43
Seminar addresses bullying problem
By Denise Dick
BOARDMAN
For a school anti-bullying policy to be effective, it must be systemwide and involve school personnel, students, parents and the community, an international speaker on bullying told Mahoning County educators.
Allan Beane, who worked for 36 years as a special- education and regular- education teacher as well as a university vice president, was a featured speaker Monday at a professional development day for teachers and other school personnel. He has written more than 30 books about bullying and served as an expert consultant in five criminal cases and six lawsuits involving bullying.
The Bully-Free program was sponsored by the Mahoning County Educational Service Center and was offered at both the Boardman Performing Arts Center at Boardman High School and at Canfield High School.
“One need only to turn on the television or read the newspaper to learn about the growing problem of bullying in our schools,” Barbara Williams, MCESC director of teaching and learning, told the educators.
Beane, whose son was bullied in seventh grade, said that bullying has become a national crisis. It may be physical, verbal or done online.
“It is time for all of it stop,” Beane said.
He calls bullying abuse, and says it’s dehumanizing.
Bully victims sometimes resort to self-harm, suicide, sink into depression or retaliate against their abusers.
“The path is similar to the path kids take when they’re sexually abused,” Beane said.
It’s likely to occur in an area with little or insufficient adult supervision such as in a hallway, bathroom, stairwell, playground, parking lot or between buildings.
Though bullying isn’t new, Beane says the prob-lem is worsening and becoming more pervasive. Twenty percent or more of students have reported being bullied. Some children, including those with disabilities, of Arab-American descent and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, are more likely to be victims of bullies, he said.
Beane said that if a student reports a bullying incident to a teacher or other school employee, that employee should never minimize or make light of it. They should be investigated.
There have been numer- ous lawsuits involving bullying in schools.
It also contributes to poor school attendance and to dropout rates, the speaker said.
How schools deal with bullying must be system-wide and become a way of living and part of the curriculum.
“You can’t just have a bully-free month,” Beane said.