School Sampler:
Ashland, Virginia

Location
Liberty Middle School (Grades 6–8)
13496 Liberty School Road
Ashland, VA 23005

Contact
Marilyn Towsey
Bullying Prevention Committee Member
Phone: (804) 752-6020
E-mail: mtowsey@hanover.k12.va.us

Description

Liberty Middle School is a rural school located near Richmond, Virginia. It serves 1,200 students in grades 6–8. The school has become more ethnically diverse in recent years, drawing students from the nearby town as well as rural families who have been in the community for generations. The school is now about 20 percent African American, and has a small but growing population of students who speak English as a second language.

For the past 12 years, the school has had a violence prevention team working to keep the school a safe place for learning. The prevention strategies focus on fostering respect, building social skills, and working together. Students have been very willing to come together and work on peer mediation. The topic of bullying was a sensitive issue; however, many students were unwilling to talk about this subject. This was a sign for the school staff that more attention needed to be paid to discussing and preventing bullying.

The school discovered the well-respected work of Dan Olweus who developed the research-based Bullying Prevention Program in Norway in 1983. The staff applied for a grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and became one of five schools in the United States to pilot the program. Although the program was new to this country, it has proven results in decreasing the frequency of bullying incidents by 50 percent after two years of implementation in Norway schools. The program is the only bullying prevention program at this time to have been identified by OJJDP and the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder as an exemplary, proven, replicable program meeting strict standards of effectiveness.

The Bullying Prevention Program is designed to reduce bullying by providing a comprehensive, schoolwide framework for intervention at the school, classroom, and individual levels. The goal in using interventions at all three levels is to ensure that students are given a consistent, coordinated, and strong message by everyone in the school that bullying will not be tolerated. An important part of the program is making sure that adults respond quickly to student concerns and that the responsibility for stopping the problem is on adults rather than on the children themselves. Another important aspect to the program is teaching children that bystanders have a responsibility to prevent bullying, either by refusing to support bullying behavior or to alert an adult to a problem.

Liberty was visited several times by the U.S. program coordinator Susan Limber of Clemson University and a representative from Boulder, Colorado to determine if the environment was conducive to implementing the schoolwide program effectively. For example, the program requires that a coordinating team be established at either the district or school that includes a school administrator, a teacher from each grade, a guidance counselor, a school-based mental health/social services professional, and parent and student representatives. Because the school already had a violence prevention team in place represented by various staff and students, it was easier to start the process. Bullying prevention builds on what staff members have already been doing in terms of violence prevention. Marilyn Towsey, former prevention coordinator and currently a member of the bullying program committee, said that it is important to show the staff that a new program will build on what they already do, rather than being just another “add-on” requiring more work.

It was important that time be available for weekly student and faculty meetings. Liberty already had time built into the schedule for these meetings, so that the whole schedule didn’t need to be reconfigured. Groups of 10–12 children and one adult now meet every week for 40 minutes to discuss the week’s events and issues, and share concerns regarding bullying. The groups also have planned lessons on bullying.

Before implementation, the school administered the “Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire” to students to assess and focus the attention of adults on the problem. The questionnaire assesses the severity and frequency of bullying by age and gender, focuses adults on the need to address the problem, and identifies areas in the school where bullying occurs most often. Results showed that 29 percent of the students said they had been bullied in the preceding month, which is similar to the percentage found in other schools, according to recent national surveys.

The results of the survey also showed that education was needed about what bullying really is. Says Towsey: “About halfway through the survey, students said that they had begun to realize that bullying was more than pushing and hitting, that it was other kinds of behavior as well. Now children could put a label on behavior that they had assumed they just needed to put up with.” Children were also able to see that they weren’t alone in having a problem.

Liberty has a three-step process for dealing with bullying infractions which emphasizes education rather than punishment. The first offense is noted in a student’s file with a warning that adults will be watching closely for further incidents. After a second offense, the child must sign a behavioral contract not to bully others and teachers contact the student’s parent. The third offense requires parental notification and “re-education” counseling.

Both teacher and student education are important at Liberty. At the beginning of the year, teachers attend a half-day seminar with the coordinator. Teachers from each grade form a task force to develop bullying prevention curricula. Although the six lesson plans were designed by the program developer, teachers meet in teams to tailor the lesson plans to their own class. The lesson plans are adapted each year to keep the material fresh for teachers and students. Seventh-grade students are invited to the sixth-grade planning meetings to give advice based on their previous experience with the curriculum.

Bullying prevention has also become a community focus. A group of students has formed the STOP SQUAD, which has written and performs a skit called “Sticks and Stones” to illustrate the different types of bullying. One segment of the skit portrays a popular student who abuses the power of being popular to bully others. The skits also show how it is sometimes difficult to bring up the problem at home, how hard it can be for children to talk about it with their families. “The skits have a tremendous effect on adults,” says Towsey. “We show the skit to other schools and community groups to help develop a great awareness of the problem.”

Funding is an issue. The largest source of funding has been a three–year grant from the Governor’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities program. Towsey has been full-time coordinator of the program for the past two years. With funding cutbacks, this year there is a part-time coordinator, but the bullying committee in still firmly in place. Although the implementation of the program was originally funded by a grant, funding is now coming from the school and grants from the community services board. It was important to involve the entire community in the bullying issue, such as having the STOP SQUAD perform to community groups, so that the community will support the program. In fact, the community services board will help the school look for additional funding.

Although the data are not in yet from the first schoolwide post-survey taken last spring, a random sampling of students (60) who were asked questions regarding bullying is quite encouraging. The sampling indicated an increase in awareness of the problem—which is an important first step, since you can’t solve a problem if people don’t recognize there is one. More students, especially bystanders, are speaking up about bullying. Students are more willing to file reports of bullying, and are also speaking up more about adult bullying.

Last year only 83 bullying incidents were reported (out of 1,200 students). Of those 83, only one student had more than two reports of bullying. All others had one or two bullying reports. Says Towsey, “In 90 percent of the cases, the first offense [a reprimand of a note going in the student’s file and a warning that teachers will be watching closely for repeated offenses] was all it took.”