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Community officials gain insight on bullying prevention
Putnam County community members gained a little more insight on bullying prevention through a free lunch presentation at the Prindle Institute for Ethics on Thursday afternoon.
The director of development for the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program Marlene Snyder and Olweus leader and trainer for Indiana Mary Yoder Holsopple led the presentation by discussing just how bad bullying can be and how to help stop it.
Bullying is an aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power or strength. It is not only seen in Putnam County schools, but all over the community as well.
"Bullying can very easily cross the line into illegal behavior," Snyder explained. "It does affect your whole community."
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, which was created in Norway, is in more than 10,000 schools in the United States. Through this program three key components are outlined; bullying involves an aggressive behavior, typically involves a pattern of behavior over time and an imbalance of power or strength.
Although bullying has been around forever, it seems that within the last few years it has gotten worse. Targets of bullying often develop low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, lower school achievement, increased absenteeism and increased instances of illness.
"It's important that schools put a bullying prevention program in place," Snyder explained. "Parents are key in this. We have to work with the children to change their ways."
Without having a bullying prevention program in place, a climate of fear and disrespect can be created. It can interfere with learning and students may feel insecure and no longer like school. It has also been proven that schools with less bullying have higher academic achievement.
In Indiana, all schools must follow the requirements of HEA 1423, which requires annual reporting of all bullying incidents, training for all school employees and volunteers who have direct, ongoing contact with students, have a procedure expedited investigation of bullying incidents as well as provide age appropriate, researched-based instruction focusing on bullying prevention for all students in grades 1-12.
Also through the new state law, if students are bullied off-campus the school can still discipline the bully.
Both Snyder and Holsopple stressed that adults are not always good at estimating the nature of extent of bullying both in the community and within schools.
"When they see adults not doing anything, kids think that they don't care or that they are incompetent," Snyder said.
According to the Highmark Foundation, 15-25 percent of students in the United States are bullied with some frequency while 15-20 percent report bullying others.
Bullying prevention not only has an impact on one's self-esteem, but it has a cost benefit as well. In the school aspect, cost benefits relate not only to improved school climate, but also to school budgets.
"When students leave for any reason, including because they are being bullied, public schools lose revenue from state reimbursements for student enrollment," the Highmark Foundation noted.
Prevention also has a societal impact, as those who stay in school are more likely to become more productive members of society instead of draining government resources.
Therefore, in order to truly prevent bullying the community needs to begin teaching students how to intervene, safely.
"These kids (bullies) are not alone," Holsopple said. "They do have followers and we need to teach kids how to intervene safely. It takes a whole lot of courage for these kids to do something."
The community needs to make an effort to change the climate of the school and the social norms regarding bullying. It needs to become the norm to not join, which can be done by not repeating gossip, supporting the person that is being bullied, telling an adult or by talking to the person doing the bullying in private.
Bullying prevention is not the sole responsibility of administrators or any single individual, to be effective bullying prevention require efforts from the majority of the staff as well as the parents.
Putnam County schools have bullying prevention in place, but having such a program takes time to see the effects.
"It's a process," said Bill Smith of the Greencastle School Corporation. "It's the law and we're required to do it. But that is not why we do it."