August 10, 2005
Dear Middle School Teachers and Counselors,
As part of our First Amendment Schools and Character Education efforts, Price Laboratory School has developed an anti-bullying program to share with area schools. We have chosen to entitle this effort "Students Helping Students". Middle and high school students, through our advisory program, were involved in activities designed to build a caring community. As part of this effort, they discussed issued related to harassment and bullying. NU middle and high schools worked together to develop posters and inspirational and reminder statements designed to get students to help one another in building a stronger school community. As a result of their efforts, along with additional research conducted on prevention of bullying and harassment, four important components were developed. These materials are being shared with you to support the efforts in your school to build positive student behavior and, in turn, a positive school climate.
Brochure: Students Supporting Students to Build a Caring Community
This is an informational brochure directed at all middle school students and their parents. The brochure contains tips and strategies for prevention of bullying and harassment. Sections are directed toward victims of bullying/harassment, bystanders, bullies, and parents. References for additional information are also provided. Feel free to alter the brochure to fit your school. Add your school name and phone numbers and any additional information that is appropriate to your situation. Consider the brochure your template for beginning.
Take a Stand to Do the Right Thing
Don't Pick on People Because They're Different
Don't Hate Me Because I'm Nice
Choose to Be a Good Person
Good Character
Choose to Do the Right Thing
Be Cool to Your School
One Person Can Make a Big Difference
DO Something!
The Power of Choice
It is important that you gauge the degree to which bullying is a problem in your school. This is best done early in the school year, prior to any organized efforts to deal with bully prevention. The CD contains one survey to be given to teachers and staff members and designed to provide information on their perception of the existence of a bullying problem. The CD also contains a sample survey that can be administered to students to gauge their perceptions related to bullying in your school.
The CD and accompanying materials are being given to schools free of change. While all of the samples enclosed contain the PLS/NU name, schools are strongly encouraged to use these as templates, but to add their own school name on the posters, brochures and locker magnets before printing your own sets of these materials. Better yet, use the materials to stimulate your students to develop additional poster and magnet ideas that they design, print and display at school. The success of your efforts to improve school climate by creating a more caring community atmosphere is dependent on your student taking ownership in the project. What better way is there for this to occur than to provide students with information on bullying, then provide opportunities for them to develop their own anti-bullying campaign.
You may request a CD by emailing Jody Stone at Stone@uni.edu. The CD contains word documents of the locker magnets, the posters, the survey and the brochure. We would suggest the following steps to get you started in your continued quest for a positive school climate:
1. Determine the pervasiveness of bullying in your school: To do this, begin the year by administering the Safe School Survey to both teachers/staff and to students. Notice that these are different surveys. Feel free to change this survey to meet the needs of your particular school. The survey results will provide you with some baseline data about the extent of the problem in your school. It will also give teachers and administrators a chance to see where their perceptions differ from those of their students. I would very much appreciate receiving a copy of your survey results. Your name and the name of your school will not be used in any of the summary data. In fact, if you would like to send the completed surveys directly to me, I would be happy to compute average scores of each of the questions and send those results to you. This will likely save you some time.2. Prepare one or two lessons to introduce bullying to your students. To make it real to your students, share the results of the survey with your students. In addition, share some of the national bullying statistics with your students. The five Internet references listed below provide excellent lesson plans that introduce the topic to middle school students. In addition, the articles provide statistics on bullying in middle schools as well as background information on the topic. Reading through the information provided on these web sites will give you more than enough information to carry out initial awareness activities with your students.
References with lesson plans & background information
Middle School Bullying Lessons - http://mis.spps.org/counselors/m_bully_less1.htmlEducation World, Bullying Intervention Strategies That Work, Linda Starr, 2000, http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues103.shtml
Bully-proofing your Middle School, Marla Bonds, Spring 2000, http://www.naesp.org/ContentLoad.do?contentId=481
Stop Bullying: Guidelines for Schools, New Zealand Police Association, http://www.police.govt.nz/service/yes/nobully/stop_bullying.pdf
More Information on Bullying, Bully B'Ware Productions, Canada, http://www.bullybeware.com/moreinfo.html
Why You Should be Concerned About Bullying, Scottish Council for Research in Education, 1992, http://www.scre.ac.uk/bully/
3. Kids design their your own awareness campaign. It is important that students take ownership of any bullying problems that are apparent in your school. A good way to do this is to get students actively involved in an anti-bullying campaign. To generate interest/ideas, print several of the posters and locker magnets provided on the CD. (Be sure to add the name of your school first!) These make excellent visuals around which student discussion can take place. Get students to react to the information presented on the posters. Find out which points they feel will be the most help as a "reminder" to kids their age about positive behavior. Challenge small groups of students to design their own posters and locker magnets. Display their posters around school. Locker magnets can be printed in a standard color printer. The magnetic sheets can be purchased for approximately $1 per page. If you have students design their magnets on the computer, you can print around 10 magnets per page. (I would love to see some of these student designs, if the kids are willing to share them. I would like to post them on our web page so other schools can see them too. It might be fun for kids to see their creations on a web page!)4. Determine if student's perception improves. Wait until you have had time to successfully complete some of the above mentioned steps, then administer the survey to students and teachers/staff again. It would be a good idea to wait at least several months before collecting this data. Take a serious look at the data, comparing it to the initial survey results. Draw your own conclusions. Did this brief introduction increase student awareness of the problem? Do the results warrant increased attention to the bully component of safe schools? What other strategies can be employed to create a more positive school climate?
5. Develop a plan for the future. A positive school climate is a very important component of a successful school and should be an integral part of every school's School Improvement Plan. A variety of conditions have been related to improved academic achievement in schools. This includes academic engagement, connectedness, participation in extra-curricular, liking school, having a student voice, positive peer relations, safety, fair and effective discipline, and/or teacher support (Oct. 13, 2004, www.mainecshp.com/school_climate/guidelines.html.) Of these conditions, liking school, having a student voice, positive peer relations and safety can all be directly impacted by dealing creatively and effectively with issues related to bullying.
I would appreciate hearing back from you as to how you are using the materials and how this format for sharing ideas is working. I would also like to post your student's ideas for locker magnets and posters on my web site. I am also interested in learning about how your pre post survey data comes out. Remember, your participation in this project is totally voluntary. You may use some or all of the materials, but are not obligated to do so. Feel free to direct your comment and any information you would like to share to me through emailing Stone@uni.edu.
Sincerely
Jody Stone
Price Lab/NU High