Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Schools Focus on Bullying Prevention

Schools Focus on Bullying Prevention /Walz

Intro: Public school students and parents are seeing some changes this year in the way their schools handle bullying. That’s because of a law passed by the legislature last year that schools are now starting to put into practice. One way schools are trying to comply with the law is through a renewed focus on bullying prevention. Maura Walz of the Southern Education Desk has the third of our four-part series.

The state education department’s Garry McGiboney has been helping Georgia’s schools stop bullies since the early 1990s. But since the state legislature passed the revamped bullying law last year, McGiboney says he’s seen a change:

McGiboney: Our view has come from responding to questions and responding to requests for training, which has been unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my career as an educator. There’s more attention in Georgia on bullying prevention right now than anything I’ve ever heard about. (0:19)

McGiboney has kept busy, training teachers, administrators ‘ even school bus drivers. Every adult who works in a school is now legally mandated to report bullying if he or she sees it. So educators want to make sure that they know how to spot the behavior ‘ and how they should respond when they do.

But McGiboney says there’s been a shift in the types of questions educators ask since the law was passed. At first, he got mainly operational questions about how to put the law into practice.

McGiboney: But that has changed from questions about the law more to questions and an interest in bullying prevention and bullying intervention. (0:07)

The reasoning is that it’s better to stop mean teasing and harassment before it builds enough to reach the legal standard for bullying.

So -- pop quiz: how do you stop bullying? How do you even recognize bullying? [fade up background sound behind the kids] Here’s how a couple of students answered that question recently:

Kid: A bully is probably like the meanest person. That’s what comes to my mind, like someone pushing someone.
Kid: Like when they push you or shove you. Bullying is like, when something is unfair and one-sided, it happens when people are usually upset about something and they go after you and they take it all out on people.
Kid: I’ve seen someone getting bullied, but I told a teacher.
‘ 0:23]

[fade down background behind kids; fade up Jeff Dess greeting staff at Mt Bethel Elementary; then fade under narr.]

Jeff Dess’ job is to help schools make sure students know how to answer that question. Dess runs a prevention and intervention program in Cobb County that experts point to as a model for bullying prevention done right.

[fade up, Dess asks how to get to Ms. Oakes office]

On this day, Dess has come to Mt Bethel Elementary in Marietta to work with the school’s ‘bullying committee.’ It’s a group of teachers and administrators -- led by guidance counselor Kellie Oakes ‘ who have volunteered to help develop the school’s bullying prevention strategies.

[intercom beeps]
[voice over intercom] Yes?
Kellie Oakes: Hey, can you make an announcement just to remind the people on the bullying committee that we’re meeting at 2:30?
[intercom:] Okay
Jeff Dess: Bully them to come!
[intercom:] (amused) Bully them to come. Okay.
Dess: Yes. Threaten them!
[intercom beeps; voice says] Bullying committee members’..(fade down at 0:20)

[bullying committee conversation running under narration following]

When it convenes, the committee discusses how best to integrate their prevention strategies into the classroom. Should they repeat last year’s contest, which challenged each classroom to create a poster illustrating positive behaviors?

[fade up: Dess: Or you can keep the poster that you already have that was a winner and assign each grade a character word ‘ it can be kindness, caring, empathy, whatever you want to do, make sure the kids understand it, and develop those posters’fade down]

Or, should they follow the lead of another school and have fifth graders produce videos demonstrating the difference between tattling on someone and telling an adult about behavior that could hurt someone?

They also go over a survey that the counselors plan to give to the school’s older students. Dess explains one change this year that will, for the first time, let the school track instances of bullying over time.

Dess: We added a question to the survey’ I was bullied in the past 30 days in the following ways: and it says physical -- pushing shoving tripping hitting; verbal -- hurtful teasing insults making threats; cyber -- computer or texts; left out or ignored on purpose. And their choices are not at all, 1-3, 4-5. This will give you a direct indicator of whether bullying is going up or down and in which areas it’s going up or down. So that’s a cool question to add (sound of hitting the paper.)

Peggy Haag [pronounced with long a] teaches second grade at Mt Bethel and is a volunteer on the bullying committee. She says that even before the law, prevention work has helped the students learn to check themselves against bullying.

Haag: I think children are more aware of the fact that that’s called bullying and that I better be careful of what I do and that there are consequences for it.

The results of a survey that the Mt. Bethel counselors gave to students last year seem to bear that out ‘ but also suggest challenges. 85 percent of last year’s third through fifth graders said they would report bullying if they saw it. But if they saw someone being ganged up on by a group, the number of students who said they’d report it dropped to 68 percent.

Oakes says there was some nervousness at the school when they began to implement the full documentation required by the new law. It seemed overwhelming.

Oakes: It was such a grey area, really, we were like, what about this? Teachers are going to feel like they have to write down if somebody looked at somebody. We were afraid that people were going to be feeling like they had to fill them out all the time.

But Oakes says the paperwork has been manageable. She also says the law has helped change the way she communicates with parents, for the better.

Oakes: Before, maybe we would have just talked to a kid about an incident, kinda kept it in mind, but we weren’t maybe contacting the parent every time. But now, I had a couple yesterday ‘ where I just wrote it up, ‘you know, it’s not bullying it yet but we have to keep an eye on it.’ And both parents were right on top of it ‘ ‘thank you so much.’ And it prepares them too so they’re not so surprised, ‘what are you talking about this has been going on?’

But the process of spreading bullying prevention efforts around a school does take a lot of work. In an ideal world, Dess says that he would take a full day and a half to train teachers and staff on bullying prevention strategies.

[short fade up of sound of the committee discussing strategy.]

But in the real world, Dess says he’s lucky if he can get 45 minutes of teachers’ time in a faculty meeting.

And then there’s the question of funding. Federal funding that has supported Dess’ program ran out this month, and Dess and the program’s other administrators aren’t sure if they’ll be able to find the money to fill the gap.

From the Southern Education Desk in Atlanta, I’m Maura Walz.

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