This past year, our CARES Heroes have worked to set the scene educating our staff and students about bullying. As a PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) School, a designation we received last spring from The Minnesota Department of Education, it is our commitment to keep improving our school environment, educating our students and families, and making Grainwood the safest school possible.
Bullying is a hot topic in education. Even now, the legislature is working on improving the standard for how schools address it. First and foremost, bullying will not be tolerated at Grainwood and any incidents of bullying will be dealt with according to our district policy.
There is no doubt students and families (and even staff) interpret bullying and bully-like behavior differently. Therefore, our first objective is to establish a common language around bullying and define it for Grainwood.
So what is bullying? Here are few definitions and some rationale that our PBIS Committee reviewed over the past few months. Authors Lester Laminack and Reba Wadsworth share this information in their book Bullying Hurts.
The American Psychological Association (2012)- “a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words, or more subtle actions…The bullied individual typically has trouble defending him or herself and does nothing to ‘cause’ the bullying.”
Beane (2009)- "There is an imbalance of power.”
Barbara Coloroso (2011)- "Bullying is not about anger. Rather it arises from feeling superior and seeing no value in selected others. It is about contempt-a powerful feeling of dislike toward someone considered to be worthless, inferior or undeserving of respect. Bullying is arrogance in action. Once kids believe that someone is 'less than them’ they can harm that child without feeling any empathy, compassion, or shame.”
A more kid friendly definition of why bullying occurs...(PBS Kids 2009)- “The reason why one kid would want to bully another is this: when you make someone feel bad, you gain power over him or her. Power makes people feel like they’re better than another person, and then that makes them feel really good about themselves. Power also makes you stand out from the crowd. It’s a way to get attention from other kids, even from adults."
Moving forward, our PBIS Committee used the above and other resources to craft our own kid-friendly definition for Grainwood: Bullying is mean words or actions, done on purpose, to hurt people and their feelings. A bully does these things to one person over and over.
We are taking the time to introduce our definition to our students and staff slowly through school-made videos that model examples of what bullying is and what it is not. (I am sure you have heard about our CARES Heroes videos; we showed our newest versions at this past February's Family Fun Night.) Overall, I imagine it will take 1-2 years for full implementation to establish a solid understanding of bullying and to speak its common language. As a school, we plan to gauge student learning through an annual survey. The first survey was administered to our grades 3-5 students this past January and we started incorporating their feedback into our future CARES planning and instruction.
How can you help? If you are concerned that your child is being bullied, please contact your child's teacher or the principal. We rely on families to report behavior that would fit the definition above, so we can deal with it immediately and appropriately.
Education, whether academic or social, is a partnership between the home and school. Thank you for contributing to Grainwood's success!
Principal Glynn
