Parents Get a Lesson in Bullying

With a new and tougher anti-bullying law introduced to New Jersey lawmakers late last month and the recent suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, parents in town came together on Oct. 27 to learn how to prevent bullying in the town.

"Children are committing suicide, parents are fed up and educators are frustrated," said Helene Bergman, co-chair of the PTC special education committee.

The PTC special education committee selected bullying prevention as the group's signature issue for the school year. The selection came before the events surrounding Clementi's suicide and other bullying related incidents in the country.

Stuart Green, leader of the New Jersey Coalition for Bullying Awareness and Prevention and Kim Schumacher, guidance counselor at Roosevelt Intermediate School spoke to approximately 50 parents and nearly a dozen administrators on the subject of bullying.

"Our goal is to investigate bullying and come up with recommendations for a 'tool box' of options that administrators can implement at each school," said Lisa Kops-Wendel, co-chair of the PTC special education committee that organized the presentation.

During his presentation, Green offered many suggestions for the "tool box." Green is a psychotherapist and director of training and behavior science at Overlook Hospital. He defined bullying as a pattern of repeated negative acts, with intent to harm, where there is an imbalance of power between the individuals involved. He said that it is the most common problem of the school age child and reaches its peak during the middle school years.

"Bullies are not bad kids from bad families or bad communities, it is because of the characteristics of the culture and climate of the school or other social institution that they are in," said Green.

He explained that while bullies may often have difficult relationships at home and use more alcohol and tobacco they are often popular students who have good self-esteem and academic performance.  Since schools are the most common site for bullying and it can affect academic performance, Green recommends that schools adopt the "Whole School Model" which incorporates proactive involvement on all levels such as administrative support, teacher training, positive student-staff relationships and parent involvement.

According to Green, kids who are not involved in school activities and don't have friendships are most at risk and should be easy to identify by staff who can engage and mentor them. "You can identify the kids who are having the worst day of their lives everyday because they are targeted and they feel insecure and they are not engaged," said Green. "That should be an emergency."

Green feels that using school wide approaches work most of the time, "unless the teachers aren't buying into it which means that school leaders aren't selling it hard enough." He said that zero tolerance and peer mediation do not work for bullying. Green recommended that parents use the web site www.njbullying.org  for resources related to bullying.

"Our policy allows us to individualize each situation to the child and to the incident," Schmacher said. "It's really about respect, you don't have to like everybody, it's about respecting everybody for their differences."

She reviewed the programs that are being implemented now such as character education assemblies, videos and "Mix-It-Up" day where students don't sit with their friends  so they can meet new people.

"It is our job to make sure the school is a safe place for all children," said Schumacher.

Schools Superintendent Margaret Dolan emphasized that Westfield teachers are trained to prevent and report bullying as well as serve as role models for students.  Dolan assured parents that many of the items on the new anti-bullying bill of rights are already in place in Westfield schools.

The next meeting of the Anti-bullying task force will be November 10, 8 p.m. in the WHS cafeteria.