Ian a short film inspired by a true story

This video would be an excellent resource for a classroom lesson to show the effects of leaving someone out because they are different, empathy, or the power of one positive bystander.

Bullying In the News

Today Mrs. Trump was in the News for her invitation to the State of the Union tonight extended to a boy in Delaware who has been bullied for his last name since President Trump was elected. In fact it seems every week there is a news story about some type of bullying. Bullying has been linked to school violence and suicide. Yet many states still do not require anti bullying programs be taught in schools. Check this web site to see the requirements for your state stopbullying.gov

As school counselors we can take the lead to implement a school-wide bullying prevention and intervention program. Single events like one classroom lesson, a school assembly, or discussions during Bullying Prevention Month have been shown to be ineffective. What is effective is having all staff trained in a common definition and procedure for handling bullying reports, educating families, and using an evidence based curriculum to teach students to recognize and respond to bullying behavior. Fellow students being positive bystanders is the most effective deterrent to bullying in schools.

I have used the Committee for Children Bullying Units as a school counselor and find them to be clear and easy for students to understand. They also are accompanied with online training units for staff that make training consistent. I especially like the training portion they offer for administrators.

There are several high quality programs that have been researched and shown to be effective when implemented with fidelity. Schools are not always honest in their reporting of bullying. Bullying happens whenever there are groups of children (and adults) together. It frequently begins in preschools. I hope as a school counselor you advocate for a comprehensive bullying program in your school and evaluate its effectiveness. See the Bullying page on this website for more ideas.

Life-Changing Lessons for Girls

Our school division is looking for evidence-based resources for our school counseling program. The Peace Center's Bullying Prevention Resource Center in Pennsylvania has put together a program "Girls Unlimited" and published the curriculum through youthlight.com Every girl in grades 6 and 7 could benefit from participation in these 6 forty five minute sessions. Topics include:

• How to recognize their own emotions and treat themselves and others with kindness and respect.
•Practical ways to manage their anger or upset
•How to intervene when witnessing relational aggression
•The meaning of self-respect and self-care
•The value of trust

•The importance of women bonding togetherWhile the curriculum is self-explanatory 

My favorite part of the curriculum is Power Play which allows participants to discover that they have the ability to trust their own instincts and not hand over their power to others. I like that the evaluation is built in to the curriculum and that the developers are continuing to track the effectiveness of the program. 

Although the curriculum is self-explanatory Karin Kasdin, Founding Director of Girls Unlimited does offer one-day facilitator training through thepeacecenter.org I encourage you to check out this evidence-based resource to address relational aggression.

No Name-Calling Week

I have my school celebrate No Name-Calling Week every year. I like that it occurs the same week as MLK day. It is easy to remind students about the power of words because Martin Luther King Jr. changed lives with his words. It was started by GLSEN ( no-name-calling-week ) which has lots of resources for educators. We use it to circle back and reinforce that repeated name-calling and teasing can become bullying. We also emphasize empathy and showing compassion for students who are being targeted. Of course in this digital age we mention how it can also occur using technology. This year I asked each teacher to send home information about the week to families to discuss at home and also to use it as a topic today for their morning meeting. 

Evidence-based Bullying Prevention

All fifty states in the United States have passed school anti-bullying legislation, the first being Georgia in 1999 and Montana the last in 2015. A watchdog organization called Bully Police USA bullypolice  advocates for and reports on anti-bullying legislation. States have clear policies about bullying and you must follow what your own state requires. For example, this year Virginia passed additional bullying legislation which requires principles to notify parents of any alleged bullying within 5 days. Virginia has several valuable resources for schools prevention/bullying/ Here is a list from 2016 listing evidence-based programs to address bullying bullying-prevention-curriculum. I know it is not totally up-to-date because it still lists Steps to Respect but the Committee for Children has transitioned to Second Step Bullying Unit (pictured above) which is very similar but more up-to-date. Bullying programs make a difference, in schools that have an anti-bullying program, bullying is reduced by 50%. Many school counselors facilitate the bullying prevention program in their schools. ASCA offers bullying-prevention-specialist-training if you feel you need more training on this critical topic.

Who Gets Bullied at School

People can be mean and those who bully often target someone who is perceived as "different" than their peers. It could be a student who is gifted or has a special talent. Students with food allergies are targeted and blamed for school's tightening policies about food being served at class parties. If a student has a physical feature that is noticeable like large ears or being short, that can make him/her a target. Students who have a limited number of friends, are introverted, or socially anxious are often harassed. They get called "retarded" because they rarely speak in groups. Adults need to be very vigilant and responsive to bullying. It frequently is done when peers can see it and hear it but the one doing the bullying thinks the adult won't notice or is not around. If a student is bullied and reports it to an adult, the adult must receive the report in a way that is helpful. Never tell a child to ignore bullying. Bullying is a repeated pattern of behavior that will likely occur again. When adults in a school are not responsive to bullying reports kids stop reporting bullying but bullying is still happening!

UNITY DAY: Together against bullying.

United for kindness, acceptance and inclusion. Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Make it ORANGE and make it end! What are your true colors when it comes to bullying? If you care about safe and supportive schools and communities make your color ORANGE on Unity Day. That’s the day everyone can come together – in schools, communities, and online – and send one large ORANGE message of support, hope, and unity to show that we are together against bullying and united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion. Learn more at pacer.org They have great resources for kids, parents, and educators.

My school participates every year in Unity Day. For the past few years I have involved the SCA by giving them a mini lesson about Unity Day and then having them make the posters that are displayed during October for Bullying Prevention Month. The one pictured above is simple and cute. We hung it on the front door of our main office.

October is Bullying Prevention Month - Stop Bullying On the Spot

We use this bulletin board every other October because all our students know the story of Spookley the square pumpkin who was bullied by the round pumpkins. Lessons are available here pacer.org/bullying/classroom/elementary/spookley/
It helps reinforce the Second Step Bullying Unit lessons I teach and the literatur based lessons led by our classroom teachers, administrators, and librarian. This year we waited until the latter half of the month to start talking to the kids about bullying. Our district uses a common scope and sequence and the elementary counselors agreed we needed to talk about accidents and empathy before bullying. We use all the Committee for Children products and these are early lessons in Second Step. If you do not have the money for Second Step check out the resources on the government website stopbullying.gov

Literature-Based Bullying Program

Our school has used a literature based bullying prevention and intervention program from K-grade 5 for the past ten years. For a bullying program to be effective it cannot be totally on the shoulders of the counselors. The program also must evolve according to changing needs and feedback from evaluations. Last year all the counselors in our County were required to do the skill based lessons based on the Committee for Children's Bullying Unit which is evidence-based. These lessons are engaging and do a very good job addressing electronic bullying in grades 3-5. Because the counselors had to deliver the evidence-based lessons they no longer had time to do the read alouds as they had done in prior years, Therefore we tried either the principal or assistant principle reading those books to K-3; it was so well received this year I selected books for them to read to the upper grades as well.

The administrators read these books at the end of October which is National Bullying Prevention Month. We are pushing the skill based lessons and books the librarian reads into November because this topic requires prior knowledge before it can be taught and we try to use the first six weeks of the school year teaching children what we want them to do. Our librarian is a former counselor so she happily reads and does an activity at each grade level as long as I assign her good books! The teachers had been reading the same books for several years so this list reflects what they will read this year.  There are new books published on this topic every year so we wanted to make sure we were sharing the best of what is now available. These are the books I selected to address the theme of bullying behavior.  We encourage the teachers to read these books in January as a means of revisiting this important topic as the school year progresses.

The entire school uses the Committee for Children definition of bullying and uses the Responsive Classroom Code of Conduct CARES: Cooperation, Assertiveness, Responsibility, Empathy, and Self-Control. All students are taught an assertive response is usually the best way to handle challenging behavior and to be positive, helpful bystanders or "upstanders" - not provide an audience or join in. All staff receives annual training on how to respond to disrespectful behavior and what to do if the reported behavior is bullying. Our state requires schools to use a research-based program to address bullying. We evaluate this program annually to make continual improvement. Data from the evaluation and incidents of bullying reports and coaching session are shared each year with teachers during pre-service week.

How will you be the One?

One by Otohsi is one of my favorite books to use to teach students to REFUSE bullying behavior. I have used it in my bullying lesson in October for the past 5 years. This year we were required by our district to teach the Second Step evidence based bullying lessons developed by the Committee for Children. But I know literature based lessons are powerful so my school is continuing using literature at all grade levels to address this bullying. My librarian has been reading a book each year to all grade levels on bullying as part of our school-wide program but she did not love the book she was using in grade 3. I suggested we have her read One and she then developed a great activity to go along with the lesson. She had each student respond to the prompt shown above and she got some heart-filled responses. She then turned them into this great simple bulletin board that is in our main hall. I am so lucky to have a staff that think they all play a part to teach children to spread kindness.

Unity Day

Today is wear orange to make it end, unite against bullying. We have been celebrating Unity Day at my school for the 10 years Pacer has been sponsoring this activity. It is a great way to get the message out to all students that bullying is against the school rules. Teachers review the definition in their morning meetings and the 3Rs Recognize, Report, Refuses. We also do a big social media campaign on this day, the highlight of Bullying Prevention Month. To learn more about Unity Day see pacer.org/bullying/nbpm/unity-day

How to UnMake A Bully

There is a whole series of these videos that were developed by fourth and fifth graders. They are a great resource for Bullying Prevention Month.

Jaylens Challenge Teen touring country seeking to end childhoo FOX 26 ...

Bullying Prevention

The Committee for Children continues to provide excellent evidence-based resources to schools to make schools safer. The online training schools receive when they purchase the Second Step Bullying Unit is terrific. I wish every administer would watch Module 1 to really understand this problem and their responsibility in making sure ALL staff are properly trained to handle bullying. The second Module is for ALL staff. This year all our new staff had to go through Module 2 and watch videos and take quizzes. It takes about an hour but it really teaches them how to take a report and if they are a teacher (or counselor) how to develop a plan with a child. Module 2 is for staff who are going to teach the student lessons which in our district is the counselors. National Bullying Prevention Month is a perfect opportunity to engage families in awareness of bullying behavior and how to help children respond if they are bullied or if they are aware bullying is happening (bystander). Check it out cfchildren.org/bullying-prevention#stafftraining

National Bullying Awareness Month - October

Every October, schools across the country join in observing National Bullying Prevention Month. The goal: encourage communities to work together to stop bullying and cyberbullying by increasing awareness of the prevalence and impact of bullying on all children of all ages. Throughout the month our learning community will be raising awareness about bullying behavior and how important bystanders are to reduce bullying behavior.

During October the counseling lessons will all be about bullying based on the Second Step Bullying Unit. Administrators will be visiting all kindergarten through third grade classes to read a book about bullying.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016 we will celebrate UNITY DAY: Together against bullying — united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion. Make it ORANGE and make it end! What are your true colors when it comes to bullying? If you care about safe and supportive schools and communities make your color ORANGE on Unity Day. That’s the day everyone can come together – in schools, communities, and online – and send one large ORANGE message of support, hope, and unity to show that we are together against bullying and united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion. To learn more about this day see http://www.pacer.org/bullying/nbpm/ All staff and students are encouraged to wear orange that day.

In place of a morning message in morning meetings on Unity Day we ask classes to work together on a simple Unity Tree. The Unity Tree is a powerful symbol reminding everyone that bullying can be prevented when we all come together – united for kindness, acceptance and inclusion. Creating a Unity Tree is an interactive and hands-on activity, a shared experience in which all students can participate and everyone can watch the tree grow. Each person contributes their own unique experiences, creative ideas, and strategies by writing positive messages on leaves that are attached to the tree. As the number of leaves increases, it creates a visual reminder, demonstrating that when we are united we can create social change. On the class easel or bulletin board, create the trunk of a tree and branches. Pre-cut leaf shaped pieces of orange paper large enough for students to write a message will be provided to teachers. Here are three options for types of messages, or create your own: If you planted a seed, what would you tell your seed about bullying? What can you do change/impact your school’s culture about bullying? How can you support a friend/peer who is being bullied? Each student writes down their response on a leaf. Attach each of the leaves to the tree. Display the tree in your classroom for the remainder of October.

SCA representatives will be making a poster for each classroom about Bullying Prevention Month. The display case in the front of our school will feature anti-bullying this month.

Bullying Prevention

Nationally 1 in 4 students report they were bullied during the past school year. I have coordinated our school's bullying prevention program for the past 8 years. When I went to my current school 9 years ago there was a lot of social and verbal bullying that was mostly being ignored by staff. We began using the Committee for Children Steps to Respect program in grades 3-5 and I developed materials for counseling lessons and teachers in grades K-2. Despite a comprehensive program, 23% of our students in grades 3-5 last year reported they were bullied. Bullying is a social and environmental phenomenon that happens in schools. My major focus is to train all staff to listen and empathize when students report bullying so they continue to report and to train students to be helpful bystanders. Research has shown over and over again that those are the most important components of a successful bullying program. 

Last year I developed a Google Form with the information on the Bullying Report Form shown above. It is on the Counselor Corner part of our school web page and students, staff, and parents can use it to document reports of bullying. It comes directly to my confidential school Google folder and generates all the data reports I need. Last year I received 33 reports online. We still have paper and pencil copies available (our cafeteria and recess monitors carry these on a clipboard). Students can also complete a paper form and put it into a Bullying Box outside my office. Staff provide their name but parents and students can make anonymous reports.

This year our district purchased the Committee for Children Bullying Prevention Units for all schools K-8. It uses the same language and tools as the older Steps to Respect materials but does not rely as heavily on the literature-based component. We will continue to use read alouds and discussions led by teachers in all grades at my school to ensure total by in and an ongoing message that bullying of any type is not allowed at our school. My favorite part of the new Bullying Prevention Units is the 3 online training modules.

We are providing "flipped" professional development for our staff with these training modules. All staff will use Module 2 on their own time which trains them to take a bullying report and if a situation is determined to be bullying develop a safety plan for the students being bullied and a behavior-change plan for the student doing the bullying. As the training administrator I am notified when staff have completed the training. We are requiring all new staff to come meet with me for 15 minutes for a discussion about our school's procedures and so I can answer any of their questions. This is a big time saver because in the past all staff sat through a 45 minute presentation by me and new staff had to come to my office to watch the Steps to Respect DVDs which took an additional 2 hours.

Check out the Committee for Children materials here Bullying-Prevention-Unit

End of the Year School Climate and Bullying Student Survey

In our school management plan we strive to have a high percentage of staff respond appropriately to reports of bullying behavior. We have been using the Committee for Children Steps to Respect and now the Second Step Bullying Units which emphasize annual staff training and reminders to listen empathically to all reports (affirm the child's feelings) and gather enough information to determine if the behavior meets the definition of bullying (unfair, one-sided, negative power). Research shows that if staff do not listen to reports students will stop reporting. This question on the survey all 3rd - 5th graders completed last week shows we have aways to go to meet our goal.

Kindness, Positive Psychology, the Power of a Smile

This book addresses bullying but focuses on the use of positive psychology to combat it. It relays the message that happiness is a choice and a smile can change a negative environment into a positive one. The author, Shawn Achor, is a researcher on positive brains and success. Learn more about him at goodthinkinc.com

Unite Against Bullying

Our school mascot, a Knight, joined the staff and students for wear orange day October 21 to make bullying end! Orange is the color for fairness in Character Counts. A key word in our definition of bullying is bullying in unfair (a group against one). The Knight was dressed in the a color each day during Character Counts Week.

Bullying: Awareness, Prevention & Intervention

What do you share about bullying prevention on your school web page? In Virginia there is supposed to be a designated point of contact for parents to go to about bullying. I am the point of contact for my school.  I think it is very important for parents to know what we are teaching students about bullying behavior. Here is a link to the page for my school program   http://www.apsva.us