|
|
|
Bullying, harassment,
or just joking around?
Second Step program teaches kids how to identify and respond to negative
behaviors
Walking down the halls of any school, you can see kids pushing, teasing
and calling names. It’s just what happens when you put a bunch
of kids together. Sometimes even teachers and staff join in the fun.
But when has joking around gone too far?
For one girl, it was when it ruined a friendship.
Throughout sixth grade, “Jane,” of Marquette was a close friend
with a classmate, “John.” In seventh grade, a problem developed.
Jane’s teacher began suggesting that she and John liked each other
as girlfriend and boyfriend, and the idea spread through the school
like wildfire.
“I think that they just wanted to get us rattled and see what we
would do as opposed to actually bother us,” said Jane, whose name,
along with John’s, has been changed for this story.
Even after Jane and John tried ignoring the teasing, telling kids to
stop and even telling the teacher to stop, the problem continued all
year long. In the end, they decided that it would be easier to stop
being friends than to deal with all the teasing.
Some people might call this a case of bullying or harassment, but according
to Jane, it’s not so clear.
“I don’t think it was a serious thing,” she said. “I
think they were just screwing around with us. If it had escalated to
something where it really bothered us to the point where they made us
cry, we would have told somebody else.”
So what is bullying or harassment?
The line between joking around and bullying or harassment is a fine
one. So how do local kids define these behaviors?
“I think bullying is when some kids pick on other kids for no reason
at all,” said Eric Wagner, twelve, of Marquette.
“When someone picks on someone else for usually not that big a
reason,” said Beth Cipriano, twelve, of Marquette.
“Kids being mean to each other because of low self-esteem,”
said Devin Lavey, thirteen, of Marquette.
Bothwell Middle School in Marquette has its own definitions.
“Bullying is defined in our school handbook as including but not
limited to, verbal assaults, emotional abuse and physical threats or
attack,” said Lesley Addison, a guidance counselor at Bothwell.
“A verbal assault would be calling names, saying very hateful,
hurtful things to people in a very loud negative way,” Addison
said. “Leaving people out, spreading rumors about someone to make
them feel bad, pretending to be friends with them and not really being—
those things are emotional abuse. Walking up to someone and saying,
‘I’m going to beat you up after school,’ is a physical
threat.”
Many students, as well as adults, assume that bullying and harassment
are the same thing, but there are differences.
“Bullying is kind of a power thing,” Addison said. “Someone
wants to have some control over someone else or wants to show that they’re
more powerful and wants to make someone else feel less than them.
“Harassment is more like teasing to the extreme. Maybe it starts
out as fun, but it goes too far. We define harassment as any unwelcome
behavior—so anything that’s happening to you that someone
else is doing that you don’t like that’s intended to hurt
you, to demean you, to embarrass you in some way.”
Why are some kids bullied?
Some kids are bullied or harassed more than others. But what makes them
stand out in the crowd?
“Because they’re different,” Wagner said. “Because
they’re smart. Because they don’t fit in. Because they don’t
have the latest things. Because maybe you just don’t like them
so you bully them as retaliation for what they’ve done to you.”
Self-esteem also seems to play a role in who gets bullied.
“The bullies know that they probably don’t have high self-esteem
and that they think that they’re not as good as everybody, so the
bullies think they’re an easy target,” Lavey said.
Or maybe the bullies are just trying to get a rise out of their victims.
“People know that they may not try to fight back and they’ll
show the reaction they want usually,” Cipriano said.
Dealing with bullying
At Bothwell, discipline for bullying and harassment can range from detention
to school expulsion depending on the number and severity of the offenses.
To get at the root of the problem, the school started using the Second
Step program this year.
“The focus of Second Step is helping students understand how they
feel, take into consideration how other people feel, being empathetic
or learning empathy,” Addison said.
Empathy is an important step in helping people figure out how to deal
with bullying and harassment, Addison said.
“Before they can solve the problem they have to figure out what
the problem is,” she said, “and they have to figure out how
they feel and why they feel that way, and also how does the other person
feel and why do they feel that way.”
Addison has seen some positive effects of the program.
“I overheard another person talking about a teacher handling a
situation with a student, and the teacher actually talked about, ‘Remember
we learned about empathy. Remember we talked about what it would feel
like to be in that person’s shoes.’ And the student was able
to say, ‘Yeah, now that I think about it, that probably really
didn’t feel good, so I’m going to apologize to her.’”
Some kids think the program is working.
“The Second Step program is really telling us what bullying is
and how to deal with it,” Lavey said.
However, some students feel that the program isn’t as effective
as it should be.
“I think they should do more hands-on things, like watch out in
the halls and focus more on the people you notice bullying, and not
as much on the people not bullying,” Wagner said.
No one should go it alone
An important thing for kids to remember if they’re being bullied
or harassed is they don’t have to go through it alone, Jane said.
“You should always tell somebody that you trust, whether it be
a friend or an adult, a parent, a teacher, anybody, and they can help
you get through it,” she said. “They can talk to you or they
can talk to the person that’s doing it and try and get them to
stop.”
In Jane’s situation, she had a strong support system.
“My parents, and my little sister helped me a lot,” she said.
“And my really close friends, they kind of helped to tell me to
just ignore them, they’re wrong. My mom always told me it doesn’t
matter what they say; just ignore them, and eventually if they realize
it’s not bothering you they’ll leave you alone.”
Addison agrees that whether it’s bullying or harassment, it’s
not up to just one person to solve the problem.
“We have a responsibility to each other,” Addison said. “Every
teacher, every staff person, every student, every parent, every community
member has an opportunity to make a difference by teaching, modeling,
reinforcing kind and respectful ways of dealing with people by stepping
in when they see someone who looks like they’re being harassed
or bullied and saying, ‘You know what? It’s not OK to treat
each other that way. What is the problem? How can we help solve it?’
“It is everyone’s responsibility.”
—8-18 Media
Editor’s Note: This story was written by Kelsie Coccia, fifteen,
and Megan Maas, thirteen, with contributions from Kaitlyn Ball, ten;
Paige Gilbert, twelve, and Traci Hicks, eleven.
Money matters
Teens learn importance of financial management
By the time they graduate, sixty-five percent of college students owe
at least $3,000 in credit card debt. During a recent presentation at
Northern Michigan University, a representative from the Federal Reserve
Bank told teens how to avoid falling into debt.
Ericca Maas, a senior project manager in the community affairs department
of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, gave a presentation to youth
about money management. The presentation was part of a seminar called
“Marketplace Economics and Entrepreneurship: Money Matters,”
co-sponsored by the Federal Reserve, Michigan State University Extension,
and NMU’s Center for Economic Education and Entrepreneurship.
The seminar’s primary purpose was to educate teachers and youth-serving
professionals about the importance of teaching financial management
to youth.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is the center of the Federal
Reserve Bank’s ninth district, which includes the Upper Peninsula,
Northwestern Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Montana.
There are twelve districts in the country.
“I wanted to talk about money because I’ve made a lot of mistakes
with it in my life,” Maas said. “I want others to be able
to learn from my mistakes and to make better decisions in the future
when they deal with their own money.”
The community affairs department is dedicated to helping low and moderate-income
communities get better and equal access to capital and credit. That
means they work on housing and small business development, as well as
financial education.
“Financial education needs to start at a young age,” Maas
said. “What we say at our office is ‘K to Gray.’ It needs
to continue into the older years as well.”
Maas told the teens that money should be handled like a relationship
with another person.
“People need to be careful not to start a relationship with money
that will give it too much control over their lives,” Maas said.
“Money is powerful and deserves respect.”
One of the main problems kids have with money management, according
to Maas, is they don’t save their money.
“They wait for their allowance and always have their eye on the
thing that they need,” she said. “I’ve been in contact
with kids who would borrow future allowances from their parents and
would even be accumulating debt at that young age.”
One of the biggest reasons college students, as well as many adults,
have so much debt is credit cards.
“When I was younger, I frequently would just go and buy whatever
I wanted and typically pay for it with a credit card,” Maas said.
“That was the major mistake I made. It took me about five years
to pay down the debt and start saving again.”
One of the money management techniques Maas recommends is making a spending
plan.
“It doesn’t need to be elaborate,” she said. “But
it is very important that you figure out where your money is coming
from, and where it needs to go. Spending plans can help you do this.”
Seventeen-year-old Danielle Thoune, a junior at Marquette Senior High
School, enjoyed the presentation.
“I do believe the presentation was helpful,” Thoune said.
“I’m going into college in a few years, and I don’t want
to come out of college with too much debt.”
Thoune said more financial education is needed in schools.
“The econ classes right now tell you how to do some things, but
it doesn’t really show kids the difference of being totally in
debt and getting by and surviving in the world,” she said.
Thoune plans to put what she learned from the presentation into practice—someday.
“Considering I don’t have a job and I don’t have income,
it makes it a little hard to save,” she said. “Once I get
a job, I can apply what I learned.”
—8-18 Media
Editor’s Note: This story was written by Ben Brow, fourteen, and
Joseph Short, fifteen.
|
