Schools work to minimize harassment between students

Staff Writer
Tahlequah Daily Press

Studies show what people once thought was normal playground behavior can have lasting, detrimental effects on a person.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and groups like the Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights – or PACER Center – want to raise awareness on the dangers of bullying. The group began its campaign in 2006, and it started out with a one-week event that eventually grew to encompass the whole month. One of PACER’s original goals was to change social views on bullying so that it would no longer be considered a “childhood rite of passage.”

Since the group’s founding, numerous studies have been done on bullying, who it affects most and what consequences it has on the victims.

According to PACER, one out of every four children is bullied during the school year, while only 36 percent report the incident. The reasons for being bullied most reported by students dealt with their looks, body shape and race. Students who experience bullying are at greater risks of depression, anxiety and poor school adjustment, while kids who do the bullying are at increased risks of substance abuse, academic problems and violence later in life.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-gender and questioning students or those perceived as such suffer some of the harshest bullying from peers. Nearly 82 percent of students that identify as LGBTQ were bullied last year because of their sexual orientation, and 63.5 percent felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation.

Fred Poteete, a preventionist at Tahlequah Public Schools and a nationally renowned bullying expert, started TPS’s bullying prevention activities earlier in the school year to set a precedent for students. Poteete was crucial in passing Oklahoma’s Bullying Prevention Act and said Oklahoma was the 10th state to pass such an act.

Poteete said after witnessing a bullying situation when he taught at Tahlequah’s Central Academy, he knew he had to do something.

“I remember back in the ‘90s, I was talking to the kids in the auditorium at lunch time and this kid jumped over the seat and just started hitting these kids in front of him,” Poteete said. “I took him out after that, I sat him down and I asked him what was wrong and he told me that those kids had been picking on him all school year. He was a calm kid normally but he just snapped; he’d had enough. I knew then something had to be done.”

One of the first things Poteete implemented was a drop box where students could discreetly voice their problems. Poteete also came up with a “hot spot survey” students take once a year to map out the areas of school where they feel unsafe. The anonymous survey helps administrators recognize areas of not only bullying, but areas where students see tobacco, drugs, vandalism or anything else that would create an unsafe environment. Poteete said one of the best resources for bullying prevention is the “See Something, Say Something” form that can be found at tahlequahschools.org. The form allows people to report bullying or an unsafe situation at any TPS campus.

Poteete said one of the main things they want to emphasize to children is that they have options when dealing with a bullying situation, and that each option has unique consequences.

“They need to know that what they do matters and has an impact,” Poteete said. “Everyone needs to realize that even if you can’t save the world, you can still do your part.”

Studies have also shown a strong link between bullying and suicide. According to PACER, youth victimized by peers were 2.4 times more likely to report suicidal ideation and 3.3 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than students who do not report being bullied. As reported by the Center for Disease Control, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., with 41,149 reported cases in 2013.

Another big component of bullying and its effects are the actions of bystanders. Students who experience bullying report that supportive actions from their peers were the most helpful and that students who are bullied are more likely to find those actions of their peers more helpful than those of an educator or self-actions.

Liza Warren, a counselor at Heritage Elementary, said she believes the school doesn’t have much a problem with bullying because of how supportive the students are of each other.

“Power in numbers is what I try to teach to some of these kids,” Warren said. “I ask a lot of these kids, ‘If you aren’t standing up for those kids being bullied then what are you doing?’ And a lot of them say that they are being the bullies if they don’t do something. Here at Heritage, we’ve got some amazing kids and they tell us if something happens so I think that’s why we don’t have too much of an issue here.”

Warren said she felt it was important to instill that feeling of unity at an early age in children. Both she and Poteete shared in their feeling that to have a successful bullying prevention program, an understanding and cooperation between staff, parents, students and everyone else involved is necessary.

“Bystanders are the key to stopping things,” Poteete said. “Not just for the child being bullied but for the child doing the bullying as well. If we don’t stop that behavior now, where are they going to end up later in life? They’re probably going to end up in a prison or something like that and that’s not good for society. Or maybe someone will bully their way to a CEO position because, unfortunately, we have a lot of people in authoritative positions that bullied their way there and we don’t want that. You want the kind of person that shows their power only when they have to.”

Copyright 2015 by the Tahlequah Daily Press. Provided by AP Exchange.

The Gayly – October 7, 2015 @ 12:20pm.