District looks to ERASE bullying

Are Prince George schools winning the battle against bullies?

For any of the victims of bullying incidents or kids who are being targeted by an onslaught of hateful messages sent to their computers or phones, the answer is an obvious no.

But after a concerted effort to create its Safer School LiveBinder website and get on board with the provincial ERASE (Expect Respect And Safe Education) anti-bullying strategy, School District 57 is giving students and teachers new tools in the fight to stop student harassment.

As part of the provincial strategy, the school district is developing stronger codes of conduct to clamp down on bullies and finding ways to use technology, including a smartphone app, to help students report bullies.

The focus now is on training teachers, administrators and counsellors to recognize the warning signs will know how to intervene to stop kids from being bullied. On Monday and Tuesday, the school district will begin hosting a three-day Violence, Risk and Threat Assessment conference at Van Bien elementary school at 311 Wilson Cres.

Ninety secondary school principals, vice-principals, and guidance counsellors will join RCMP and Northern Health social workers to discuss ways to tackle bullying and harassment problems. Anti-bullying expert Theresa Campbell of Surrey, who made a presentation at the B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils regional conference two weekends ago in Prince George, will be the guest speaker. On Wednesday, elementary school administrators, teachers and counsellors will meet at Van Bien for the Ensuring Safe Schools seminar.

The district has spent considerable effort developing its Safer Schools online document, which went live in September on the the district website, www.SD57.bc.ca. The site provides students advice on how to report bullies online, lists contact numbers for community social agencies and support groups, and contains documents to help students, parents and teachers deal with issues of bullying and harassment. Teachers can download lesson plans that teach anti-bullying strategies.

"Since our students are so savvy with technology it really is something that is user-friendly to them and they can find the information they need," said assistant superintendent Susan Johnston.

Persistent efforts from victims of bullying, teachers and parents who showed up at school board meetings last year to tell their stories convinced the board to develop the Web document. The document is based on the Schools Advisory For Educational Research (SAFER) Schools handbook the school district produced in 2003.

"Our working group created a great mix of people - we had teachers, parents, students and members of the community working collaboratively on that document and we decided it had to be [in a Web form] so it can be updated and we came up with the LiveBinder solution to that," said Cindy Heitman, SD 57's principal of curriculum and instruction.

"It's very intuitive for kids to click in, navigate and access information. It's all linked to other sites that are already in existence and when they update their sites our information is automatically updated. The document is changing almost on a daily basis."

As of Tuesday, the site had more than 800 hits.

"We're living in a world of technology and we want people to use the website," said board chair Sharel Warrington. "There's so much information there and we want to let people know they can access very critical information there. They can get support and parents can get tools to talk to their children with."

While the potential is there for students to file false reports on bullying and cyberbullying incidents through the website or phone app, Warrington said the benefits of the site far outweigh the drawbacks.

"Our society has evolved into a place where there are behaviours that may not be appropriate. The fact is, bullying and harassment is reported, acted on and there are consequences now. There were times years ago when we considered bullying almost acceptable because it was just kids talking that way to each other. But it's not acceptable.

"A lot of work went into the SAFER Schools document and it may not have been used as well as it should. But now that it has been revived in a different format, we need to make sure we're supporting it. With that document there were a lot of programs that started in schools that had to do with social responsibility and how to students treat each other. So our schools have had programs for a long time that support the growth of appropriate behaviour."