Joining us this morning, I'm Cassandra Townshend,
Co-Director of the BEST Project
at the University of Vermont,
and very excited to be with you
on this chilly Friday in December.
And excited to share with you some information
around bullying prevention within, really MTSS,
but also PBIS, which is a great example of MTSS at work.
So just a few things to note.
This session will be recorded.
I'll ask that you just remain muted during the presentation.
However, there will be opportunities for you to engage.
So feel free to raise your hand
when those opportunities arise.
Go ahead and type into the chat box.
Ann Dooby, my fabulous colleague here is with us
and she'll be monitoring the chat as well.
She'll also post the materials for today's webinar
in the chat box for all of you to have.
And of course this is recorded
and will be posted later on our website.
If you had folks who wanted to join
and were not able to,
they can certainly review the recording
on our website as well.
So thanks again for being here this morning
and we're gonna get started.
And in order for us to get started,
what I would love for those of you
who are here with us today
is think a little bit,
this is our anchoring and connection activity.
Go ahead and think about an experience you had
in which you witnessed bullying-like behavior
when you were a child or an adult,
and what did it look like?
How has that experience impacted you as an educator?
So if you would be so kind, challenged by choice, of course,
go ahead and reflect on your own lived experience.
And please type in the chat box
or go ahead and raise your hand.
Awesome, thank you Ann.
Yes, if you do have other folks in the room with you,
we wanna make sure you get the survey
as well as the certificate of attendance.
So thank you for that.
Teasing about size.
Right, absolutely.
I've seen that as well.
I've also experienced that growing up.
What other things have you experienced or witnessed
in your schools?
What are you seeing right now?
I can see some folks typing I think.
We'll give you just another 30 seconds, let us know.
And there'll be other opportunities as well.
So feel free to engage in any way you feel comfortable
this morning.
Yes, academics being a slower reader.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot of that that happens,
both on sort of the physical side of things,
but also the academic.
There's lots of varieties of bullying-like behavior.
Racist comments, absolutely, yep.
Seeing an increase, Amanda, thank you for sharing.
I've also heard that with the schools
that I've been working with, so.
All right, thanks everyone for sharing.
And if you think of something,
again, we'll be monitoring the chat.
So today, what we are focusing on is really giving you all
sort of a 36,000 foot view of national statistics and data
on bullying-like behavior,
as well as some local data in Vermont.
While Vermont is a small state,
we're certainly not immune to incidents
of bullying-like behavior.
We wanna talk about bullying behavior.
I'm gonna talk a little bit about defining it.
And really the bulk of this webinar
is really giving you some strategies
as well as introduce you to a couple of resources
if you don't have a resource already
to add to your toolkit for how to address
bullying-like behavior in your school.
And so that'll be our time today.
One of the things I do wanna be very clear about,
and you'll hear me today,
is I'm using the word bullying-like behavior.
And that's very intentional,
in that bullying behavior is something that any of us
can certainly engage in.
It doesn't define who we are.
It is a behavior that we certainly need to address
in a educational setting.
Oftentimes we talk about behavior
as a form of communication.
Some of us are very skilled at communicating,
others of us are not as great and same with our students.
And so you'll hear me use that,
we wanna use that person-first language around,
it's really a person who engages in bullying-like behavior.
It doesn't define who they are
as an entire human being, right?
So that's an important context setting.
So just wanted to bring that to your attention
as I go through this presentation today.
So bullying, as we know,
and you may have experienced this in your schools,
these statistics may be somewhat familiar,
but certainly bullying has not gone away.
It's really prevalent in our society today.
There's often higher rates of,
there's differences between male and females
in terms of rates of being bullying.
One out of five, right,
students has reported being bullying.
One of the statistics that's interesting
in terms of the male versus female
is that males do tend to report at a higher rate
of being physically bullied versus females.
However, females are also reporting
that they're being subjects to bullying based on rumors.
So again, there are certain differences that are out there
with bullying statistics
that we just wanna be mindful about.
Many of the students nationally who have been bullied
or have been received bullying-like behavior
certainly were made fun of, right?
They're subject of rumors.
Certainly there's physicality
in bullying-like behavior as well.
One of the most prevalent things
that I think in the past few years
that we've seen an increase in is this next third bullet.
In 2021, there was a really great research article
and fact sheet produced by the CDC.
And what they're finding
is that one in 10 LGBTQ+ students did not go to school
because of safety concerns, because of fear of bullying.
And then nearly one in four experienced sexual violence,
and one in four were bullied at school.
There's a link to that article.
It's much more relevant in terms of our date
and where we are today in 2023.
Certainly would recommend checking that out as well.
And then globally,
oftentimes bullying-like behavior happens in those areas
in the school where there's less adult supervision, right?
And so oftentimes you see bullying behavior happening
in this hallway, in a stairwell,
even actually in the classroom at times, right?
And so we just wanna be very mindful of those locations.
And again, lots of resources for you to explore.
We won't have time today to get into all of them,
but again, you'll see a plethora of links for you
that will hopefully help you
in doing a little bit more research.
And one thing I would like to note
is feel free to borrow and steal these slides.
So again, these are resources for you to take,
share with other folks.
That's really how we get to share all of this information.
So as I mentioned, bullying behavior in Vermont,
we are not immune to it, right?
We have the most recent youth risk behavior survey analysis
was done in 2021.
So if you attended this webinar last year,
we used data from 2019.
So this is all updated data.
It's relatively similar to the 2019 data.
However, what we're seeing is that, you know,
17% of high school students are reporting
being a target of bullying.
We're also seeing 24%
of middle school students are being targeted for bullying.
Especially, you know, as this talks about
within the past 30 days.
Cyberbullying is huge now, especially post COVID.
Many students are much more, you know, using technology.
And so we're seeing an increase in that as well.
And like I mentioned, LGBTQ high school students in Vermont
are also experiencing higher rates.
And I love the visual graph here.
You can find the whole report, lots of really nice visuals
to demonstrate this data.
But our hotspots, as you can see,
are really our LGBTQ population in our schools in Vermont.
We're seeing also higher rates of BIPOC students
being victims of bullying as well as freshmen.
That was a higher point in female students as well.
So again, we are not immune to it,
which makes it even more important for us
to come up with strategies to support all of our students.
Another study that took place at UVM
with Professor Bernice Garnett,
she's done a lot of research
on hazing, harassment and bullying,
as well as restorative approaches and practices.
We'll talk a little bit about that.
But again, many students in her particular research survey
said that they had to been a victim
of some type of harassment as well.
Many were experiencing cyber bullying as well.
So if you wanna look at that, there's a research,
actually a Vermont Digger article
that can talk a little bit more into detail around that.
So why are we talking so much about prevention of bullying?
What we know is that there are some significant
mental health consequences that are not only short-term,
but long-term for ongoing acts
of bullying-like behavior for students.
We will see, as the Center for Disease Control has put out,
and again, highly recommend you check the links,
really significant higher rates of depression
for students who have experienced bullying,
lower academic achievement, even aversion to school,
students not wanting to go to school.
And so we really wanna make sure that we're addressing it
because these are significant outcomes,
not only for short-term, but lifelong outcomes as adults.
We all remember those experiences,
and they have, whether we have identified or not,
they have had an impact on how we are and who we are.
So also, students who are both targets of bullying
and engage in bullying behavior
are at greater risk of mental health.
So oftentimes we have students who are victims of bullying
or they've learned it
through their environment in which they live,
and then they then are also
engaging in bullying-like behavior
because it's been modeled,
those two combinations also through the data,
increases a higher risk for mental health
and interfering behaviors at schools.
And so it's not only that,
but our self-esteem is so tied up
with bullying-like behavior
that oftentimes when students are bullied,
they have that negative self concept.
It infect, it impacts how they feel about themselves,
it impacts their relationships with others,
and it also impacts physical wellbeing and overall health.
And so while these are important,
Vermont has taken some great strides
in creating Vermont Education Quality Standards
that are very clear
around our educational systems' expectations
to create school facilities
that are free of bullying-like behavior,
equitable learning environments.
And so this is a snippet
from the Educational Quality Standards for you to look at.
It was updated in May of May 18th, 2023.
So again, Vermont is certainly taking
really good strides in making sure
that we're not only thinking about bullying behavior,
but how are we creating equitable, anti-racist,
culturally responsive,
harassment and bullying-free learning environments.
So kudos to Vermont for that.
Vermont also has a model policy
on the prevention of hazing, harassment,
bullying of students.
This webinar does not go into any detail regarding that,
but wanted you all to be aware of that.
And if you have any questions,
check out that link on the website.
You'll be able to, right here,
you'll be able to have information
on what that model policy is
and certainly be in contact with the agency of education
if you have any questions.
But again, Vermont is taking those efforts
and really prioritizing the value
and the importance of bullying and hazing,
harassment and harassment prevention.
So a couple of definitions
is really that bullying is not necessarily a one time thing.
It's certainly not great, bullying-like behavior,
but really when you look at that model policy,
it defines it as being repeated over time.
It's really intended to ridicule, humiliate,
and intimidate a student.
And it does occur not only during the school day,
but actually before and after.
And we get a lot of those questions.
Well, I heard it happened outside of school.
The moment in which it was brought into the school,
that is something we need to look into as administrators,
as mandatory reporters of bullying.
And so I just wanna be really mindful of that.
And again, the other key piece of this is making sure
that the key is, is it impacting the educational access?
So that's another component of those definitions
for bullying.
And we wanna make sure
that all students have access to education.
And so if there is bullying-like behavior,
harassment, hazing,
that's our obligation
to really reflect and investigate that.
So bullying behavior can take multiple forms.
Some of you had mentioned this earlier as well.
I mentioned it, physical, verbal, intimidating,
it can be threat.
We've heard a lot of microaggressions, right?
Those subtle jabs that can happen in the hallway,
those more global, spreading gossip, leaving exclusion,
in fact can be seen as bullying-like behavior.
And so what we wanna know
is we understand what it looks like
so that we can prevent it.
And what we do know, what the research does say
is that bullying, school-based bullying prevention programs
really have a positive impact
on decreasing bullying-like behavior.
And so that's why we're here today is how do we do that?
So have you, or do all of you on the line,
have a prep prevention strategy in place in your buildings.
So if you wouldn't mind in the chat box, let us know,
do you have a prevention strategy that you're using?
If you do, we'd love to hear what that is,
you could name that.
And then if so, who's responsible for that?
So I'll give you a couple of seconds,
few minutes to jot down,
do you have something in your school that you can use?
And also feel free to raise your hand too.
All right, well I'm not hearing many responses.
Oh, one.
Second Step, okay, awesome, Abby, thank you.
School counselor does this, absolutely.
Awesome.
Yeah, so good.
Second Step certainly is
a bullying prevention program as well.
We're not gonna address that,
so you're in the right place.
We're gonna introduce two additional ones.
So thank you so much for participating,
and like I said, if you have other thoughts or ideas,
certainly put them in the chat box.
Oh, thanks Sarah.
Everyday Speech Classroom, SEL Program.
Awesome, I haven't heard of that.
I'll have to look into that.
That's great, thanks for sharing, Sarah.
Awesome.
So when we talk about any sort of intervention,
I would be remiss not to talk about it
without really connecting the dots
with our MTSS framework in Vermont.
We certainly have a strong MTSS system.
Many of our schools are working on this.
Many of you all are at varying levels of MTS implementation.
But really, the best prevention is prevention for a whole.
And so really focusing on
when we're talking about bullying prevention in our school,
what are we doing within our three-tiered logic model?
What are we doing for everyone, right?
That's really that universal strategies.
And that's one of the keys to decreasing this
is really having a universal system or curriculum in place
that will help students understand, and staff as well.
What are the expectations of our school?
What are our school values?
What do we believe in?
So really what is that school-wide approach?
And then certainly we know that
with our MTSS system and PBIS,
while we may be implementing
universal strategies and practices,
we always have students
who may need a little bit more targeted level of support.
We have students who need a little bit
more intensive levels of support.
And so within the PBIS framework, it really looks like,
what are your school-wide agreements?
What are those expectations,
and how does that play into bullying prevention?
So another key aspect of approaching bullying prevention
is really understanding the function, right,
of the behavior.
I talked a little bit about that behavior
is certainly a form of communication,
but we all have a function to our behavior.
And so some of the most common functions
of bullying-like behavior are really attention.
It could be peer attention, it's adult attention.
And so we want to think a little bit about
how we are giving positive feedback to students
when they're not engaging in bullying type behavior,
but also really what is that function?
So a lot of it is peer-based, that attention.
Sometimes it is to obtain something again,
but frequently it's really about
what that function of the behavior is.
And once we know that, we can then put in programs in place
that will really counter that.
So when you're thinking about function in your schools,
again, as I said, peer attention is certainly a very,
one of the biggest ones.
But you wanna think of, these are just some great questions
for you to have as a leadership team.
How can students get peer attention in another positive way?
Do you have opportunities
to give your students attention, right?
How can we remove the behavior,
the reinforcement for students that are engaging
in bully-like behavior?
Often that requires giving them reinforcement
for other types of behavior, right?
And so we really want to think about
bullying-like behavior with that attention focus.
And also a lot of it is derived on adult connection,
peer connection, everything we do,
and you know this, is about relationships.
So how are you building those opportunities
for positive relationships,
positive opportunities for peer-to-peer connection,
as well as adult peer connection?
And so those are just some key things that we wanna,
that really are important to address.
What's really interesting,
and I love this, because at the end of the day,
we can do a lot of bullying prevention and curriculum,
but the research really speaks to
that when a peer intervenes, not an adult, not a parent,
not anyone else, but when a peer intervenes
in on behalf of the student that is being bullied
or experienced bullying-like behavior,
that actually helps stop the situation at higher rates.
So again, think about the power of peer engagement
and student voice in prevention.
And so what we call that is those bystanders.
So any student who is witnessing it
has a real positive impact
on the prevention of bullying-like behavior.
And so I'm gonna get into a few of the pieces and strategies
and curriculum and recommendations.
One of them is this program called Stand Up for Courage.
It really empowers,
and there's a link here you can link to it.
Certainly recommend exploring that
if you haven't looked at it yet.
But it really empowers the youth leaders in your building
to engage and really teach each other, you know,
what are the strategies to support each other
to minimize bullying-like behavior in your school?
And so it'll talk a little bit
about what you do to teach it.
They'll talk a little bit about
how do you recognize students
who are actually that's standing up for others?
That's where you get that positive reinforcement, right?
So you're honoring students and you're acknowledging them
for doing the right thing every single day.
And there's lots of opportunities
to do peer-to-peer based reinforcement as well
as part of Stand Up for Courage.
And so certainly would recommend you checking that out
if you're not familiar with that.
The other one that's really focused
on the role of the bystander is StopTheB.
You may have heard of this.
This was actually started by some young,
these young sisters in high school.
And the real aim is to stop bullying
by raising the awareness of the issue
and the various dynamics of bullying
and how bystanders can really have a positive impact.
So it's really about inspiring students in your building
to be brave and to stand up,
and to also have the right language, right?
We also don't want students to stand up
in a way that could have a negative impact.
So that's the other key piece of this
is how are we giving our students the right language
to stand up for each other,
and to do it in a kind and thoughtful way.
So again, definitely wanna check that out.
So lots of statistics around the importance
of the bystander.
Again, thinking, I already mentioned this,
but wanted to just highlight some more data and research
around that.
Again, the role of bystander of peer-to-peer is important.
How are we building up our students' ability
to stand up and stop?
And so you'll see some more data around that.
There's a few research articles,
certainly check those out as well.
The other thing that's really, really important,
and I'd love to hear your perspective
or your lived experience is,
students who experience bullying are more likely to find
that peer actions are helpful, right?
I just talked a little bit about that.
Would love to hear in the chat box,
why do you think this statement is true?
Have you seen this work in your buildings?
If not in the chat box, go ahead,
feel free to raise your hand.
Let us know what you're thinking.
Why do you think this is true?
Thank you Sarah.
Yeah, absolutely.
It may feel less like they're being tattletale.
Absolutely.
In fact, kids often report that bullying can get worse
after telling adults, right?
So that's a really good perspective, absolutely.
Yes, middle school age,.
I love it, you're right.
The social influence is much more powerful, right?
Your peers to peer.
As a parent, I experience that.
I can tell my kids things left and right.
I could say the same thing
that one of their friends is saying,
but guess who they're gonna listen to?
It's the friends, right?
We all have experienced that, right?
Absolutely, thank you so much for sharing.
So yeah, the power of peers is really, really important.
Other important elements that you wanna consider
with any sort of curriculum and program
is really that anything that we do
when we talk about or reporting,
these should not be punitive.
These should be educational, right?
We also wanna make the thoughtful connection
between families and caregivers.
We have to work together as a team.
Oftentimes parents and caregivers have a better sense
of what's happening at home
and how things are, you know,
happening that may impact our approach, right?
The homeschool community connection is critical
in terms of building universal practices.
So how are we communicating
our bullying prevention strategies
that we're doing at school to families and caregivers?
Because if it's happening, if parents and caregivers
are using the same strategies,
there's that sense of consistency across environments.
So again, these are just things for consideration
that we really want to be thoughtful of when we're talking,
and we're gonna talk a little bit in a second
about cyberbullying and then restorative approaches.
But one of the things
that we really need to be thoughtful about
is this final little bullet here.
Peer mediation sometimes was associated
with an increase of victimization, feeling victimized.
So it should not always be used for bullying situations.
So again, the adults need to be part of it,
they need to regulate that.
But if you often have a student
who's been a victim of bullying,
and then you have another peer mediate that situation,
students may not have the skillset
to be able to do that level of mediation.
While it's great for students to engage
and support each other in the bystander role,
it's not as effective to have them
be in that mediation role.
And so that's just a food for thought that is very,
I think a critical thing for us to consider
when we're thinking about peer-to-peer support.
We also post COVID,
certainly cyberbullying has been in existence
for a very long time as we know,
in this digital world that we live in.
But certainly we've seen an increase of that.
More students have access to technology.
And so especially during times of homeschooling
when we were all in our own little worlds,
opportunities for increased isolation
and then access through technology,
that was often our kiddos' only avenue
for peer-to-peer connection, right?
And so there's reasons why this is prevalent.
Oftentimes when you're in a room by yourself on a computer,
you kind of lose sense of the bigger, greater world
and expectations, right?
You lose sense of that.
There's this sense of anonymity, right?
Things being anonymous, there's lack of supervision, right?
And so we just really wanna be mindful of that.
And there's lots of different ways
that we can address those.
Some of the prevention strategies many of our schools use
are very, very, very effective.
So digital citizenship lessons,
many of you have these, right?
Thinking about what does it mean to be a digital citizen
and then really empower students as well.
Lots of education around screen time
and giving breaks in screen time
and reinforcing the positive use of technology
can really go a long way.
And so our response to any sort of cyberbullying
and what I've seen both as a practitioner in a school,
I've seen it as a parent as well,
is that oftentimes this happens outside of school
and then it's brought into school.
And so we need to really take that seriously
and really think and teach our students to report
and let folks know that this is happening.
'Cause it is significant.
May not be as overt, but it's very subtle sometimes,
but also critically damaging as well.
So a couple of thoughts
before we get into the two different curriculums
that I wanna end our time with today
is thinking about the restorative approaches,
restorative practices
in bullying prevention curriculum and practices.
One of the things
that we really need to be thoughtful about,
and I mentioned this a little bit,
thinking about the role of peer mediation,
is that bullying-like behavior is often sort of seen
and is an imbalance of power, right?
And so because of that, we really wanna make sure
that we're thoughtful in the restorative approaches process
to sometimes mediate bullying-like behavior.
And in doing that, we want it to be facilitated
in a thoughtful way.
That's where we really wanna think about,
who are the adults in our building
who are skilled in restorative approaches and practices
and really have the skillset
to facilitate group conversations around the impact
that bullying-like behavior
has not only had on the individual or groups of individual,
but how does that impact our entire learning community?
Sometimes what we find is face-to-face meetings
can be more detrimental to students
who have been victims of bullying.
Repair work is what we want to do,
and the restorative approaches and practices
provides that framework and opportunity to do so.
But we wanna be very thoughtful in how we do that.
So some nuggets for you,
and if you haven't, if you're not as familiar
with restorative approaches,
we always have that at our BEST Summer Institute in June.
We often have webinars,
or if you are looking for more information,
please reach out.
We would be happy to hook you up with folks
who have a wonderful skillset in this.
But just some nuggets that I wanna leave you with
is when you're doing the restorative approach process,
you really wanna make sure it's voluntary.
It really has to be voluntary
in order for it to be effective.
You wanna make sure all of the parties involved
in this approach after a situation occurs
is that they're ready to participate, right?
You wanna also make sure that the person
who's engaged in the bullying-like behavior,
they may not even be aware
that it is bullying-like behavior.
So that's where the education comes in.
But you also wanna make sure that they're ready
to really accept some responsibility.
Another key piece with the victim of bullying
or the target, if you will,
and the person who's engaged or the group of people
that's engaged in bullying-like behavior
is you wanna make sure that the victim is safe, right?
And has this either a plan or feel safe in engaging.
It's not just physical safety we're talking about,
we're talking about emotional safety as well.
Do they feel okay genuinely and authentically okay
engaging with this process?
The other couple of things that are really important
is you gotta do a lot of legwork ahead of this
if you were to engage in repair work
through the restorative approaches practice.
Lots of pre-meetings, really engaging families as well.
And I think a key piece is,
and you'll see a document, there was a paper,
a white paper written about this
that highlights all of these bullets
for you to further explore,
is that if the person harmed
doesn't want a face-to-face meeting,
it really should not happen.
There are other ways to engage in the repair work
when a student has been a victim of bullying.
And so you just really wanna honor that,
because again, you don't wanna be sort of
through this process, doing more harm than good.
And so again, just some food for thought,
some other recommendations that you have.
And again, I'm monitoring the chat.
If you do have questions,
feel free to raise your hand as well.
We've got a nice group with us today.
So, all right, so we are gonna talk a little bit about,
with the time that we have left,
really just introduce you two recommended
bullying prevention frameworks and curriculum
that are really within the PBIS framework,
you can certainly implement these.
If you're not a school implementing PBIS,
the concepts are very great and universal
as long as you have really that three-tiered model in place,
'cause they both talk a little bit about
what do you do for all students?
What are you doing for all students
and dives a little bit deeper into those, so.
Before we get into that, I just like a pulse.
Are any of you familiar with these?
Let me know.
One is the PBIS.
And if you're not, you can write yes or no into the chat.
Just would like to get a sense of how in depth I should go.
And again, with our time, it'll be a kind of an overview,
but would love to just get a sense.
The first one is bully prevention,
and that's really focused on elementary.
And then the other one which has a lot more recent data on,
which is exciting, Expect Respect.
Awesome, so good.
So some of you have some uses, have knowledge,
some of you don't, perfect.
So we'll introduce these to both of you.
Just a plug to Rhonda Ness,
who is a professor who's done some fabulous work
out of the University of Oregon.
She was one of the developers of Expect Respect,
middle and high school version,
and she's done a lot of research on that,
and she is going to be our keynote,
one of our keynotes at our Summer Institute.
So that's a sneak preview for all of you,
but she will be there.
And she's done some great work on social justice
in relation to PBIS and student voice in particular,
more global still social justice strategies
in student voice.
And she was a huge proponent of this curriculum.
So let's dive into what these are.
All of these, pardon me.
All of these have features of sort of skillset,
so skill development, really around what are the routines
that you are going to teach all of your kiddos
in your building
when they witness bullying-like behavior.
So again, you start out with,
what are our school-wide agreements, right?
What are our expectations?
And then if you see bullying-like behavior, many of these,
both of these talk about a routine.
So what are you going to explicitly teach your students?
And then what are the staff and students and faculty
going to do about it, right?
So we'll get into a little bit
about what those skills look like.
So the big ones that you'll see,
and you may have heard this is really
this Three-Steps Skill, Stop, Walk and Talk.
So I'm gonna dive into these in a little bit more detail.
The Stop routine is essentially
having somebody put up a stop signal.
So you're teaching a student
or groups of students are teaching other students,
depending on who's going to do this.
But really having that explicit stop signal.
It could be a hand signal, it could be a voice.
What's worked really well is having student leadership teams
co-develop what this stop signal may look like
because you also want students to use it
and you want it to be developmentally appropriate.
So if you could get students
to engage in this development process with you
as part of this curriculum, I think that's amazing.
They'll also have a little bit more ownership into it.
So again, really keeping it very simple.
Stop and decide what that looks like, right?
The Walk routine.
The Walk routine is really an opportunity to teach students
that sometimes Stop doesn't work, right?
So if you're engaged, or you're being the victim,
or you're seeing it,
this is where the bystander and the student is saying stop,
and it's not working, you need to maybe walk away, right?
Because if you engage,
and this is the tricky part with adults as well,
we engage sometimes in this power struggle.
Oftentimes when we engage
and continue to engage in a situation with somebody else,
we're actually reinforcing it,
because what is the function
of bullying-like behavior, right?
Attention, peer attention.
So walking away actually can really remove that attention
from the situation.
So that's the other key to this.
You stop, if it doesn't work, you walk away.
So again, teaching students that little routine.
And then the third routine,
which is really critically important, is once you stop,
if you walk, you gotta talk.
So how are you encouraging students to talk to an adult
if this continues to happen?
Again, when we talked a little bit earlier
about the definition, it's something that happens,
for bullying, happens over time or more than once,
one or more times.
So again, part of it is really understanding
patterns of behavior so that we can get ahead of it.
But if we don't know there are these patterns happening,
it's really hard for us to know.
And we experience this all the time.
And so part of it is really, you know,
when we talk to kiddos using these curriculums
and teaching them,
it's not really that tattling, right?
We wanna reframe that.
And this is what I would often do.
It's asking for help so that we can support the other kiddo
who may need help, right?
Because this is not gonna have a long-term positive effect
if nobody stops this type of behavior, right?
So again, really making sure that we're stopping,
we are walking away and we're talking, right?
So that's a very short and simple things that you can do.
And this is so important
because 64% of children who were bullied
don't report it, right?
And more modern, more recent statistics
also align with this research as well.
So again, what are the avenues for our students
to identify ways to communicate what's happening, right?
Why do you think this is true?
I think we kind of alluded to it,
but if you have thoughts, would love to hear.
Why do you think students are not reporting
bullying-like behavior?
One thing that I've heard is students fear retaliation.
Yes, thank you Sarah.
Absolutely, fear of retaliation, right?
Fear that the bullying-like behavior will get worse, right?
So that's where this universal stand, if you will.
So everyone understands what it looks like,
what bullying-like behavior is,
and what we're gonna do about it is so important, right?
Thank you for sharing.
Another differentiation in,
I believe it's the Expect Respect curriculum
is it gives a little bit more
about sort of taking deep breaths
and a little bit more strategies,
sort of social emotional strategies that you can use, right?
So again, with the stop messaging, right,
there's different languages you can adopt,
and the curriculum will outline different opportunities.
I was just actually
at the National PBIS Leadership Forum in Chicago,
and I'd be happy to send you the link.
Students presented the Expect Respect curriculum
and how they do it, and it was just amazing.
And I'll talk to Ann, we have all of you,
we'll send you that link.
But it was really helpful
to sort of hear the student's perspective
on how they've taken this
and have done such a great job in using their language
to really follow through with a Stop, Walk, Talk,
and what does it look like, right?
And so again, it's been really, it was really eyeopening
to see other students engaged in this,
and would love to hear your stories as well.
If you have something that's working well,
would love to hear what's happening in your buildings.
So the adult response is certainly a key aspect of this.
And both of these curriculums, we'll talk a little bit about
what adults should do in the building, right?
So there's some language here on the next slide
that I'm going to just jump to.
Also being mindful of time, you know, there's some scripts,
I don't know about you, I love scripts.
It's very helpful for me to use scripts with students,
especially if I'm in a situation
I'm not sure how to process.
And so again, you really wanna make sure
that your staff is really,
not only the students know what to say,
but what is the professional learning
you are giving your staff
on how to respond when they're seeing this, right?
So did Cassandra tell you to stop, right?
So again, I think using these scripts processing
are really, really important for our students.
Did you walk away?
You're also reinforcing the skills that you've just taught,
the Stop, the Walk, and the Talk, right?
So that's really, really important
to not only know and teach what the students are gonna do,
but how are your adults in your building going to respond?
And what we know, consistency is key.
If I'm an adult and I kind of blow it off and say,
ah, it's just that, don't worry about it.
You know, that is sending a very different message
to that kiddo, versus the other adult who's really engaged.
So again, consistency is key in everything we know.
Another important aspect of this is safety.
Safety of the student as well,
safety of groups of students.
Again, we wanna make sure
that what you call it in your school may differ,
but sometimes we do have to create a safety plan, right?
It could be a temporary safety plan
until another plan is in place.
But being really thoughtful
at which level or what data you have
that would warrant a safety plan.
So is there physical harm?
Is there suicidal ideation?
Like these are some significant red flags
that we would want to as a team, as a leadership team,
as a student support team, would really need to consider.
A couple of other nuggets
from the two curriculums that I've shared is really,
there's some great lesson plans as well.
So a lot of it you can just grab and go, which is great.
I know how busy all of you are in your daily lives.
But there's this great example
and there's a video here for you to look at,
but I love this,
an example of sort of visually describing behavior, right?
And how the bystander,
and how we can really extinguish the behavior
by doing the Stop routines.
And so I just think that's such a great little video
if you wanna look at it.
We don't have time today,
but I think that's also important thinking about,
yes, while we have this curriculum,
what are creative ways
in which we can teach our students, right?
The leadership team, as I mentioned,
I saw this group in Chicago, it was amazing.
They had this open accepting leadership team.
Anyone could join this leadership team,
and they were able to get student buy-in,
they made T-shirts that were like expressed
what they believed in their building
as their school-wide values.
And it was just so amazing so that this notion
of really having students and student leadership teams
really own and move this work forward
is gonna have really positive impact.
So again, don't underestimate the power of peers.
And so making sure that social powers is really important,
and if we're using it for the good,
that's gonna have a really pervasive positive impact
on your learning environment.
There's certainly differences,
social emotional learning differences in function
as well as, you know, between elementary curriculum
as well as middle high school.
There's different functions potentially.
So you just wanna think about
what's developmentally appropriate at those levels
as you're thinking about developing a leadership team.
Some of the things that, these are just some nuggets
that we would certainly encourage you to think about
is really sort of how your leadership team
is developed, right?
How are you using peers to teach and connect
with other peers in your building?
An example is often high school students
may go down to middle school and have conversations.
We used to do this with our middle school students
would go down and teach strategies for elementary students
and they thought it was so cool having the older kiddos
come down, their attention was much more sustained
than when I was talking to them it seemed.
So again, thinking about
how you can use your student leaders in your building.
Are any of you, maybe a show of hands,
or do you have a a student leaders
or a leadership team in your building?
Show of hands, you can use your little physical hand
or your emoji hand.
It looks like something you do.
Awesome, so this is a great place to start with your teams,
making sure that you are using them and getting their input.
All right, thanks Abby, thanks for joining today.
And again, just a couple of real quick friendly reminders.
I'm not gonna go through each of these,
but again, the best form of implementation
is really doing it with fidelity,
making sure your entire staff understands
what the curriculum is that you're doing,
just like we do in literacy
when we're looking at math, what is it we're doing?
There's often ways to assess as well.
So I'm gonna just jump to those here too.
Well real quick, teach all students,
you're not just gonna teach this once
in the beginning of the school year.
Anything we do around social, emotional, behavioral learning
and curriculum and strategies we teach throughout the year.
So what are some boosters?
What are some workshops?
What are some opportunities throughout your year,
your PD calendar, not only to teach the staff,
but what are you gonna do
in terms of reminding our students?
We do this in academics, we also need to do it
in anything that we're doing
around social emotional learning.
And then I did wanna just bring your attention to,
there's some self-assessments that may be really helpful
for all of you to consider
getting a sense of what current practices
are currently implemented in your building.
Are certain things taught, are they in place?
Again, these are just general self-assessments
that you could do as a leadership team,
you could do as an entire school.
And really the reason we do self-assessments
is to inform our action planning.
So if you go through a self-assessment,
and this is also on the PBIS website,
it's linked in one of the curriculums as well.
But if you're going through it
and you're like, all of these are in place, kudos, right?
Then I would look at my data and say,
what data do I have to support the self-assessment?
Or what if there's areas that are not currently in place?
That's gonna then drive your action plan.
So lots of great ways to get not only staff information,
but let's get students as well.
What is the pulse on your school, right?
Do your students feel safe?
Many of you I imagine
have a universal screener for social emotional behavior.
There's a lot of them out there.
There's a PBIS School Climate Survey.
Panorama has some great universal screeners.
Some of these questions are really lead to students
feeling safe in a school.
And so when we have a safer learning environment,
students feel safe, right?
And actually there's less feelings of,
and bullying-like behavior that you'll see in the research.
So if we have a strong universal system,
if we have a positive school climate,
we're going to see numbers reduce
in terms of bullying-like behavior.
So these are some questions that you may wanna ask.
It could be a simple Google survey with your students.
Many schools have done that as well.
But think about how you're looking at those data
to drive your assessments.
And again, does it work?
Yes, the research is very clear.
Bullying prevention curriculum, curricula does work, right?
And so we see that time and time again.
I think the important thing is to be consistent.
You may not see something happen overnight.
And I think that's where sometimes
we get a little discouraged,
we've done something and we're like, oh, that didn't work.
You really gotta stick with it.
That's what we know with implementation science.
We need to think about how do we do something
with consistency over time.
With the curriculum that we know,
there's lots of data as you can see here,
that students and schools that have adopted.
The PBIS Bullying Prevention curriculum
have seen significant reductions in bullying-like behavior.
Not only that, but they've seen reduction
as well as out of school suspension,
any sort of behavior observation, data forms,
those types of things.
So again, there's certainly enough research and evidence
to say, let's invest.
And again, invest, many of these are free, right?
So it's just a matter of sticking with it.
So in the time that we have,
here are some resources for you.
This was a lot of information at you
at a short amount of time.
Happy to have further conversations.
I'm happy to stay on the line as well.
Answer any questions you all have.
If you are interested
and would like more specifics about this,
don't hesitate to reach out to me.
Happy to schedule another conversation, Zoom,
would love to connect with you.
Would love to also hear any great ideas
that you're using in your schools.
We would love to share that
with our larger community as well.
Before we take off, just wanna let you know,
you will receive a certificate of attendance
after you complete a survey.
So please let us know how this went for you this morning.
We certainly look at those to inform our future webinars.
And just wanna thank you all so much for taking the time.
This is a very, very busy time of year and it's Friday.
Appreciate all of you being with me and Ann this morning.
Stay tuned and hope to see you at another event soon.
So thank you all so much.
Happy to stay on,
and you're welcome to leave an action step in the chat
if you like.
Thank you all.