Students Learn How To Stop BullyingNov 30 2010Students Learn How To Stop BullyingRANCHO CUCAMONGA - The students of Summit Intermediate School are transforming their campus into a place where their peers are treating each other better. Forty students and seven teachers at the school completed a two-day Safe School Ambassador training program this week that teaches students skills to stop bullying and violence. “A lot of kids here can be bullied about being smart,” sixth-grader Cassandra Zapata said. “It’s a problem when some kids are not getting good grades, so they feel they need to take their anger out on another student.” As of 2010, more than 15 elementary, middle and high schools in the Inland Valley and the San Bernardino area have launched Safe School Ambassador programs, and nearly 1,000 schools across the nation and Canada use the program. By spring the program is expected to be launched in 23 schools, officials said. This is the fourth year Summit Intermediate has used the Safe School Ambassador program. The program, through the nonprofit Community Matters, was developed in 1999 to prevent peer mistreatment and violence among students in fourth to 12th grades. After the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, when two students killed 12 students and one teacher, schools disproportionately focused on school safety, according to a Community Matters news release. They largely ignored the role that students can play in reducing violence and mistreatment, the nonprofit said. Students who see, hear and know things adults don’t - often are the first to see mistreatment and violence, and can intervene in ways adults can’t. Although adults may make and enforce the rules at school, students create and maintain the social norms that allow peer mistreatment to happen. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Summit students learned how to notice five types of mistreatments and seven actions they can use to respond. Students and teachers were even taught not to use the word “bully” as a noun because it has a lot of emotional baggage. Instead, they should use the word “aggressor.” “When you’re doing your ambassador work, you’ll still have to find your own balance where you’re assertive but not bossy or weak,” trainer Shay Olivarria told the students. “The biggest benefit of this program is that each of you are learning skills that will also help you deal with your own issues.” The training required students to role-play the mistreatments and use the actions to help remedy them. Students were also asked to list all of the mistreatments they have seen, known or heard about on their campus. “I think sometimes students don’t know what to do in a certain situation, but with this, there are specific actions that will help them solve a particular situation,” said Jeff Strogen, a seventh-grade teacher at Summit. Olivarria said that as students use the themes and strategies on their peers, it will allow them to change the social norm and culture of the school. “When students can step in and use the ambassador actions, it signals to other students that those kinds of threats are not OK,” she said. After the training, ambassadors will have to keep logs documenting the incidents on campus. And every two weeks they will meet with other students and an adult in family groups to talk about what they’ve done as ambassadors and get coaching from adults and other ambassadors. “There are problems that some adults may not know about, and I think there are students that feel they can solve a problem instead of going to an adult,” Strogen said. “This program makes students feel empowered. I think it makes for a closer community and on campus it makes it a safer place to be where students are treated better.” On the lookout Safe School ambassadors are trained in their positions to know how to stop acts of cruelty among their peers by noticing and responding to five types of negative behavior: * Mistreatment Actions Balancing - Saying something positive about a person or group that was put down. Blog written and posted by Canan Tasci on November 12, 2010. 
Recent Posts10 Ways You Can Help To Stop BullyingWe have a choice. We can be overwhelmed by the size and scope of the issue and do nothing, or we can wake up our courage and do something that contributes to making things better. ‘Bully’ movie opens Friday, March 30th - Waking Up Courage is the Solution to Stopping BullyingThe new movie “Bully” opens March 30th in major cities nationwide. The film documents bullying between real kids and outlines the extent of the bullying epidemic. But solutions do exist – in the form of programs like Safe School Ambassadors that awaken the courage of bystanders to speak up when they see bullying occur. Rick Phillips Speaks On Bullying at the Clinton School of Public ServiceThe Clinton School of Public Service invited Rick Phillips, Executive Director of Community Matters as one of their Distinguished Speakers for their series of public lectures in Little Rock, Arkansas. Safe School Ambassadors school nationally recognized for its tolerance effortsMesa Linda Middle School in Victorville, CA was recognized as a “Mix It Up” Model School by the Teaching Tolerance Project. Straight Talk TNT - Teens ‘n Twenties Publishes Article Praising Safe School Ambassadors ProgramLauren Forcella, founder and editor of the website Straight Talk TNT: Teens ‘n Twenties, has written and published an article on her site praising the effectiveness of the Safe School Ambassadors program. |