Suicide and bullying

Recently I saw a news report about two students who had committed suicide because they said they were being bullied. The report said that the students had spent the night together and hanged themselves. One of the girls had left details about her funeral. She wanted it all pink. The girls were 14 years-old. This was depressing for me when I was reading the article and viewing the video. I am an administrator, but I am also a mom. I would hope that my four children would never make this decision. I worry about what is happening in not only my school, but also in my children’s schools.

After I read the article I just googled bullying and suicide. Those three little words brought up more than 19 million results. This really scared me. I looked at the first article from a Bullying Statistics website.

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html
The statistics were alarming.

• “Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC. For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it.
• Bully victims are between 2 to 9 times more likely to consider suicide than non-victims, according to studies by Yale University
• A study in Britain found that at least half of suicides among young people are related to bullying
• 10 to 14 year old girls may be at even higher risk for suicide, according to the study above
• According to statistics reported by ABC News, nearly 30 percent of students are either bullies or victims of bullying, and 160,000 kids stay home from school every day because of fear of bullying”

The following links are articles that I found related to bullying and suicide.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7228335#.T53-RIGiaSo

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/03/12/14-year-olds-suicide-puts-spotlight-on-online-bullying-dangers/

http://www.sprc.org/sites/sprc.org/files/library/Suicide_Bullying_Issue_Brief.pdf

http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/suicide/content/article/10168/1795797

The most alarming article was about a 10 year old girl who killed herself because of bullying. Her mother said she had talked to the school about a previous situation. She had told her daughter they would talk to the school on Monday again, but during the weekend the student hanged herself. With each individual situation, there is not a blanket solution. I’m sure her mother never suspected that her daughter was so upset that she would kill herself.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45354766/ns/today-parenting_and_family/t/mom-bullying-drove-my--year-old-girl-suicide/#.T54Fl-nmfE8.link

The following are some warning signs of suicide from the Bullying Statistics website:

• “Showing signs of depression, like ongoing sadness, withdrawal from others, losing interest in favorite activities, or trouble sleeping or eating
• Talking about or showing an interest in death or dying
• Engaging in dangerous or harmful activities, including reckless behavior, substance abuse, or self injury
• Giving away favorite possessions and saying goodbye to people
• Saying or expressing that they can't handle things anymore
• Making comments that things would be better without them”

In addition, bullying can happen in many forms. Bullying is not just face-to-face anymore. Parents should insist that they have access to any students' social media accounts from Twitter to Instagram to Facebook. Also parents should know who your children have for contacts and who they are texting.

As a parent and school administrator, I urge everyone to take a child’s comments seriously. People who talk about suicide should talk to someone right away regarding their thoughts. If you can’t get your child to a doctor, take the child to an emergency room. When we have students who talk about committing suicide, we have them sign a no-suicide contract, and then we urge the parents to seek professional help.

And finally, make sure you tell the school what is happening with your child. Even if something happens outside of school, administrators and counselors can help mediate a situation between children.

Bully, Bullied, and Bystanders

Recently, I read an article which focuses on the three characters (as they were called) who play a part in a bullying situation. The characters were the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. The article was by Barbara Coloroso, an advocate of bullying education. Here is the link to the article. 

 Bully, Bullied, Bystander...and Beyond | Teaching Tolerancehttp://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-39-spring-2011/bully-bullied-bystanderand-beyond

Sometimes we at schools focus so much on the bullied and the bully that we forget the bystander. Ms. Coloroso suggests that bullying generally can’t happen without the “complicity of bystanders.” Coloroso says that sometimes the bystanders will cheer on a bully, join in, or look away because they don’t want to be the next target. Coloroso believes that schools need to hold bystanders accountable for the roles that they play. She suggests that the bystanders need to be part of the change process. She believes that merely holding the bullies accountable and trying to change their behaviors is not enough. She said that “we can transform the role of bystander into that of witness – someone willing to stand up, speak out, and act against injustice.” She presented some examples of students standing up with others i.e. 50 students wearing a pink shirt for a student who was bullied over a pink shirt, a girl who ate with another after being told not to eat with that student, and a student who stood up for another who in turn was bullied. These students exuded courage in standing up for others.

A second article I read was “An analysis of school anti-bulling laws in the United States” by Maryellen T. Kueny and Perry A. Zirkel. The article was published in the Middle School Journal.  This article also discusses the role of the bystander. According to the authors, “students who witness bullying occupy a bystander role that may contribute to the cycle of aggression.” This article stated that “50% of students admitted to allowing bullying to occur without intervening.” In addition, the authors suggest that student bystanders “increase their level of participation by encouraging the bullying to continue.

This idea of standing up for the child being bullied is very difficult for the middle school student. The middle school student might not have the self-confidence to put himself/herself as a challenger to the bully. This is where we as a school need to educate our students that they do need to stand up for the bullied and not just ignore what is occurring.

Check out Barbara Coloroso's website at  http://www.kidsareworthit.com/ in which she provides handouts for parents and educators about bullying. These handouts are in English and Spanish. She also has a great handout which visually portrays the cycle of bullying.

BULLYING VIDEO AND CHMS STATISTICS

This week I had a discussion with one of my teachers (alias, Mr. Smith) who also teaches at a local university about the perception that his college students had regarding bullying and harassment issues. Mr. Smith told me that one of his college students had completed a presentation which included scenes from the recent movie Bullying. His college students had the perception that the behaviors in the movie are commonplace in all schools. The following is a clip from the movie. When I watched this video, I was distressed by what these children have encountered. At CHMS, I do not want any child to feel that no one cares for that child and that the child has no friends, nor that he or she doesn’t have anyone to turn to in times of crises. Mr. Smith and I discussed what we encounter regarding bullying at CHMS. Mr. Smith wanted to provide a realistic picture to his college students about what we see at our middle school. He wanted true data of what we have seen this year regarding bullying to use in his college class. I discussed with Mr. Smith about the Shelby County Board of Education’s Policy regarding bullying. The following information is from the Code of Conduct: “Passed by the state of Alabama Legislature, House Bill 216 became effective July 1, 2010. As a result, public school districts in Alabama are now required to establish school board policy to address and prevent harassment, violence, threats to do violence, and intimidation in the school environment. Subsequently, the Shelby County Board of Education recently adopted its own anti-harassment policy which strictly prohibits this behavior. Harassment is defined as a continuous pattern of intentional behavior, and includes (but is not limited to) written, electronic, verbal, or physical acts that are reasonably perceived to be threatening by the student-victim. In an effort to minimize this type of behavior in the school environment, the Shelby County Board of Education has created a process whereby a student, or the student’s parent or legal guardian, may report instances of harassment to the school administrator for further review and investigation. The reporting form is available through the school district’s website. When incidents of harassment are investigated and confirmed, the school administrator will apply appropriate disciplinary consequences.”

As we apply this standard at CHMS, we must look at the definition of bullying. In the board policy, it is stated that we need a “continuous pattern of intentional behavior.” This is the standard that we apply. For instance, if we have a student call another student a name one time, this is not necessarily bullying. But if every day, a student calls a student a derogatory name for a week, then the standard of a continuous pattern would apply. We then looked at our data. We looked at what types of incidents of bullying we see and the number of bullying incidents at this point in the year. As we looked at the current statistics, I have disciplined thirteen students out of a total population of 914 students or 1.4% of our student population. The noted incidents did not include sexual harassment as this is a separate statistic. These incidents would have been verbal or physical acts which were threatening towards another child. We noted that the majority of the thirteen students were 7th graders and were males. We pulled the folder with the harassment forms and only had a handful of forms which had been turned in by students. These forms are used to start a bullying investigation and only five of the forms lead to a disciplinary action. The other forms were situations in which we needed to mediate between friends. It was interesting to look at the data to see where the incidents occur. Several incidents occurred in the locker room or in PE. This is always an area of focus for us as a school. We had previously changed our supervision in these areas to minimize bullying in these areas. We will continue to monitor the bullying incidents this year and try to minimize unhealthy situations. We do not want any child to feel the way these children feel in the above video. But a key point for parents, teachers, and children is that they need to tell a school teacher/administrator/counselor if bullying is occurring. Nothing will be resolved or a situation improved until the school takes a course of action.

Bullying Resources on Delicious

As we create our bullying lessons for our Advisory Program, we are constantly looking for the best resources to use with our students. I have used the social bookmarking site, Delicious, https://www.delicious.com/cynthiacruce to catalog the bullying resources that we have used or explored.

As I was creating this bookmarking site, I created a stack for my bullying resources and a stack for my technology resources. The idea of a stack was a new concept for me. I think of the stack as being like a visual folder. A stack is a collection of links built around a common theme. The way the information appears in the stack is very visual. You can see images from the website, a short commentary about the website, and any tags that were added. I liked using the stacks to organize my favorite websites. This would be very valuable for any one in education who works on multiple concepts at a time. 

For instance, I created a stack for technology and one for bullying resources, but I can see myself adding resources on Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and creating a stack for that concept. Then I could share these resources with others.

I have collected a variety of bullying resources. One of my favorite resources was the STOP cyberbullying.org website. The site is broken into resources for different age levels, plus it has resources for parents and educators. Another resource that would be helpful for middle schools is the It’s My Life. Friends. Bullies/PBS Kids website. The resource had a good video that could be used immediately in any middle school. The video is from the children’s perspectives.

Three resources that have good information for parents is the FBI – Parent Guide to Internet Safety, isafe.org, and Microsoft.com//security/family-safety. The FBI provides scenarios related to Internet use and how parents should respond if they have to deal with situations with their children. Related to what parents need to know is a website called isafe.org/img/pdf/Acronyms.pdf. This website has abbreviations and emoticons :) for text speak. This would help parents to understand the conversations their children are having on line. The Microsoft website also has guidelines regarding teaching family members how to use the Internet more safely

Websites that would be good for educators is the Stopbullying.gov website, the bullyproof classroom website, and the Community Matters website. All of these resources offer information that schools and educators can apply in their classrooms.

A site that would be good for research purposes is the Bullying Statistics website and the schoolclimate.org website. Both of these websites provide statistics and strategies for schools.

I hope these resources are useful for others, and I will continue to add to these resources during the year.

Chelsea Middle School Advisory Program

The Chelsea Middle School Advisory Program is ideally, a time when teachers and students examine "real-life" issues and character education traits. Advisory groups focus on issues that relate to students in their roles as people, as learners, and as members of the community. The ultimate goal is for students to understand themselves better in each of these roles. Throughout the year, students explore topics as varied as developing personal goals, celebrating accomplishments within and outside of school, and examining the factors that enhance and interfere with their learning. The advisory group is intended to offer students a safe, supportive forum for dealing with issues of significance to them. Advisors provide advisees with an attentive ear, caring support, and sound advice throughout the year.

Listed below is a tentative schedule of our advisory meeting dates and the lesson topics.

8-Sep-11          Responsibility

15-Sep-11        Respect/Bullying

22-Sep-11        Sportsmanship

29-Sep-11        Responsibility for a Safe School

20-Oct-11        Attitude

27-Oct-11        School Pride/Cleanliness

3-Nov-11         Kindness/Stop Bullying

10-Nov-11       Patriotism

17-Nov-11       Cyber Bullying

1-Dec-11         Stop Gossip / How it Hurts

8-Dec-11         Acceptance

12-Jan-12        Bullying/Stop Harassment

19-Jan-12        Success

26-Jan-12        Good Judgment

2-Feb-12          Integrity

9-Feb-12          Courage

16-Feb-12        Good Citizenship

23-Feb-12        Perseverance

1-Mar-12         Punctuality

8-Mar-12         Service to others

26-Apr-12       Respect for Peers/Friendship/Bullying

3-May-12        Self-Discipline

During the meetings of the CHMS school leadership team, we would discuss that we could not just focus on bullying/harassment, but that we also needed to focus on creating well-rounded students who had good character. This involved teaching the aspects of good character and then analyzing these ideas within small advisory groups.  For instance, during the first advisory class time, we discussed what types of reponsiblity a person may have. We decided that this idea of having responsibility not only to ourselves, but to others was important so we started with this. This provided our foundation for our advisory. We used the information below to discuss repsonsiblity.

 The Six Types of Responsibility

Moral Responsibility to other people, animals, and the earth. This means caring, defending, helping, building, protecting, preserving, and sustaining. You're accountable for treating other people justly and fairly, for honoring other living things, and for being environmentally aware.

Legal Responsibility to laws and ordinances of your community, state and country. If there's a law you believe is outdated, unjust, discriminatory, or unfair, you can work to change, improve, or eliminate it. You can't simply decide to disobey it.

Family Responsibility. This means treating your parents, siblings, and other relatives with love and respect, following your parents' rules, and doing chores and duties at home.

Community Responsibility. Unless you're a hermit who lives in a cave, you're part of a community. As such, you're responsible for treating others, as you want to be treated, for participated in community activities and decisions, and for being and active, contributing citizen. If your neighborhood park is full of trash, don't wait for someone else to pick it up. You can read local and community newspapers to stay informed. When you're old enough, vote in elections. If you're feeling really responsible, you might even decide to run for office.

Responsibility to customs, traditions, beliefs, and rules. These might come from your family, your community, your heritage, or your faith. Learn what they are and do your best to respect and follow them.

Personal Responsibility. It's up to you to become a person of good character. Your parents, teachers, religious leaders, scout leaders, and other caring adults will guide you, but only you can determine the kind of person you are and ultimately become.

After the teacher lead the discussion, the students created a six types of responsibilities poster (See below) with each type of responsibility listed. The students would discuss what would be an example of family responsibility and put this example in the appropriate location. The students provided examples for all six types of responsibility.

The advisory lessons that followed also were created on the idea of creating responsility, but we now delved into being respectful of others. This lead into our first lesson on the different types of bullying, and what to do if you are being bullied. And now you have to stay tuned for examples of our advisory lessons which will be provided in the next blog post :)