Dearborn Schools to Launch Anti-Bullying Campaign

Everyone remembers a student they attended classes with who just couldn’t seem to catch a break from his or her peers.

For these students, school becomes a place of loneliness and isolation instead of a place of learning and inclusion.

Dearborn Schools administrators hope to make school a better place for students by launching a district-wide anti-bullying program. One of the goals of the program is to encourage dialogue among teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders about a problem that affects the victims’ ability to learn–not to mention their self-esteem.

“It’s important to remember that bullying occurs outside the classroom,” said Superintendent Brian Whiston in an interview Tuesday. “It happens at recess, it happens on the bus and it happens online. It’s a huge problem.”

He added that because bullying incidents will be tracked, the district will risk a documented increase in bullying incidents.

“We’re going to do something about it–even though it will appear to others that we have a huge bullying problem, we’re going to document the incidents,” Whiston said. “It’s like putting five more police cars out on the road–you have more arrests, but it doesn’t mean crime is increasing.”

Kickoff Event

The new anti-bullying program will begin this fall with a kickoff event on Sept. 14 at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center to help bring attention to the event, said Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Education Gail Shenkman.

The district will also have a poster contest. The poster will be visible at all schools and will be used in videos and printed materials, Shenkman added.

Under the program guidelines, each school will have three age-appropriate, anti-bullying events per year. The programs will focus on how to treat others with respect.

Additionally, parent education seminars, staff training for all employees who come into contact with students, information gathering, annual surveys and lessons will be implemented.

The challenge of creating an anti-bullying strategy is to make sure it is uniform within grade levels at each building, said Troy Patterson, the chair of the K-12 curriculum committee.

“One of the key aspects of the district’s response to bullying was to develop a curriculum that is common across the district,” he said. “With the help of a tremendous number of people, we developed five standards in order to facilitate this work.”

The five standards are defining bullying, the impact of bullying on the victim, cyber-safety, types of bullying and the responsibilities of all involved.

Patterson said the district’s internal computer communications system will be used by teachers to tap into resources and information.

“We used the I-blog system though the district, and what we have is a curriculum matrix for all the grade levels,” he said. “This is available online and it was a way that we could work with a tremendous number of people at any time.”

The key to making the program successful will be training children and staff to recognize bullying incidents when they occur, Whiston said, who likened the problem to observing someone elbow someone else every time they walk past them—what’s really happening may or may not be apparent.

“Once we can get teachers—and especially children—parents to recognize when an incident occurs, a lot of (bullying incidents) will go away,” he said.

During the past several months, Dearborn police, the Dearborn Parent-Teacher Association and community groups have had provided input to develop the campaign.

Bullying More Prevalent

The kind of bullying that occurs among young people today doesn’t resemble what it was even five years ago, said Betsy Kellman, the regional director of the Southfield Chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.

“Of the complaints that we receive, 70 percent are related to schools, and of those, 50 percent occur online,” she said. “It’s a huge problem and it’s always surprising to see the lack of respect shown to others.”

Incidents run the gamut—from bullying based on ethnicity or sexual orientation—to those who are bullied because of other factors, Kellman said.

Developing strategies to cope with bullying, at least for now, falls on the schools.

Michigan is one of only five states that do not have a bullying law on the books, Kellman said. Two sets of bills, one pending in the Michigan House and the other in the senate, have been introduced by legislators.

The house bill was discussed in the Education Committee, but was not referred out of committee prior to the summer break.

"We'll work on it again in September because it's something we need," said State Rep. George Darany (D-Dearborn). "The fact that we're one of five states that doesn't have a law is discouraging . . . I do think there's enough bipartisan support for the bill to be approved."

In the meantime, school board trustees were pleased administrators took a stand.

“I don’t know if you use the word violence or aggression, but bullying is a form of violence and aggression," said Trustee Mary Lane. “Prevention and stopping it is very important . . . it’s a task that we need to pay attention to.”