Bullying has gone online in schools

The classic image of school bullying has Big Billy beating up Little Bobby for his lunch money has mostly been replaced by online bullying on social media, including Mason County students.

The National Center for Education Studies reports that in 2019, about 22% of students ages 12 to 18 reported being bullied during the school year. That’s a 10% drop from 2009.

Of the students who reported bullying in 2019, about 15% reported being the subject of rumors; 14% reported being made fun of, called names or insulted; 6% reported being excluded from activities on purpose; and 5% reported being pushed, shoved, tripped or spit on. Additionally, 4% of students reported being threatened with harm, and 4% reported that others tried to make them do acts that they did not want to do or that their property was destroyed by others on purpose.

Matt Mallery, superintendent of the Mary M. Knight School District, said he doesn’t see much bullying on the Matlock campus. “It’s more of the online bullying through some form of social bullying,” he said.

Kids spread information on Snapchat, Discord and other platforms, Mallery said.

“It’s usually about some type of personal information, like who they’re dating and not dating,” he said.

Online bullying has increased “because it’s anonymous, to some extent,” Mallery said. “It can be more hurtful because it goes to multiple forms of people.”

When a student tells an administrator they have been the subject of an obscene message on Snapchat, for example, the principal and/or the school counselor set up meetings with all the parents and seek a resolution, Mallery said.

Jeff Davis, superintendent of the Pioneer School District, said bullying is “not rampant” on the Agate campus, nor does he hear about much cyber-bullying. The district teaches students up to eighth grade, and Davis said he hears more about bullying from administrators who have high schools.

“The definition of bullying gets misunderstood,” he said. “It’s targeted behavior, usually (involving) a size difference, repeated over and over.”

Employees concentrate on solving conflicts and helping students get along with each other, Davis said.

“I think we’re headed in the right direction,” he said.

In the Shelton School District “social media and phones are oftentimes a challenge to some of our bullying,” especially at the secondary schools, Superintendent Wyeth Jessee said. He added, “Things start off in the community and they’re brought into the school.”

In response, “We can be reactive or preventative,” Jessee said. “We are in a preventative stance … It’s the work up front.”

The schools spotlight celebrating students having successes with their peers, Jessee said.

“We are really focused on positive experiences every day so bullying gets extinguished,” he said.

For Grapeview Superintendent Gerry Grubbs, “a safe bully-free school begins with schedules, management, instruction and supervision that creates an engaging, efficient learning environment,” he wrote in an email to the Journal. “Forward thinking and planning minimizes the opportunity for misbehavior, and more specifically, bullying.”

As for the district response to bullying complaints, Grubbs wrote that “a critical piece of minimizing bullying is through timely, firm, but kind communications from adults about expectations and metering out appropriate consequences as needed. The closer to the event that the correction is applied, the more effective the response. Within the area of response we create mechanisms that allow for ease of communication from staff, students and parents to administration to ensure that problems aren’t ignored.”

Children who bully might be reflecting the actions they see by the adults in their orbit.

“We are critical of children who bully, but frankly I see many adults in many environments who engage in bullying behavior,” Grubbs said. “Because it is a human issue and not just a childhood issue, it takes all of us to practice, model and communicate practices that minimize bullying everywhere. With this in mind, we have adopted the Character Strong Curriculum that explicitly teaches higher level personal characteristics. As we roll this out to our community, we will be sharing strategies and language that families can use and model at home. We will do this so that the child’s entire environment (teachers, families, students) surrounds them with the knowledge and vocabulary of our vision for conduct. The nine characteristics that will be explicitly taught to everyone connected to our school are respect, empathy, cooperation, responsibility, perseverance, courage, gratitude, honesty, creativity.”

The district also conducts Safe Schools Training for all staff members that includes bullying and other formal policies and practices, he wrote.

Bullying isn’t an issue in the Southside School District, said Superintendent Paul Wieneke.

“We do not have trends of bullying at Southside, and have had few, if any, complaints about bullying over the past three years. Students truly care about each other in a positive way,” he wrote in an email to the Journal.

“The culture at Southside is anchored in Hope Science: 1) having goals; 2) having pathways toward goals; and 3) having agency (or the commitment toward owning a positive future),” Wieneke wrote. “Southside teachers teach expected behaviors and social and emotional well-being through the ‘Character Strong’ curriculum.”