Bullying: It's worse than maybe you think

Kim Werner is a middle school counselor in Miami-Dade Public Schools. Her seven years as counselor have followed a career with Delta as a flight attendant. She and her husband Larry Williams live in Miami Springs; their children are Lana and Ben; the cat in the picture is Peanut. For more information on bullying prevention, you can go to her website – A Piece Full World at www.apiecefullworld.com.

By KIM WERNER

Have you ever felt as if you had no words to accurately describe an event? Has that event been so alarming and disturbing that you wanted to just walk away and pretend you hadn’t just witnessed, heard or seen it? Has an event ever been reported to you that is so awful it feels incomprehensible, let alone understandable that a school child could do and say such things?

Multiply that awful feeling by 10, 20 or 100. Every day as a public middle school counselor, I am disturbed -- disturbed by my students’ reports of receiving, experiencing and witnessing their peers’ brutality.

Ugly words fly in school hallways and online. Feelings are hurt. Tears are shed. And our shoulders are shrugged. “What can we do?”, we rhetorically ask and get on with “the business of education.” We get on with analyzing data and test scores. But I know, and you know, we cannot educate children if they do not feel safe.

And have you ever felt this? Have you felt that gut-wrenching drop when your own child is scared? When the phone rings and it’s your beloved child once again -- morning after morning for a month -- calling, sobbing, hidden behind a pillar at school too scared to go to class? I have. My daughter, Lana, wasn’t repeatedly ridiculed, tripped or pushed. She wasn’t a target of online meanness. She was simply a little girl walking to class alone down a school hallway. She got the unwanted attention of a group of big girls. They mocked her. “Hey, little girl…..,” they called after her and laughed. They moved on. Lana didn’t. She was stuck in anxiety and fear.

That‘s what bullying does. Words of encouragement did nothing. She stayed stuck until my husband and I moved her out of that school.

What did her school do? They did as much as most schools do about bullying -- not enough. They could have done more. They should have done more. We all should do more. That’s where we are with bullying prevention in Florida -- needing to do more.

Policy is not enough. Children are not protected by policy. Rather they are protected by our educating ourselves on what it takes to truly shift school-bullying cultures to cultures of kindness and respect. That takes real work -- work I naively thought most school districts would want to do. I was wrong.

I am also an Olweus Bullying Prevention Program trainer. I was selected by the Florida Association of School Administrators (FASA) in 2009 to help launch the Florida Bullying Prevention Initiative. I pursued that opportunity because I had just begun working as a middle school counselor.

Middle school frankly is just painful for so many children, my daughter included. My former school, an “A” school, is no different than any other middle school anywhere. I heard slurs called out -- ugly, painful, make-you-shrink-into-your-own-self hurtful stuff. I saw book bags emptied and stuffed into the garbage. I saw children choked, tripped and pinched. I saw other children watching. Some joined in the taunting. A few would reach into the garbage can and silently put a friend’s book bag together again.

Do you know what “scooping” is? No? Our children do. Large boys’ chests are “scooped”. Their nipples are pinched and twisted. Do you know what tea-bagging is? Some boys -- yes they have their pants on -- rub their scrotums on the faces of other children on school buses. Imagine. Let me say it again -- boys on our public school buses rub their scrotums on other children’s faces. And other children watch. Some cheer and laugh. Others silently quake.

Girls are clever in their bullying. Once at my former school, an ongoing scavenger hunt of sorts -- ever growing, ever more painful -- was written in a textbook shared by students in different periods. “Go to Page 178.”, the latest entry would say after traveling back and forth throughout the textbook, guided by clues. Finally some new and nasty entry would nail our guiltless girl. Imagine her pain. Imagine her dread. Imagine the teacher completely and utterly unaware. That is how awful, hidden and insidious bullying can be.

So I wanted to “do something.” I wanted to do something more than just wait until some terrible thing happened. I knew we needed to do something comprehensive and authentic.

I was blessed to have been chosen by FASA as an Olweus trainer. My training was exciting. I sat with professionals from across the nation. We all had one mission: Keep children in our states safe from bullying. I returned from my training ready to share everything with everybody. I understood the transformational potential of Olweus. I thought my school district and my school’s leaders would be excited, too. I was wrong.

Since becoming an Olweus trainer, I have been told by a school leader that bullying was not a problem at our school. I had brought into the school an $8,000 Olweus material and training grant. I had organized and motivated a bullying prevention committee made up of teachers from each grade level, security guards and parents. I had students on board in creating our program. Then my principal told me he’d changed his mind -- we were not going to implement the Olweus program.

Please know that having an Olweus trainer is considered by some to be a big deal. It is such a big deal in Ohio, for example, that I was selected from many applicants for a much sought after position in part because of my Olweus trainer status. I write this not to point fingers but to get us to a place where it is not about you or about me. Rather it's about our children and keeping them safe.

I am not without hope. We are moving in the right direction. I believe we can, with lots of hard work and with the right leadership, move school cultures from disrespect and fear to respect and confidence. When we effectively prevent bullying we promote all the things we want for our children. We promote patience, kindness, integrity, courage, tolerance. Imagine that.

Lana, so you will know, is fine now. Doesn’t mean she wants to do her homework. She doesn’t. Doesn’t mean her room is tidy either. It isn’t. It does mean that she and her brother Ben are spirited, fun and funny children. And I am a frazzled, sometimes fretful, but mostly happy and proud mom. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.