Bully. Victim. Bystander.
These are labels Living Sky School Division is moving away from in its initiatives to mitigate bullying.
While the Ministry of Education has an Anti-Bully Initiative, Living Sky has a program of "enhanced student behaviours."
"We deliberately use 'enhanced student behaviours' because we want to talk about positive behaviour," said the division's superintendent of school operations, curriculum and instruction at the most recent meeting of the Living Sky board of education.
Reporting on student behaviour programs throughout the division's schools, Brian Quinn said, politically, there is a strong will to keep the spotlight on the issue of bullying, in light of events such as school shootings and teen suicides. And so there should be, he said.
But, he added, Living Sky is "simply ahead of its time in maintaining this focus."
Providing board members with a list of the behaviour programs that have been ongoing in the division's schools, he said, "You can see the schools have taken the leadership in this area, in terms of reaching out and experimenting with programs. You can see just by the number of programs the level of interest there is at the school level."
From among the programs, Quinn highlighted the Tell Them From Me initiative.
He described this as a "game-changer," because for the first time they are entering the student voice in the process. Tell Them From Me is an online survey evaluation system designed specifically to address the needs of schools.
"This is the first time, systematically, that we've heard from our students," said Quinn.
"Tell Them From Me is a piece of software students use to communicate with us about their engagement in their learning, but also many things relating to school and life experience," said Quinn. "We got into this three years ago and now the province has followed suit.
Some of the results from the Tell Them From Me surveys taken at schools throughout the division, and compared to national averages based on schools with similar demographics, show:
more Living Sky students participate in school sports than the national average;
fewer students participate in school clubs than national average;
more students participate in part-time work;
students spend fewer hours reading and more time on cell phones;
students value educational outcomes more highly than their peers in the rest of Canada;
fewer students are truant;
fewer attend university;
students have a higher than average engagement in education; and
students have a greater interest in apprenticeship.
Regarding bullying, the results show:
an average number of students feel bullied; however
more students feel safe in school.
These results, he said, are really an invitation to a conversation, and where their real value lays is with each school working with their own data, and avoiding making comparisons between schools in unequal circumstances.
Quinn says he sees an enlarged role for school community councils in enhanced student behaviour. He would like to see each school community council in attendance in this fall's annual workshop to have a presentation on Tell Them From Me and on school goals, have a chance to start talking together about those issues, and leave that night having signed off on a school action plan with at least one goal set to begin the journey.
The board also heard from Cut Knife High School principal Michelle Ramsay and liaison worker Kathy Bullock about the No Such Thing as a Bully program that has been instituted in both Cut Knife schools.
No Such Thing as a Bully, developed by a Saskatchewan expert in conflict resolution, provides tools that teach both adults and children to prevent themselves from using bully actions and victim responses. Founded by Kelly Karius, BSW, RSW, it encourages those involved in or touched by bullying to examine their own behaviours, leading to a better, safer community.
Ramsay said the springboard to the program was from Tell Them From Me feedback.
"Kids felt safe at our school but weren't happy about the way they were treating each other," she said.
Rather than administration always addressing the issue, it was decided the whole school address it.
The goal is to reduce bullying by 10 per cent in next year, using Tell Them From Me as feedback.
The actions they took, said Ramsay, were to establish a Bullying Intervention Team, institute common language everyone uses and understands, bully proofing lesson plans in the classroom, Tell Them From Me surveys and increased supervision at noon.
"We believe everyone is important, everyone can make a difference and everyone deserves respect," said Ramsay.
She also said the Caring and Respectful School initiative, a provincial anti-bullying strategy, is important as it offers a set of tools to use in lessons that leads to consistent response to conflicts and bully actions, how to recognize them and what to do.
The language of No Such Thing as a Bully indicates that someone who bullies not be labelled.
Ramsay said, "It's about the action, not the person, the belief that behaviour can change. Looking at it as an action, we can change our actions."
It also looks at victim responses and bystanders.
Bullock said, "The philosophy is that one person can do bully actions, they can have a victim response and they can be a bystander, all within the same person.
Ramsay agreed.
"We all do all three, each one of us, at some point in time. It's about looking at it as a positive enhancement that we can all do better than we are right now."
Both agreed the No Such Thing as a Bully program had been well-received by the students and, somewhat unexpectedly, there has been a wide cross section of the student body getting involved.
