Episode 48: Are Kids Still Being Bullied in School? - Part 2

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Welcome to another episode of K12 Education Untangled. My name is Dr. Kim Fields, former corporate manager turned educational researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microdiscriminations that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. 1 Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their educational progress. If you're looking to find out more about current information and issues in education that could affect you or your children, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K12 education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening. On today's episode, I'll continue the discussion about bullying in schools. This discussion was in two parts and this is the second part of that discussion. You can check out episode 47 for the first part of the conversation. The topic will be of limited scope in that it will not include bullying in colleges and universities, nor cyberbullying. Bullying is one of the greatest health risks to children in the United States today. Bullying prevention as well as school safety is a top national priority and a key area of academic research. The research includes areas such as the role of personal biases, how emotions are at the core of bullying, homeschool cooperative programs, and anti bullying legislation. Let's get started. Bullying is generally defined as an intentional, repetitive behavior manifested in unbalanced power relations in order to cause harm. Some common characteristics of bullies seem to be the experience of growing up in harmony, hostile or rejecting family environments, negative self denigrating beliefs, and negative attitudes and beliefs about others. A bully tends to act out either because of insecure attachments, learned aggressiveness or weak social bonds. One reason for not being able to navigate the root cause or mitigate that root cause of bullying is that many adults feel that bullying is just a natural part of growing up. Some even feel that schools are making too much of this. In light of this perspective, bullying behaviors are often overlooked or minimized. It might be relevant to ask ourselves these questions. One, should saying unkind things to others like teasing, name calling, threatening the natural part of growing up? Two, should purposefully causing emotional pain to someone by spreading rumors or isolating others be a natural part of growing up? And three should physically hurting others be a natural part of growing up? Years ago, bullying was regarded as a rite of passage experience. But the stakes are higher now because it's no longer about who's playing on the playground or whether a bully is taking over a certain situation. It's about life and death, in some cases homicide or suicide. Therefore, more focused action is necessary. There are two types of bullying, physical bullying and psychological bullying. Physical bullying is the tangible, easy to identify, and is usually associated with visible damage like biting, pulling hair, hitting, punching or kicking. Whereas psychological bullying can be verbal or nonverbal, less visible, and more difficult to detect. Although it's no less damaging, it includes gestures and expressions as well as manipulating or damaging relationships. Bullying is significantly more prevalent in elementary schools, usually among 6 to 10 year olds and and in middle schools among 10 to 12 year olds. Students may become involved in these hurtful dynamics as bullies, victims, or both. Known in the research as aggressive victims, bullying tends to decline in later school years, typically in high school. Although the negative effects of bullying can be evident in an individual's adult life, these effects show up as anxiety, social isolation, sleep disturbances, eating disorders, and poor academic performance. When looking at gender and bullying dynamics, boys typically experience more physical bullying, whereas girls tend to exhibit less open and more indirect forms of aggression, such as talking about the other person, usually behind their back. Boys, however, can be involved in indirect bullying. Gender differences in aggression come out mostly due to socializing agents where parents encourage the behavior in boys, such as autonomy and goal directed behaviors, while with the girls they direct them to relationship management. Girls were taught to respond to anger and hurt by acting in areas such as personal relationships and psychological well being, whereas boys are socialized to deal with anger, frustration, and other negative emotions through aggression and other physical forms of action. It's important to understand the gender differences in bullying situations and to analyze the aspects that contribute to the perpetuation of bullying. Seeking ways to eliminate bullying in order to support academic success is important, but there's a more fundamental societal reason to teach children how to interact responsibly with each other. It is necessary to teach children to develop compassion for someone who is different from themselves. For the child who is disabled, the one who is of a different race, the one who is gay, the one who is poor, the one who is smart. All these children make up the fabric of America. Emotions are at the heart of bullying. The symptoms of bullying, physical aggression, verbal abuse, ostracism all have a root in the lack of understanding and self regulation. As of 2014, 49 states have anti bullying legislation in place and a number of schools using anti bullying programs continues to grow. In fact, one year later in 2015, all all 50 states have anti bullying legislation. Although some laws are considered stronger than others, these legislative and programmatic actions demonstrate a commitment to addressing this critical problem and they have cost the United States billions. Yes, billions. Yet according to nationwide surveys, bullying rates have not declined. The anti bullying programs have not worked because they typically don't address the root cause of bullying, a lack of emotional intelligence, which is the set of skills for understanding, communicating about and regulating feelings. Emotional intelligence needs to be a central component of anti bullying programs from preschool to high school classrooms. Developing emotional intelligence is usually absent from the anti bullying policies. What's needed is an education in emotional intelligence. This could help prevent children from resorting to pushing, to taunting, to hurting others as an emotional release in cases when bullying is inescapable. An education and emotional intelligence will help targets of bullying as well as bystanders develop the skills they need to manage their fear and anxiety, communicate their needs and get support. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize emotions in self and others, understand the causes of emotions and their consequences for thinking and behavior, label emotions with a sophisticated vocabulary, express emotions in socially appropriate ways and regulate emotions effectively. Fortunately, emotional intelligence can be taught just like math or reading. It can easily be integrated into the standard academic curriculum and it can improve classroom instruction and the overall school climate. Emotional intelligence training is not only for children, but should also be required for their teachers. Neglecting the emotional education of children and adults risk leaving children at the mercy of every emotion they feel and every aggressor who comes along that's neglected their own emotional development and this has created a gap in the educational system which perpetuates the rise of bullying in schools. Systemic evidence based social emotional learning programs can fill that gap and giving children and their teachers opportunities to develop the skills they need to be healthy, effective and compassionate. Research indicates that there's a connection between self esteem and the bullying phenomena. This research asserts that both the bully and the victim are related to some degree with low self esteem. Bullying behavior is usually categorized as aggressive and the victim is usually expressed as passive. The study introduces the aspect of assertive behavior. This study in the Journal of Education Sciences investigates the impact of self esteem on assertiveness, passive versus aggressive conduct, and positive interactions among high school students. Assertiveness is a social competence that supports social acceptance and inclusion and can lead to healthy, respectful relationships. Assertiveness, if looked at as a competence, can be taught and learned. The most significant obstacles to becoming assertive are insecurity, fear, shyness, the desire to fit in with peers, acceptance, the lack of direction, the lack of knowledge, and the inability to negotiate well. Somewhere between passiveness and aggressiveness, assertiveness is a balanced way of dealing with others, solving arguments and conflicts, and attaining objectives. The researchers in this study noted positive correlations between self esteem and assertiveness, therefore establishing the importance of self esteem in developing healthy and efficient ways of communication, self assertion, and conflict management. Low self esteem is a predisposing factor for victimization. Healthy self esteem is an essential asset in developing assertiveness and in avoiding aggressive, hurtful, or humiliating strategies of interaction, conflict resolution, or attaining personal objectives in life. Two areas that bullying happens in schools is on the playground and on the bus. Playgrounds tend to have a fair amount of adult supervision that hopefully are trained to spot bullying. But intervening on the bus is more difficult because the person responsible for the students is spending their time trying to make sure they're driving safe enough to get children home safely. They simply can't address every problem that happens on the bus. They can only focus on problems they get out of hand. There are some bus drivers who understand how to set the tone on the bus, and there are others who know how to appropriately discipline children. Making the drivers primarily responsible for controlling student behavior on the bus may be putting too much pressure on them. There are a couple of ways to support drivers, however. One, provide them with support that's necessary and two raise their status in the eyes of the students in order to ensure that students see the drivers as part of the school team. School leadership is a critical piece to initiating the strategies. The first step for educators and administrators to reduce bullying in school is to acknowledge that bullying behaviors are not natural part of growing up. The second step is that the educators and administrators must be vigilant and aware of what bullying looks like and third, they need to advocate for all students so that the school is a safer environment for everyone. Are teachers well trained to recognize bullying? The attitudes of pre service teachers toward bullying indicate that most of them report their concern about bullying, but some of them still believe that bullying is a natural part of growing up as reported reported in the Review of Educational Research in April of 2023. They did, however, tend to view different forms of bullying as more serious than others, with many considering physical bullying to be the most serious form. Most pre service teachers reported feeling responsible for dealing with bullying, although many did not feel confident in their ability to do so. This leads to logical conclusion that teacher preparation programs should focus on training pre service teachers with the tools that they will need to deal with bullying because classroom teachers have an instrumental role in reducing bullying behavior and supporting victims. The fact is that how teachers respond to bullying can influence their students willingness to report bullying as well as the number of occurrences of bullying in the classroom over time. When teachers don't address bullying, the victims feel unprotected, they fear retaliation, they stay silent, and they continue to be bullied. Conversely, when teachers successfully intervene in bullying, their response can help victims feel more socially supported by their teachers. A study published in August 2013 edition of the Psychological Science revealed that victims of bullying, including those who go on to bully others, are at increased risk of bad health, poor finances, and unstable relationships years after bullying occurs. 1420 North Carolina Children participated in the Great Smoky mountain study of 1993 and researchers followed up with those children several times between the ages of 9 and 26 years old, with roughly 90% of the participants remaining in the study over 20 years. Bullying leads to different outcomes depending on the child's role. According to the study, those purely victimized by bullying may endure social, emotional as well as physical problems, might not perform well in school, and can also cause a hit to their income. Bullies tend to actually be socially savvy and may even be popular, although they are likelier to commit crimes later in life. The worst fates were for those children who were victimized by bullying and perpetrated bullying on others. The study noted that these children are likelier to be impulsive, quick to anger, lacking self esteem, socially inept and unpopular.

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From the researchers Data in this study, victims who don't go on to bully others appear relatively resilient. Overall, having more data on bullying incidents may help improve prevention efforts. Let's take the state of Connecticut for instance. Connecticut schools documented 1431 cases of bullying in 2013, the first year that the state required the schools to track the data. The state's figures track every reported act of bullying that was investigated by the school in the 2012-2013 school year. Under Connecticut law, which was passed in 2011, bullying complaints had to be investigated and documented. School employees had to report bullying and share their findings with parents of the bully and the victim. The school districts had to have a school climate coordinator on staff and establish safe school climate committees. State officials indicated that analyzing the data on the state and local level should help schools identify good prevention practices as well as find areas that needed additional attention. Attention While the data may be helpful, the anti bullying strategies currently receive low rates of success. Here are some action steps that you can take and knowledge that may be even more helpful. There's a correlation between students with disadvantaged family backgrounds and their tendency to suffer peer victimization at higher rates than students from advantaged families. In other words, students from families of low affluence were more likely to be bullied. Further, students from families with lower socioeconomic status may be more likely to be bullied because they receive less social support compared with other students. This social support is typically provided by parents and teachers. One of the reasons that children from higher socioeconomic status are less involved in bullying is because their parents tend to have higher education levels and and they tend to be more involved in their children's education and development. They also seem to be more willing to communicate with their children to help solve the learning and living problems that their children may be facing. These parents can also mobilize more social and cultural resources to be involved in their child's school educational activities as well as build cooperative relationships with their teachers. In contrast, parents from lower socioeconomic status often lack the relevant resources and capabilities to create favorable external development environment for children and this makes their children more likely to be bullied. Here are some ways that parents can develop more resilience in their children, especially pertaining to bullying situations. 1 Be actively involved in your children's education 2 Pay attention to your children's mental and behavioral development 3 Improve the parent child relationship through increased close communication and interaction. These close communications help your children cope with difficulties in learning, living, and period actions so as to protect them from the harmful effects of being bullied 4 learn how to prevent and and treat school bullying and provide role play exercises to help your child recognize school bullying and to make appropriate responses and five Seek the help of community resources in schools for ways to overcome bullying victimization. The parent involvement model developed by Epstein and her colleagues in 2001 emphasize promoting family school collaboration, improved school climate, improved student behavior, and school discipline and increases in students reading achievement scores. There are six components to this parent involvement model as both a preventive and intervention modality 1 parent education often provided through workshops 2 two way communication, usually about school events or student academic or personal development 3. Parent volunteering this seems to be associated with a significant decrease in bullying at the middle school level four Learning at home again back to the role playing of social interactions and social situations 5 decision making, in other words, being part of school committees that are developing anti bullying programs and six Collaborating with community, identifying and integrating resources, services and other assets in the community that might help students and their families. For your information, the U.S. department of Education hosts an annual anti Bullying Summit. You can check online to see where the current summit is going to be held. Additionally, there are several resources that provide overviews of state laws and pending legislation about bullying, including the 2011 U.S. department of Education's analysis of state bullying laws and policies and a report by the kinder and Braver World Project research series titled An Overview of State Anti Bullying Legislation and Other Related Laws, which was published in 2012. When bullying behaviors constitute harassment or discrimination against a protected class, the U.S. department of Education Office of Civil Rights and the U.S. department of Justice Civil Rights Department Division may need to be involved. The Department of Health and Human Services has a website to educate the public about types of discriminatory behavior as well as the obligations of the school to address them, and that website is www.stopbullying.gov. when schools don't adequately address harassment, they may be in violation of civil rights laws such as Title 4 and Title VI of the Civil Rights act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation act of 1973, Titles 2 and 3 of the Americans with Disabilities act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Here are this episode's takeaways. Emotions are at the heart of bullying. The symptoms of bullying, the physical aggression, verbal abuse, ostracism all have a root in the lack of understanding and self regulation. The anti bullying programs have not worked because they typically don't address the root cause of bullying, a lack of emotional intelligence, which is a set of skills for understanding, communicating about and regulating feelings. There's a connection between self esteem and the bullying phenomenon. If you think about it, bullying happens in many forms and constantly surrounds us. It continues to happen because we currently live in a society that constantly focuses on someone's flaws. Reality TV programming that focuses on negative aspects of one another. Combine this with bad parenting, politicians who are the poster children for bad behavior, as well as an influx of anonymous blogs where people post ignorant comments about things they don't really know about. And there you have it. Research indicates that prevention and mitigation of bullying is linked to an increase in self image in adolescents. 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