School Bullying Council

(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY Everyone knows that employees who are bullied at work are more likely to quit. But a new study from the University of British Columbia shows that it’s not only the victim who is likely to bail — the person’s coworkers are also likely to leave their jobs:

Witnessing or learning about these impacts of workplace bullying is likely to promote empathetic responses. Employees witnessing coworkers being bullied, or merely talking to them about their experiences, are pushed toward taking the targets’ perspective. Such perspective-taking leads one to experience cognitive or emotional empathy, which includes imagining how another feels… or actually sharing in another’s feelings. These empathetic responses can contribute to the understanding that a significant moral violation has occurred and the recognition that the victim does not deserve his or her mistreatment. As a result of this moral uneasiness, bullying at large within a work unit will increase employee intentions to quit their work group

So when you have a bully in the office, it’s not just the target that feels uncomfortable — so do other employees, who often feel empathy for the person being pushed around and feel that the treatment is morally wrong. People also don’t like working for a boss who allows, encourages, or engages in immoral behavior.

Why workplace bullying should be legal
Were  you a bully in high school? No job for you!
How to handle a bully boss

What’s the impact of workplace bullying on your business or department? Managers and HR departments alike typically ignore bullying because it’s a difficult problem to solve. Bullies are often experts at manipulation, and they tend to choose their targets carefully. Managers may justify ignoring the situation by rationalizing that the victim is a poor employee. They also may hope that the bullied worker quits, rectifying the problem (which it doesn’t because the bully then often picks a new victim).

As the study makes clear, bullying on the job is a problem for the whole team and, by extension, the whole company. As a manager, the last thing you want is a team that feels like the company is tolerating unethical or immoral behavior. They cannot trust you if you allow this to continue. As a result, morale suffers and people quit.

Here’s what you can do to combat bullying in your group or unit:

1. Stop the denial. Nobody, even incompetent people, deserve to be treated unfairly or poorly. If you see that behavior going on, it’s not the fault of the victim. Don’t allow it to continue just because Jim isn’t that good at his job, anyway.

2. Confront the bully directly. If you witness an incident or are informed of one, call the alleged bully into your office and explain that her behavior is unacceptable. Make sure the bully is aware that you will not stand for such behavior — ever.

3. Put the bully on a performance improvement plan. Remember your kindergarten report card where there was a line for “plays well with others?” This is also a critical skill in the workplace. It’s a rare employee who cannot be replaced by someone who isn’t a jerk. If you have an employee who bullies others, that needs to be stopped or the bully needs to be fired.

4. Speak up. If you’re not the manager but a peer of the bully, then speak up whenever you witness bad behavior. Defend the victim, and be honest in your appraisal. You don’t have to be a tattletale, but be firm. “Holly, what you said about Jim is not true,” or, “That is an unfair statement” or, “Did I just hear you say that Jim messed up on that project? Can you please clarify that for me?” 

Bullying is detrimental to any business. This study was conducted on nurses (where you think teamwork would be critical), but it’s easy to see the implications for any department. Ignoring bullying doesn’t make it go away, but it does make your other employees go away — even the ones who aren’t the victims. If you want to keep your valuable employees, stop the bullying.

Your school administration

The first bullying resource for parents is their child’s school. Whether your child is a victim of bullying or is the bully himself (or you are just concerned about intimidation at the school), you should reach out to your school teachers, counselor and principal for help. If you don’t get satisfactory results or assistance, don’t hesitate to go up the chain of command to the superintendent and ultimately the state Department of Education.

StopBullying.gov

The government website, StopBullying.gov, can be a helpful resource to learn about bullying policies and laws. 49 states have passed anti-bullying laws. The website also includes tips on preventing bullying, responding to bullying and talking about bullying.

Read about when girls bully

No Kidding About Bullying (Book with CD-ROM)

Based on a nationwide survey of more than 2,000 students and their teachers, No Kidding About Bullying: 125 Ready-to-Use Activities to Help Kids Manage Anger, Resolve Conflicts, Build Empathy, and Get Along (Amazon, $26) provides educators, parents and youth leaders with a wide assortment of activities that can be used to help children to resolve their conflicts without resorting to anger or violence. Geared toward grades three to six, this book and CD-ROM features games, role plays, group discussions, art projects and language arts exercises. The lessons affirm the importance of respect and kind actions.

The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander (Paperback)

This international best-seller is a favorite among parents and teachers. The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: From Preschool to High School — How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence (Barnes Noble, $12) talks about topics from conflict resolution to the three kinds of bullying. This practical, compassionate book is aimed at helping the triad of bullying — the bully, the bullied and the bystander.

Read about bullying in schools

Stop Bullying: Standing Up for Yourself and Others (DVD)

This 20 minute DVD is short, but it provides very good information for kids. Featuring nationally acclaimed and Emmy-nominated youth speaker Mark Brown, Stop Bullying: Standing Up for Yourself and Others (Amazon, $40) uses personal experience to help provide students with concrete steps they can take to respond to bullying. It talks about the importance of respect and tolerance. This DVD is appropriate for junior high school and up.

Stand Up To Bullying (DVD)

This bullying DVD is essential for your little ones. Perfect for parents to watch with children ages 4 and up, Stand Up To Bullying (Amazon, $13) features Lucky Kat and Daren the Lion to address the topic of bullying. It talks about the different types of bullying and teaches children the best ways to respond.

The Bully Project

Another vital bullying resource for parents is The Bully Project. The Bully Project is highlighted by a documentary film, Bully, about bullying in our schools. Directed by Lee Hirsch, the film follows the lives of five students in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma who face bullying on a daily basis. The Bully Project is more than just a film — it’s a call to action and a tool to raise awareness about bullying. On The Bully Project website, you can find out more about the film and its stories, as well as tips and suggestions for parents, students, educators and advocates. Kids can share their own bully stories by posting stories, uploading photos or recording videos. You can also find out about new initiatives in school, communities and online. Watch the trailer below to learn more about the film. Bully releases in theaters March 30.

More about bullying

How a bully can change your life
Is your child being bullied at school?
Protecting kids from cyber bullying

Find out more about what makes The Scary Guy so scary. Watch CNN Presents at 8 p.m. ET Sunday.

Austin, Minnesota (CNN) — Schools worldwide book him to put a stop to bullying. One Minnesota community promised him $20,000 to get him to come to town for two weeks last fall.

He calls himself The Scary Guy, and his price tag can run as much as $6,500 a day. The Scary Guy is his legal name — we checked. It’s safe to say his presentation is unlike anything most students have ever seen. The kids love him, and many school officials sing his praises. But CNN learned not every past customer believes he offers a real solution to the difficult problem of bullying in America’s schools.

Beyond the strange name and the four-figure daily rate, what’s most eye-opening is how this in-demand bully prevention guru defies the squeaky clean image expected of educators. He’s no Mr. Rogers leading sweet sing-alongs in a sweater vest and tie — far from it. He’s a tough-talking former tattoo artist covered in ink.

Lacking formal academic credentials, The Scary Guy acknowledges his looks and his lesson plans are a bit unconventional.

Scary, as he likes to be called, delivers a shock-and-awe approach. Speaking before a packed auditorium of schoolchildren in Austin, Minnesota, he barfs up apples, groans and rubs his ink-stained belly and intentionally pokes fun at the shortest middle-schooler, the bald PE teacher and the “geek in the wheelchair.” He explains he’s demonstrating classic bullying behavior to make kids aware of the problem.

The entertaining antics are followed up with fist-pumping and a steely look as he delivers his takeaway: “You travel around on this world, and you put out hate and anger, and you cop an attitude, you’ll draw all this into your life wherever you go.”

Scary calls his performances “edu-tainment” — a way to grab the kids’ attention with humor and throw in a positive lesson at the same time. Playing the bully, he says, is how he role plays his young adult years when he would find fault with just about everyone.

When pressed for his strongest message about bullying, he says it’s to “show [kids] they have the power to make the choice to be who they want to be and not become what they see and hear around them.”

Kids seem to hang on to his every word, and schools and communities are buying into his act. Over the past 13 years, Scary says he has visited schools in 19 states, and he gets requests by countries worldwide. He’s even been booked by law enforcement and the U.S. military.

Some school administrators we talked to, however, wonder whether visiting outsiders like Scary are more than just “clanging bells,” as one Minnesota principal put it, rather than the culture change desperately needed in America’s schools.

“You can have these kinds of folks come in and they are, in a sense, a bit of a mercenary — a one-time, one-shot deal,” says Principal Kerry Juntunen of Hermantown, Minnesota. “Does that really change kids’ lives? And my answer is no.”

Scary visited Juntunen’s middle school last year. The cost was covered by a federal grant. Parts of Scary’s performance were positive, Juntunen says, but other parts were inappropriate enough to convince Juntunen he would never invite Scary back.

Juntunen recounts how Scary, in an attempt to show that hand-shaking and hugging is harmless, reached out to shake a student’s hand and sarcastically said, “Oh, that’s the best sex I’ve had all day!” to a room full of middle-schoolers.

After the crude comment, Juntunen says, he immediately knew his phone would light up. “Well, what got left with the kids?” he says, “The kids got, ‘Oh, that’s the best sex I’ve had all day,’ not that it’s OK to shake someone’s hand or to hug them.”

Scary says he was just role playing, and that most people find it funny.

In his interview with CNN, Scary also didn’t seem overly concerned about discrepancies in some of his business and professional claims. His invoice to schools and his website — before we sat down for an interview — claimed his charity, KidsVisionHeart, is a nonprofit. (He changed his website after our interview.) The truth is KidsVisionHeart lost tax-exempt status nearly two years ago.

“It probably fell out because I didn’t report all of my taxes for the last seven years,” admits Scary.

CNN also learned his for-profit business, VisionHeart, was dissolved in the U.S. so his earnings from past gigs have been going to his bank account tax-free.

He says he’s trying to work out his taxes and is restructuring his business now, but his life on the road has made it difficult. And. he says, schools don’t care whether he’s for-profit or a charity.

Middle school Principal Dewey Schara of Austin, Minnesota, the community that booked Scary for two weeks last fall, is still a true believer.

“I think his credentials are stellar. And we looked into them because this is risky,” Schara says, when “you bring someone in that looks like Scary Guy, that talks like Scary Guy.”

Schara, who together with a parent-initiated bullying committee booked Scary to come to Austin-area schools, says a messenger with shock value is exactly what the community needed to wake up and take action against bullying.

“I just love his approach,” says Schara. “It’s not perfect. Some would say not beautiful. Maybe shocking to look at, but it gets everyone’s attention.”

The fact that Scary never finished college and has no formal training doesn’t bother Schara.

“In our world, the academic world, you have to have a degree, the law says you have to have a degree from an academic institution in order to do the job,” Schara said, “but that doesn’t make you a good teacher.”

Scary is also quick to defend his self-styled teaching methods and shared with CNN a curriculum he’s developing to go along with it.

“My teaching is researched-based in my personal experience and how I read people. No, it’s not out of a book,” Scary says, “but the truth is I don’t know where anyone would go to teach what I’ve been doing.”

And Scary says he has letters to prove he’s making a difference in kids’ lives.

“[The letters] just tell me what it’s like to make a difference, to make a change — to wake up to the idea that they don’t have to live with stress and negative behavior around them,” said Scary.

Juntunen recognizes some communities benefit from a Scary visit because his controversial approach can start a much-needed conversation about bullying; however, he says, what really matters is the daily interactions adults have with kids from the bus drivers to the school counselors. As he points out, people like The Scary Guy come and go.

“It is an ongoing process and the adults in this building, the adults in this community, the connections we make with kids — that’s what creates the culture, the anti-bullying culture that you’re trying to provide,” says Juntunen. “I think a lot of people are just asking for somebody else to do what we need to do ourselves.”

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/30/us/scary-guy/index.html

The numbers are jarring. Nearly one in five Canadian teens have witnessed online bullying, according to a recent Ipsos Reid study.

These cyberbullying acts range from having an embarrassing photograph posted to having one’s account hacked by someone pretending to be the victim.

Here in Nanaimo, a pair of young teens have been arrested within the last year for making threats. In one case, an online dispute led to an assault.

This, of course, is unacceptable. Social media has become enormously popular, with sites like Facebook and Twitter creating many positive benefits.

Unfortunately, there is also a new realm open to bullies.

Teens who have fallen victim to bullying at school now come home and can be subjected to harassment at home as well.

The Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district has, as it should, taken aim at bullying.

Nanaimo RCMP work closely with the district to identify bullying and other acts of aggression among children, with an aim to head it off before the problem gets out of hand.

A new website launched by police this week is aimed directly at dealing with the problem.

Parents and bullied students may be asking if it’s enough.

That’s because this a phenomenon so pervasive and longstanding that it cannot be eliminated by any school district anytime soon.

Sadly, there are some adults who justify bullying by citing that it went on when they were in school, which amounts to a tacit form of blaming the victim because the next line – often unspoken – is to suck it up, that it’s a part of life.

Well, it’s not. We don’t put up with assaults, intimidation and threats in any other part of our society.

Why would we tolerate it in our schools?

Intervening in bullying has been a challenge for educators because by its nature it goes on outside of their view.

And past efforts to address have been challenging because it has failed to address a culture among students that tolerates bullying.

The psychology is simple: Other kids sanction it through silence fearing they will also be bullied.

Targetting bullies also hasn’t worked. So programs that create an atmosphere of respect and break down the silence that bullies rely on are an effective way to begin to approach the problem. And it only remains a beginning.

The bulk of the remainder of what needs to be done lies with parents, and after that with the rest of the community.

Bullies and the kids whose silence they rely on learn their behaviours from their parents. Teaching kids respect should go without saying, though for some highly dysfunctional families, which may be informed by abusive behaviour, disrespect may be the order of the day.

Parents should also routinely monitor their children’s online activities.

Fortunately, when it comes to dealing with the online problem, there is an actual record of the harassment.

Everything that happens online is traceable, according to police officials, meaning the bullies who may think they have anonymity could be in for a rude awakening.

But as much as we need to address bullying in schools, we need to address the societal problems that create such behaviours within families and elsewhere.

Bullying, it turns out, is really not just something to be dealt with by the education system or the police.

It is everyone’s problem.

” We want to hear from you. Send comments on this editorial to letters@nanaimodailynews.com.

http://www.canada.com/Online+bullying+everyone+problem/6353905/story.html