(air whooshes) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "At Issue".

I'm H Wayne Wilson.

Thank you for joining us.

The National Center for Educational Statistics reports that on any given year, approximately 20% of students in schools are bullied.

One in five are bullied each year.

That number is astounding to my estimation and we're going to have a discussion about how we might go about becoming more aware of bullying and what steps can be taken to at least reduce the amount of bullying in schools in Central Illinois.

And to do that, we have the Superintendent of Pleasant Hill School, Dr. Lisa Weaver.

Thank you for being with us.

- Of course.

Thanks for having me.

- And for everybody, Pleasant Hill is a feeder to Limestone High School.

- Correct.

One of the eight feeder schools.

- And also with us is Derrick Booth.

Derrick is the director of social-emotional learning for Peoria Public Schools.

Thank you for being on "At Issue."

- Thanks for having me.

- Before we talk about the prevalence of bullying and the solutions to that, we probably need a definition of bullying.

- So basically, bullying in a nutshell is it's unfair, one-sided treatment by a peer that is consistent.

It could be anything from making someone feel left out.

It could be making them feel judgemental.

It could be just making them feel frightened or threatened, any of those types of things.

It could include cyber bullying.

We see that a lot in today's society.

So anything along those lines is what we really classify as bullying.

What I find a lot is my students and my families have a difficult time discerning between whether it's true conflict or actual bullying.

So I know the Center for Prevention of Abuse, it came up with a really great acronym and it's called HOUR.

And basically, we're looking at the defining terms of bullying.

So, is it hurtful?

Is it ongoing?

Is it unfair?

And is it repetitive?

So if we look at those, we can really determine if the behavior that students are experiencing is true bullying.

So, that's just one of the ways that we, at Pleasant Hill, determine if students are being bullied, when we kind of examine that acronym.

- Lisa mentioned the situation, where is it a conflict or is it bullying?

- Yeah.

- Is conflict a one-time event or is there an easy way to differentiate that, okay, this was a one time thing.

We're gonna treat it a little differently as opposed to, this is repetitive?

- Yeah, I think when you're looking at a conflict, you're looking at isolated events, probably surrounding an issue or a situation versus her definition of bullying, which I think is very good, versus is it ongoing and is it repetitive?

And is it hurtful?

And also, is it intentional?

In a lot of ways.

So I think you do have to differentiate, is it just an isolated conflict, or is this ongoing bullying that's taking place?

- And it doesn't have to be physical.

- Correct.

- [Wayne] It can take many different forms, such as?

- Cyber bullying.

Like I mentioned before, that can be through the social media platforms.

We see a lot of that in today's society with our students because they're exposed to so much of that social media.

It could be just simply leaving someone out.

They're not having the opportunity to participate in group games, whatever it might be in the school setting.

So it could be unintentional, it could be intentional.

And then just hurtful and threatening comments made.

So it could be direct bullying.

One student says something directly to another student and that's truly an intentional act of bullying.

- But bullying can be unintentional.

Let me paint a scenario for you.

If gym class, you have some athletic students in a gym class, you have not athletic students.

The gym teacher, at least my experience, was the gym teacher picked the athletic person to be team A captain, team B captain and start picking.

And the last person picked is the least athletic or nonathletic.

That is unintentional bullying, or is it even bullying?

- It could be hurtful and it could be ongoing if that's the consistent way that teams are being selected.

And I think that's why it's important for educators to be mindful of the impact of having those type of consistent routines, where someone is consistently being picked last or consistently not being picked at all.

And as an educator, when you can recognize the impact that that can have on a student but changing the format of how teams are picked, changing the format of who picks teams would be important to reduce the amount of negative impact that that can have on a student.

- It could actually be in an academic setting where the teacher calls on certain students repetitively because he/she knows that she's gonna get the right answer for that question.

- It could, yeah.

We encourage our educators in the classroom to find different strategies for just essentially classroom procedures for calling students, ensuring that everyone has a place.

- So we know roughly what bullying is now.

So the traditional way to handle that, years ago, was detention, suspension.

What are the parameters now?

How do you address this situation?

- Yeah, I think it's important to give consequences and not punishment for students.

And the difference of that is punishment is just to punish because of your behavior, versus a consequence is to teach a lesson.

So there still can be a suspension or there still can be a detention but the key is what are we doing to help them learn that their behavior is wrong?

And so that's where that mediation may have to take place, or that restorative conversation may have to take place, to let them know how their behavior is harming someone else.

And then also, maybe have them with the victim, in a room, just to set boundaries and parameters of the types of interactions that are acceptable, I think.

But the key is not just to punish where the behavior can continue, or they didn't learn a lesson in their behavior.

But the key is that we restore the harm that's been done and that they can proceed without those type of behaviors in the future.

- I probably should have asked this question first, before I asked that question of Derrick.

And that is, we were talking about some of the techniques are used but you have to determine, was there bullying?

Is there a procedure that you use or is it dictated by the particular incident?

- Normally, I would say it's dictated by the particular incident.

Every situation is unique and so we evaluate each case as it comes about.

We encourage students to come forth and report bullying incidents.

We create a positive culture and climate and we feel like our students feel very safe and comfortable and they're willing to come forward and talk to us if they feel like there's a bullying incident or any other type of incident that they feel uncomfortable about within the school setting.

So I think once you create that culture, that positive culture and climate, I think that says a lot in allowing students to come forward.

And there's always someone within that school culture that they will feel comfortable with.

Whether it's the counselor, whether it's the administrator, the Dean, whoever it might be but they know that they can come and talk to somebody.

And so just giving them different channels that they can report that bullying through.

- Derrick, Lisa said, they know that they can go to the counselor, the Dean, because there's a relationship.

You have 25, 26 buildings to deal with.

How do you build that culture that she referenced?

How do you make sure that the student is free to come in and say, Dean, somebody did this to me.

- Yeah, I think it's through consistent communication with not only your students, your staff but also the families, that behaviors such as bullying is not tolerated and you create that environment where if you see something, you say something and then you give them, as Dr. Weaver said, multiple avenues to say something, whether it's face-to-face with another educator in the building or a support staff but you also give them avenues to report it anonymously, if they feel more comfortable doing it that way, I think.

But you continue to promote those different avenues to communicate and you also definitely encourage not only your staff but your students.

If you see something, say something and to step in, when they see bullying take place.

- Derrick mentioned that the student reporting something could be anonymous but students don't always buy into that concept.

How do you assure a student that they need to step forward?

They're a witness to a bullying event, they recognize it.

They need to come to someone in authority and say, I saw so and so do this.

- We encourage them to be accountable for not only their actions but for some of the things that they see within the school setting.

So we tell them that, Hey, if you see something, you've gotta say something, like Derrick said.

And we want them to know that they're not only helping themselves but they're helping someone else.

It could be a peer, it could be someone else that they see in the school setting.

But it's really important that they start to take accountability and step up to be a leader.

And when they know that they can do that, they feel really good about themselves and the fact that they helped out a peer.

- So they should not view themselves as being a snitch.

- Yeah, that's what we wanna overcome and I think when you create that positive school culture, especially at a young age, it helps overcome that stigma of being a snitch and telling on someone.

I think that's important 'cause it's real that there's strength in numbers and so when the overall school culture is not accepting of bullying behaviors, that minimizes the strength of the bully.

- Have we seen an increase, a decrease, or has bullying remained relatively stable in terms of the number of cases, with regard to COVID or is there a trend at all?

- I would say that it's remained pretty stable.

The big area that I'm seeing concerns in that there's been an uptick, is the lack of social-emotional skills.

That really has been a concern for us since COVID two years ago.

Really, the students lack some of those self-regulation skills and just basic social-emotional skills.

So we're having to essentially reteach some of these social-emotional skills.

So we've implemented the second step digital curriculum to really teach those skills directly to all of the students in pre-K through grades eight.

We also do character counts lessons daily.

So just giving students that direct instruction with the social emotional-learning I think is key to getting them back in the groove and giving them some of those social-emotional skills that they truly need.

- A similar situation at Peoria Public Schools, Derrick?

- Yeah, we're definitely seeing the same challenges, especially at our younger grade levels of the lack of social-emotional skills that students have and that's for a variety of reasons.

Many students didn't attend kindergarten in first grade in a face-to-face setting and it's tough to teach those skills over remote.

But in addition to that, we are definitely teaching students at all of our grade levels, those social-emotional skills on how to resolve conflict and how to have positive peer relationships with one another and I think that's very important as well.

But then also, not only self-awareness but social awareness, to be accepting of everyone that you come in contact with.

No matter the differences, I think is very important as well.

- We touched very briefly on the role of the family earlier.

How often do you have to involve the family with regard to a student who is a repetitive bullier?

- My goal is to continue to keep them involved whenever there's a disciplinary behavior issue.

I always reach out to the family.

I think keeping those lines of communication open between home and school is key.

If you have the parents on board, I think you're always gonna have a successful relationship in resolving some of those issues that you see with the students.

So I think just keeping those lines of communication open and saying, Hey, this is behavior that we're seeing here at school, what are you doing at home?

Do you see some of these same behaviors?

And kind of work together as a team in a partnership and see what you can do to resolve some of those behaviors that you're seeing.

- Let's expand that conversation about at home and what the parent sees.

The parent could notice some change in the child's behavior if they're a bullier and if their child is being bullied.

So what should a family look for in either case?

- Yeah, I think changes in behavior is one of the things to be always in tune to of changes in your child's behavior, whether that be changes with their appetite, changes with their willingness to wanna go to school, changes in their isolation, just staying in their room.

So any type of change, I think it's important for a parent to notice and then intervene.

And what I mean by intervening is begin having conversations with the student about what's going on at school, who their friends are.

Are they having any challenges?

Are they having any issues?

But then also, in that partnership with the school itself, with the teacher.

Are you noticing anything about my son or daughter that's different?

I think as often as we can do that as parents and be in tune to what changes are taking place, the better it will be.

- So don't hesitate if there's a parents-teacher conference, don't hesitate to ask the teacher or the teacher may share?

- Right, never wait.

Even if it's not parent-teacher conference time, feel free to reach out.

I know a lot of my staff members use Remind, simple apps like that, where they can reach out to their teacher or where they can reach out to the families and just, if there's a concern, if you notice something different, please reach out.

- Do you run into the situation where a family member, a parent may say, "Excuse me, Dr. Weaver, what?

My son, my daughter would never do that."

- Of course.

- You need to resolve the situation and the son or the daughter is being supported by family.

Are there ways to manage that situation?

- I always try to encourage the student to take accountability for their actions.

So when behavior arises at school, I always tell the child that, Hey, this is something that you engaged in, this was your behavior.

This wasn't my behavior.

So I think it's important that you reach out to your family and tell them exactly what happened in this situation.

So it's important for them to take accountability.

So they need to reach out to their family first and say, Hey, this is the situation that happened, this is the behavior that I engaged in.

And then I back up that conversation and I talk to the family as well and I say, this is exactly what happened and so we work through that together.

- So does the student call home in your presence?

- Yes, absolutely.

- [Wayne] And that works?

- It does.

It's very powerful.

- You were shaking your head, yes.

- Absolutely.

Anytime as a school institution you can partner with the parents, that's where you're gonna see the greatest impact.

When students can see the teacher or the administrator and the parent all on the same page, you're usually gonna get a positive outcome from the student.

- It's particularly important that you address this early in life at the younger ages, when you do witness bullying because bullying can have lifelong consequences.

- Sure.

That's so true.

Bullying, if it does go unaddressed, it can have a negative impact on a student's self-esteem, on their self-confidence and developing a victim mindset as well and not feeling comfortable to speak up for themselves.

And so we want to make sure that students are aware of the different avenues they have to speak up and to speak up in a way.

But we also wanna make sure when students do speak up that as educators, we just don't dismiss their issue as sticks and stones may break my bones but words should never hurt you.

Don't worry about it.

I think when students do share that something is hurtful to them, that we as educators, we have a duty to follow up on it and investigate and do that due diligence, talking with the other student.

And then making sure that we're continuing to monitor the progress of the student and make them feel like that they did have a voice and that we did look into what their concern was.

- So someone who was bullied as a child and it is not addressed in the proper manner.

It could, when we talk about lifelong consequences, it could be as much as that child not living up to their potential.

- It could.

I think it also affects the way that they establish relationships or are able to have relationships in general in later life.

They oftentimes feel insecure about themselves, lack self-confidence.

So they're not able to go out and form those relationships as adults.

So I think it has a great impact later in life.

- Might a person who is a child, was a bullier and it wasn't addressed in a proper manner have some difficulties as an adult later in life?

- I think it's absolutely a possibility, yes.

- So, I wanna go back.

We didn't really talk at great length about creating a culture and positive attitude, et cetera but how do you go about, culture, it's a nice word but you've got a couple hundred students in each school.

Sometimes a thousand students in high school.

How do you create a culture where the students say, I'm responsible?

- Yeah, I think you have to have those expectations set and not only set verbally but it has to be a theme throughout your building, whether that's through signs, whether that's through your morning announcements.

And maybe that's through just consistent communication.

Your newsletters, your weekly phone calls home to parents.

Everything is about setting the expectations for your school.

But I think more importantly, as the educators in the school building, to model what the expectations are for the students.

And then when you see students not meeting the expectations that are set socially for students having those conversations about what we do here in the school building, what our culture is and so that when their behavior's outside of our expectations, they don't become the norm.

They become the outlier that are easier to address.

- And you seems to be in strong agreement with him.

- Yes, I would agree.

We actually have been focusing on positive psychology over at Pleasant Hill.

We've been implementing the Orange Frog Initiative.

And so we're really starting to spread kindness throughout the school and within the community.

One of my paraprofessionals, she actually started, on Wednesdays, she started creating signs that she holds in the morning to greet students.

So it might say, share a smile, spread kindness.

And now she has multiple students that have kind of joined her on Wednesdays and they all know that Wednesday is the sign day.

We spread kindness.

So I think developing initiatives like that, we just created a student advisory committee with student representatives from fourth through eighth grade.

It really gives the students the opportunity to have a voice and take on that leadership role so that they can, when we're implementing new initiatives, so to speak around the school, they're able to give some input and feel like their opinion is validated.

- I need to back up.

Orange?

- Orange Frog, Shawn Achor.

It's a positive psychology mindset, so I'll have to let you read the book.

- (laughs) That's good.

- You wanna spread orange.

- Is there a book called "Orange Frog"?

- [Lisa] Yes, there is.

- Okay, you can look it up, "Orange Frog".

So she was mentioning that there are mentors.

You actually have mentors who are students?

- Student Advisory Committee, yep.

- Does it help that an older student, maybe mentoring isn't the right word but there's an older student to look to?

If you're in fourth grade, you can look to a seventh grader?

- That makes a huge impact and actually, that makes probably an even a greater impact or just as great of an impact as when you have those staff modeling the behaviors.

When a peer can look at an older peer or another peer or be held accountable by another peer, I think that has a great impact of building that school culture of what's acceptable and what we do here in the school building.

So I think peer mentors, utilizing those older students to work with the younger students can have a great impact.

- Does age make any difference with regard to bullying, whether it be the type of bully or the meanness of the bully, or is it kind of universal, whether you're in second grade or a senior in high school?

- I would say we see more cyber-bullying with the older population, like junior high students in high school, just because the younger population doesn't really have access to the social media yet.

But as far as, you know, the threatening, the name-calling, that type of thing, I would say that's pretty universal.

- But the cyber-bullying doesn't take place during the school day?

- No, not typically.

Some buildings may.

I know the high schools allow students to have their phones.

- But in Pleasant Hill, no phones.

- [Lisa] No.

- But that doesn't mean there can't be cyber bullying.

- Correct.

- It can happen over the weekend, what have you.

- It could and it does.

- Are phones allowed in high schools?

- Phones are allowed in high school.

there's expectations, they're off and out of sight.

I know normally in common areas like lunch and things like that but they are allowed to have their phones, yes.

- So what's the recommendation?

And we talked about what to look for in your child if they're a potential victim of bullying but can the parent actually initiate a concern and call the school district?

- Absolutely and we actually encourage that.

When you do have a concern about bullying taking place to contact the school and contact the school teacher, the school administrator.

There's also a bullying complaint form we have on our district website that all of our school building websites have access to.

But we also have an anonymous tip line as well.

If you're not comfortable, your student's not comfortable being recognized as the one making the complaint, there's different approaches that you can.

So we definitely encourage that.

We think that's the first step to communicate, so that action can be taken or an investigation can be done to get to the bottom of it.

- [Wayne] And you have a bullying policy at the school?

- Yes.

- [Wayne] All schools have to have that.

- Correct, by law, we have to in the state of Illinois.

- In real brief, what does that entail?

Does that have how you can contact the school if you see something?

- Yeah, it just basically states that no child will be bullied within the school setting and it gives just, you know, no cyber-bullying will take place, no child will feel threatened, et cetera.

So they're all pretty similar but they are reviewed annually by different school committee members and so we just wanna ensure that it's effective and that we are meeting the needs of all students.

- And with that, the conversation needs to continue at your home.

We've run out of our time.

So thank you to Dr. Lisa Weaver, who is the superintendent at Pleasant Hill School, which is a feeder into the Limestone High School.

- Correct.

- [Wayne] And to Derrick Booth.

Derrick is the director of social-emotional learning for Peoria Public Schools.

Thank you both for being with us on "At Issue".

Next time, another addition of "At Issue".

This time, we're going to talk about kids again.

You can learn about science and arts in the classroom but imagine what the imagination might be if you do it out in the woods at the Sun Foundation, their 50th anniversary and a discussion about the impact of arts and science at that location on the next "At Issue".

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