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Palo Alto schools see decrease in bullying
Programs aim to create community that will curb bullying behavior

by Megan Rawlins

After a year of addressing bullying, Palo Alto schools are starting to see results, with one school reporting a 36 percent drop in the number of disciplinary actions taken.

But there is still a long way to go, local educators say.

In October, after the first full year of teaching an anti-bullying curriculum and working with students, Barron Park elementary school reported the 36 percent reduction.

"When I looked at the data, the decrease was totally in teasing and bullying," said Cathy Howard, principal of Barron Park.

Barron Park, El Carmelo, Addison and Escondido elementary schools are combating bullying through a program called Steps to Respect, which originates out of Seattle's Committee for Children.

Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet, coordinator of the Parents Place Community Education Center in Palo Alto, has been training teachers, administrators and parents in the Steps to Respect program.

Steps to Respect focuses on dispelling myths and creating communities that can identify and curb bullying behavior from multiple fronts.

"You need a program that addresses the entire school community. Everyone needs to be involved: parents, teachers, administrators and the kids," she said.

When she says "kids" she means all kids: those who exhibit bullying behavior, those being targeted and the bystanders.

Bullying is present in every community; it's pervasive, Moskowitz-Sweet said.

The stereotype of the oversized kid taking lunch money from his bespectacled counterpart doesn't even begin to tell the whole story, she said.

"There's an acceptance of it among adults that that is the way kids are," Howard said.

This is one of the myths of bullying schools have to contend with.

"Bullying is not a rite of passage. It is not 'just a part of growing up'; it does not always involve physical aggression; it is not only between boys. It is not 'kids just being kids,'" Moskowitz-Sweet said. "Fighting back is not always best, and ignoring it will not make it go away."

According to studies, 85 percent of children involved in bullying are bystanders, or passive onlookers who don't egg the aggressor on but don't step in to stop the action either.

"The key is really in helping these kids know what to do and take a stand and act in a way that doesn't allow bullying to happen," Moskowitz-Sweet said.

One of the aspects of Steps to Respect that was attractive to Howard its emphasis on helping all of those involved in bullying, she said.

"It teaches how to not be a bystander but instead stand up for other kids if they are being bullied," she said.

At Barron Park, she set up a group of six teachers, the school psychologist and herself to use Steps to Respect materials to create school policies regarding bullying and discipline in general. It's a holistic, school-wide way of looking at the problem, she said.

Bullying can be hard to define.

"Parents think it means some very egregious, out-there behavior. Among girls it is very subtle. It can be a look, a little gesture a turning away of the face," Howard said.

There are three elements to bullying that are always present, Moskowitz-Sweet said.

"Bullying always has an imbalance of power: a bigger kid towards a smaller kid, a group towards one. There is intent to harm; it is not an accident no matter what kids might say. And there is always a threat of further aggression, admitted or otherwise"

As more kids get online at a younger age, cyber-bullying has arisen as another threat. It used to be that when a child went home, he was safe, Moskowitz-Sweet said.

"Cyber-bullying's done on Facebook, on MySpace, by creating websites, breaking into email accounts. It's in virtual space and can be 24/7; it follows them into their homes, into their rooms," she said.

Another local anti-bullying effort comes from Palo Alto Medical Foundation, where Dr. Nancy Brown helped two local teens develop a bullying module for teachers on the foundation's preteen Web site.

Schools have difficulty policing behavior of students off-campus, she said.

"But if a school does a really good job at creating a community of kindness and respect then bullying goes down."

Brown suggests introducing technology and cyber-etiquette to students at school. Some Palo Alto schools offer their students email addresses through the school. Students must sign a contract prohibiting certain malicious or inappropriate behavior to take advantage of the service.

She also advises parents to keep a close eye on their child's online activity.

"Parents should keep computers in a public place, and they should have access to kids' emails," she said.

Steps to Respect and the PAMF module also emphasize building social and friendship skills. Friendship ties protect kids; they can create "an environment where the feeling is that 'This is not what we do here,'" Moskowitz-Sweet said.

Kids need to learn what a good relationship is; they need to develop good social skills before they have to unlearn bad ones, Brown said.

"Everyone in their life will, at some time, be a target. If you tolerate people not accepting difference then one day you'll be the one that's different," she said.

Editorial Intern Megan Rawlins can be e-mailed at mrawlins@paweekly.com.