The Injured Bear: The complex facets of school bullying

1. The Injured Bear: The complex facets of school bullying Sauk Prairie High School Principal Edgewood College Doctoral Student Chad Harnisch

2. Read a newspaper lately?

3. News Samples: Bullying of Asian-Americans spikes in New York City schools Religion News Service-9/06/13 (RNS) A report released Thursday (Sept. 5) by two civil rights groups found a dramatic spike inbullying of Asian-American students in New ... School bullying's chilling new front CNN-9/05/13 (CNN) -- Can cruel words really kill? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Recently, a teenage boy killed himself in Connecticut. Bart Palosz was .. Cape beefs up bullying policies Sentry-9/06/13 CAPE ELIZABETH – Many students return to school each year sad to see the end of the relaxed, slow-moving days of summer, yet excited to .. Stop School Bullying – KOGA 930 AM [Radio] Lawyers.com Blog (blog)- 9/06/13 Lawyers.com Editor-in-Chief Larry Bodine speaks with KOGA (930 AM) in Ogallala, Neb., about your legal rights if your child is bullied in school .. New Girl on the Block: Identifying and Coping With Workplace Bullies Huffington Post (blog)-9/04/13 Have you ever been the victim of humiliating or intimidating tactics such as ridicule, verbal abuse, being the butt of all jokes, being excluded ...

4. What the data says: • 50% of all high school students said they have bullied someone in the last year • Nearly 50% said they have been the target of bullying, teasing or taunting in ways that seriously upset them The 2010 study by the Westchester-based Josephson Institute of Ethics used a large sample of more than 43,000 high school students from private and public institutions nationwide.

5. What the data says: Data on bullying: 17% report regular abuse • 17 percent of American students report being bullied two to three times a month or more within a school semester • When asked what they feel when they see a student their age being bullied, the vast majority of students (83 percent) indicated that they feel sorry for the bullied student (90 percent of girls, 75 percent of boys). • Washington Post, 10/20/10

6. What’s the impact of Bullying? • Bullying/Harassment makes school a very difficult place to be. • Anxiety is the most rapidly increasing stated reason for absenteeism. • A majority of students reporting feeling anxious, indicate peer interactions as a contributing factor • “Gaming Addiction” second most rapidly increasing stated reason for absenteeism. • For students with a strong web-presence, like gamers, cyber-bullying becomes almost impossible to avoid.

7. How have schools responded? • Minimize the problem – “Kids will be kids.” • Overreact – “We have a zero tolerance for bullying so we’re having you charged.” • “Re-act” only

8. How Schools Should Respond? • Build a shared understanding of the problem • Build a shared responsibility for the solution • Empower all stake-holders to confront problem Bx. • Establish clear reporting and response procedures • Begin from a restorative perspective.

9. What is Harassment/Bullying? • "A person is bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons, and he or she has difficulty defending himself or herself." • Key Components: • Aggressive behavior with negative actions • Pattern repeated over time • Involves an imbalance of power or strength

10. What does bullying look like? • Verbal bullying through derogatory comments and name calling • Bullying through social exclusion or isolation • Physical bullying such as hitting, kicking, shoving or spitting. • Taking property such as money away. • Threatened or forced to do unwanted things • Racial bullying – doing the above, with race as a factor • Sexual bullying – doing the above, with gender or other sex-based issues as a factor • Cyber Bullying - doing any of the above, but using some form of technology to transmit the message.

11. Show students you understand:

12. Power Dynamics of Bullying: • Victims are powerless to stop the cycle without help. • Aggressors are often in denial about their actions and also powerless to stop the cycle. • Bystanders grant the aggressors the authority to continue to act as they are. • Most bullying takes place in the unclaimed spaces of our society: • Locker rooms, hallways, cafeterias, playgrounds, cyberspace, etc.

13. What does that mean? • Our students will experience trauma from bullying inversely proportional to their ability to access structures within society to address the aggressor. • Who the are those kids suffering the most from bullying? • How can they get relief? • Can this be addressed solely through the actions of adults?

14. Empower Students to End Bullying in their schools: • Analogy I use with students • Bullying is like a fire: • It needs: • Fuel (Victim) • Ignition (Aggressor) • Oxygen (Bystanders)

15. Framework for Schools: • “We don’t do that here” • Anonymous Tips • Restorative Conferencing on 1st offense • Aggressive escalation on 2nd or 3rd offense. • Continual efforts to engage silent majority.

16. Framework for Mental Health Professionals: • Listen to victim; bullying is NEVER victims fault. • Give advice (role-play) how a victim may respond to future bullying • Work together – family, child, school personnel – to address. (Work within current structure) Encourage contact with principal. • Be Persistent and follow-up - Don’t accept ongoing bullying. (Elevate concern on failure to respond)

17. Lastly: • Advocate for systemic change, independent of individual complaints, in schools where it’s needed. Take a leading role. Build a coalition of adults (parents, staff, law enforcement) to implement the plans we’ve talked about here.

18. Resources: • www.stopbullying.gov – US Department of Health and Human Services (Comprehensive resource!) Great step-by-step resources for responding to and preventing bullying • http://www.cyberbullying.us – Website for the Cyberbullying Research Center. Great resource for two reasons: 1 – best source of research and advice on cyberbullying, 2 – Dr. Justin Patchin, co-Director of Center, is a UW-EC political science professor. • Articles and research by Jing Wang and/or Ronald Ionatti. Psychometricians working for National Institute of Health. • Me.

19. Questions?

20. Contact Information • Mr. Chad Harnisch, Sauk Prairie High School • Email – chad.harnisch@saukprairieschools.org • Twitter - @chadharnisch • Blog – sphseaglesview.blogspot.com