Strategies to eliminate bullying in schools

Local educator outlines strategies to eliminate bullying in schools

By Debbie Gardner, PRIME Editor

What does school bullying look like?

According to Dr. Kathleen Skinner, director of the Center for Educational Policy and Practice for the Massachusetts Teachers' Association, that depends upon the age of the student.

"Bullying at different age levels presents itself differently," Skinner told Reminder Publications. "For little kids it's often shoving and pushing and punching. In middle school it can look like excluding kids from a group, or teasing.

"In high school," she said, "It's spreading rumors, ganging up on kids and cyberbullying."

But no matter what form the act of bullying takes, bullies, their victims and the adults who are charged with monitoring their behaviors teachers, school administrators and parents need concrete and effective strategies to help diffuse the situation and mitigate the emotional effects.

A local educator, SiriNam S. Khalsa, an instructional leaders specialist with the Springfield school system and a National Board Certified Teacher, has written such a guide.

Called "Break the Bully Cycle Intervention Techniques and Activities to Create a Respectful School Community," the book offers strategies, tips and advice to help the teachers and parents of both bullies and victims cope with and change students' behaviors.

The book is the second Khalsa has written. His first book, "Teaching Discipline and Self-Respect," dealt with classroom management strategies for teachers.

Recently, Reminder Publications had an opportunity to speak with Khalsa about his newest book, and why he felt it was important to write it.

"What studies are pointing to," Khalsa said, "is that across the country in our public schools when students are surveyed, approximately 10 percent are saying they have been a victim [of bullying] at least once a week, some more often.

"When you look at an urban middle school with 1,000 or so students," he continued, "that's over 100 students being bullied every week."

And, he said, that doesn't count those students who see or observe bullying happening around them and the effect this has on them.

"That alarmed me and alerted me that something had to be done to support a bully-free environment," Khalsa said

In the book, Khalsa takes readers through an overview of what bullying is, how to create a respectful school community, how to identify and help victims, how to help bullies, how to keep schools safe and how to deal with the newest bullying threat cyberbullying.

"I witnessed that at a school, seeing someone get a text message, knowing where it came from and being very upset," Khalsa said. "It was in a high school a few years back. A girl was sitting in a Spanish class. She was a little overweight and she was looking down at her hand and crying."

He said that later, after some coaxing, she told him someone had written something very distasteful in a text to her.

When asked how he developed the exercises in "Break the Bully Cycle," Khalsa said he drew on his background and experiences as a former special education teacher and city school system inclusion coach. "As a special educator, to be effective, it's imperative that we have not only an understanding of the student's academic needs, but also to their social and emotional needs," Khalsa said. "So I was sensitive to the relationships that work/do not work between students and teachers."

He also said he purposefully included information in the book directed to parents.

"The two most important institutions in a child's life are school and home," Khalsa said. "That's why I included a [section in each] chapter for getting information to and from parents; for the teacher to get information from a parent to help with a child's problems at school and also for the parent to work at home [with the child] whether they are exhibiting bullying behavior or have been a victim."

Khalsa also told Reminder Publications that he recently collaborated on the development of a workshop on bullying, which uses portions of his book, with the MTA.

"I thought when I first started teaching [that] it was only new teachers that were having problems with classroom management and bullying," Khalsa said. "But I found it was all teachers . It can be overwhelming."

Skinner said though she hasn't had any requests from schools in western Massachusetts for the new workshop yet, she expects the workshop to become "very popular."

"It's a very pervasive problem and bullying is a problem that schools have to deal with on a regular basis," Skinner said. "And oftentimes, because schools have a lot of new practitioners, it's a topic worth revisiting."

Schools interested in the MTA bullying workshop should contact Beverly Eisenman in the MTA Center for Education Policy and Practice at 1-800-392-6175 ext. 8232. She can also be reached by email at Beisenman@massteacher.org.

The cost of the workshop is $40/person if the MTA provides the materials; $20/person if the school provides the materials.

Khalsa said individuals interested in obtaining a copy of "Break the Bully Cycle" can do so online at the publisher's Web site at www.goodyearbooks.com.