Edgerton's promise: Take a stand: Stop bullying now

Even today, Teresa Hartford cannot tell the story of her son's sore ribs and bumped head without tears.

Another boy on the school playground, she told the Edgerton PTA during a presentation on the school's new bullying-prevention program, didn't want her son to have other friends.

She said the boy insisted that her son break playground rules for using the "big equipment." When her son refused, he got his ribs kicked. He got his head knocked against the brick wall.

Adults at school didn't take it seriously, she said.

Eventually Hartford's son told her what was happening. She got involved and the bullying stopped.

"If your son or daughter has a problem, tell them to let us know," said Hartford, an Edgerton aide who does playground duty there.

As one of two aides who oversee 600 children playing outside before school each day, she said they watch but they can't catch everything.

"There are kids out there who wait until we're not looking," she said. But staff want to squash both the sneak attack and the bolder bullying. "We're all here to make this a safe place."

Bullying has become a hot topic in recent years, and not just in schools.

According to statistics from Don Burtch, school counselor at Edgerton and licensed professional counselor at Stillwater Therapeutic in Kalispell, one in four children who are identified as bullies end up incarcerated by the time they're 23 years old.

The bullying circle - the bully feeling empowered and satisfied, others supporting the action or feeling powerless to help, the targeted victim feeling isolated and often to blame - echoes abusive domestic cycles seen at home and in society.

A 2003 Journal of Pediatrics study of 2,776 children showed that bullied children were twice as likely as other children to have sleep problems and stomach aches, three times as likely to show anxiety and four times as likely to have marked mood problems.

"The reality is this is a very serious problem over time," Burtch said. "And if you're a child who's worried about what's going to happen [outside], how well can you pay attention in class? How can you eat lunch?"

Edgerton faculty members say that is unacceptable - both for the bully and the bullied.

So they are leading the way among Kalispell elementaries to clamp down on bullying in school by implementing the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, another piece under the Safe and Civil Schools umbrella that has been in place district-wide for three years now.

Elrod School will begin the Olweus (pronounced All-VEY-us) process this year, Peterson School hopes to train staff next summer, and Russell and Hedges schools are interested.

Developed by Dr. Dan Olweus in Norway after three teen suicides in 1983 were attributed to bullying, the program has been used successfully in Europe since its inception.

It came to the United States a decade ago. Among schools which loosely follow some of the program's guidelines, there is a 17 percent drop in bullying incidents. That number jumps to 56 percent when the Olweus program is followed closely.

There's an investment to following it closely.

Through professional colleagues, Burtch started exploring and training in Olweus a year ago. He shared it with the staff and encountered immediate enthusiasm.

"It's probably the first program I have seen that, instead of staff feeling like it's an added expectation, it seems to energize them," Edgerton Principal Rebecca Dahl said. "Probably because it gives them tools, it gives them specific directions, it gives them a vocabulary to use. And they've tried it and they see it works."

Twenty-two of them volunteered to go through Olweus training last spring. They came back and administered a grades 3-6 survey that provides a baseline for the program.

The information was eye-opening.

Of the 260 or so children in the upper four grades, 54 percent reported being bullied two or three times a month. Thirty-nine percent said they felt threatened by other students.

Far and away, the playground was the primary bullying location - tagged by 78 percent. It was followed by the lunchroom, classroom when the teacher is absent, school bus, elsewhere in the school, and even the hallway or classroom when a teacher is present (28 percent).

Of those children who told somebody about the bullying, 69 percent said it was their parent or guardian, followed by 59 percent who told a friend. About 20 points behind, a brother or sister, Edgerton staff, and their classroom teacher were pretty much on a par.

After the survey, staff training continued this summer and fall. Burtch is working to provide training for parents, aides, bus drivers and others.

Some teachers have shared the concepts with their students already, letting them know that when they don't feel safe because of a bully then it's an adult's place to step in and provide some consequences.

The Olweus program involves four arenas - the community, school building, classroom and child-to-child interactions.

School rules are clearly posted in classrooms, hallways, lunchroom, playground, library, principal's office and elsewhere. They are repeated from principal to teacher to aide to custodian to student to parent, until everyone speaks the same language.

And they are simple:

1. We will not bully others.

2. We will help students who are bullied.

3. We will include students who are left out.

4. When we know someone who is being bullied, we will tell an adult at school and an adult at home.

Through an orientation program - Edgerton plans a kick-off assembly Oct. 27 - and follow-up classroom meetings, students learn what bullying is and what to do about it.

One definition puts it this way: "A student is being bullied when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more students."

Key elements here: The bully has more power than the victim, either physically, socially or emotionally. And there is a real intent to hurt the victim.

They learn the differences between rough play, real fighting and bullying:

Rough play usually is between friends with the same power who have no intent to hurt each other, and it's done in a friendly way.

Real fighting usually isn't

between friends, but their power is pretty much equal. They do mean harm to each other, and both end up mad.

Bullying is about the same as fighting, with a couple of significant differences. The bully has more power than the victim and, in a distinct way, the bully ends up feeling good or in control while the victim can have a number of serious consequences.

Much more information - how to tell if your child is being bullied or is bullying, what a child can do, how adults should respond - is available online at www.stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

At Edgerton, a report form will be filled out when staff and administrators know of a bullying incident.

Three levels of infractions, with escalating consequences, cover verbal, nonverbal and physical bullying.

Level one includes such things as gossiping and name-calling, excluding someone and insulting gestures, or pushing/shoving. Those bring such results as recess detention or a phone call home.

Level two may include posting slander in public and insults about size or race, stealing and damaging property, starting fights or tripping a person. Consequences can include in-school suspension and a principal conference.

Level three covers things like prolonged harassment and forcing a group to totally exclude a person, setting fires and arranging public humiliation, or repeated/graphic threats and physical cruelty and assault. Results can be law enforcement contact and expulsion.

In any instance, a bullied child needs to know that he or she is not in this alone.

All students are being taught to stick up for each other and to let an adult take care of the problem if they feel unsafe.

According to Dahl, "Our responsibility and our goal is to make sure the students feel safe here, that they learn social graces as a life skill, and that they know when they leave Edgerton School they are ready for the next level of learning in the reading, writing and math areas.

"In order to do that, you breed a school climate that is schoolwide and that promotes those areas."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com