violence, according to Olweus, author of “Bullying at School.”

Columbine, Colo.
As the five-year anniversary of the deadly Columbine school shooting came and went this week, Don Quick, chief deputy attorney general for the state of Colorado, who sat on the Columbine Review Commission, said Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris believed they were bullied. Klebold and Harris killed 12 fellow students, a teacher and themselves. Quick was assigned to investigate their lives and what led them to kill their classmates. “They thought they were picked on,” Quick said. “It certainly never excuses what they did, but we can see that it never happens again.”

In 2002, Colorado passed a bullying education statute that re-quires all school districts to have an anti-bully policy. “They really put the issue much more on the forefront of people's minds,” Quick said. In addition to the bully education statute, Colorado schools established an anonymous hotline used for bully prevention and suicide prevention.

What happens to bullies
The victims of bullying can suffer, but being a bully is unhealthy, too, said Tulare County Superior Court Judge Martin Staven, who handles juvenile cases. “I see a lot of bullies come through the system,” Staven said. Bullies, he added, usually have anger management issues. “This is a problem we can't ignore,” he said. Staven sees children from as young as 9 or 10 up to 17 years old and said he believes that many of them may have started their criminal histories as bullies. “A bully is a kid who picks on or hurts other children who are younger or weaker,” he said. “If it is ignored, it can escalate. They will continue until they get caught.” If bullies are stopped in their tracks, Staven said, juvenile crime will likely go down.

At Pixley Union Elementary, a kindergarten through eighth-grade school, an anti-bully campaign has been under way for three years. “Usually bullies have no empathy,” said Martha Serrato, a Pixley Union Elementary case manager for the Early Mental Health Initiative. Once a bully is referred to Serrato, she has them role play to learn empathy and teaches them anger management. Serrato said she believes that all schools should have similar programs. “Our children are going through so much, and our society is crazy,” she said. “We are disconnected from our youth.” And because of this, she added, bullying will only increase. “In general, bullies tease, lie, blame others, spread rumors and never take responsibility," she said. "And their victims are extremely withdrawn and shy.”

Over the years, Serrato has seen bullies at Pixley calm down with training and learn to respect others, and she has seen their victims learn to stand up for themselves. “Students have to feel safe coming to school,” said Barry Sommer, educational psychologist and director of student and family services at Pixley. “Ultimately, students can get scared and not go to school.”

Pixley officials have enough faith in the program that although the original grant funding runs out this year, it will continue next year. “We see enough value in it, that we are going to make it work,” Sommer said.

By Shannon Darling
http://www.tulareadvanceregister.com/news/stories/20040424/localnews/291519.html

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