Resources / Ripples & Wipeouts

One of my favorite commercials this time of year is from Staples.  They play the song, “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” usually played during the Christmas season, but for this ad, they show parents gleefully riding shopping carts through the aisles collecting back-to-school supplies.  Meanwhile, the kids stand there with blank looks on their faces.  At my house, I have just gotten used to the more relaxed morning routine that summer vacation brings, but I know that the chaos is about to start up again.  This year will be a little less chaotic than the last, as one kid was kicked to the curb at her college dorm earlier in August. And then there was one.  The one left will enter the eighth grade, the last leg of middle school.  I am already looking forward to June.

I don’t particularly want the time to fly by, but I worry about what the new school year will bring.  For some reason, the bullying, harassment, and teasing that my son endured last year seemed so much more intense than what my daughter endured years before.  I always thought girls were meaner. 

Throw in some good, old-fashioned unresponsiveness from the school district and you can begin to understand my feelings of unease.  It pains me to think what might be going through my son’s mind.  On the one hand he’s excited to get new stuff – sneakers, notebooks, and folders – but on the other hand he wonders if he will be last year’s news. Will a new kid take his place, or will the perpetrators be just as unrelenting as they were last year?

For the past year, I have worked as a facilitator with the Anti-Defamation League and their program, A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE®.  The program brings anti-bias and diversity training and resources to a variety of settings; I work specifically in school settings.  Bullying is not new – it has been around forever – so why bother trying to do anything about it now, right?  Wrong.

The statistics are staggering:  160,000 students stay home from school every day out of fear of being bullied1; 20% or more of all children attending school are frightened through much of their school day2; 67% of student perpetrators of school shootings reported having been continually bullied by peers in the past.3 It’s a wonder that any learning happens at all.  Imagine sitting at your desk at work, anxiety-ridden because the guy who bullies you will soon be back from lunch.  Oh, and yes, bullying happens in the workplace too.

Through ADL, I have facilitated trainings at Canarsie High School, Richmond Hill High School, Manhasset High School and others.  Each are dealing with their own brand of issues, all are similar in their determination to do something about it.  Some of the workshops are to help train students to be peer leaders in their building.  Others are to help educators identify and intervene when acts of bias or bullying take place.  Needless to say, the ADL has their hands full.

These experiences have given me a much deeper understanding of what is needed to make bullying the exception and not the rule, and a healthy appreciation of the work being done through programs like A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE®.  I must admit that I was taken aback at my sense of helplessness when it came to helping my son cope as a target of bullying, even with all the training I’ve received through ADL.  I am hopeful that this year we’ll be better prepared for what lies ahead.

The question we must ask ourselves is, will there ever come a time when bullying is a thing of the past?  As a parent, I hope so.  As a practitioner, these numbers tell the tale that we’re not there – and we’ve got a lot of work to do.

--JOAN