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BULLY continued from page 1 ed that 56 percent of students reported being bullied occasionally, 20 percent once or twice a week, and 12 percent almost every day. Eighty percent of the bullying was name-calling or teasing, she said. Norby plans to conduct another survey at the end of the year to evaluate the effectiveness of the Second Step program. Solana Santa Fe, serving students in kindergarten through sixth grade, also released an anti-bullying policy this year that outlines consequences for bullying behavior and asks students to sign a pledge to refuse to bully or let others bully, and to report bullying when witnessed. Skyline School in Solana Beach and Solana Pacific in Carmel Valley also have similar policies for students to sign. Skyline serves fourth, fifth and sixth grades, and Solana Pacific serves fifth and sixth grades only. Bullying workshop SBSD counselor Mary Marun attended a March 15 workshop on bullying, sponsored by the San Diego County Office of Education and the Chula Vista Police Department. SDCOE said the workshop filled early with a maximum of 70 participants, so another session will be held May 16. The half-day workshop, called “Best Practices in Bullying Prevention,” was led by SDCOE’s Project Specialist for Student Support Services, Mara Madrigal-Weiss, who said old assumptions about bullying are still being used but are ineffective. These include tactics like peer mediation, conflict resolution, posters declaring a bully-free zone, and bringing the bully and victim together to “work it out.” Madrigal-Weiss, who claims bullying is happening in every district and every campus, collaborated with Chula Vista Police Dept. Public Safety Analyst Melanie Culuko to explain national trends in bullying and successful researchbased tactics to reduce and prevent it. Marun works at Solana Vista School which serves students in kindergarten through third grade. She said the workshop gave her new insights into the problem, including a new focus on the importance of the bystander who she said can be a big help in stopping bullying. “I was surprised at how much emphasis they put now on the bystander,” Marun said. “They encourage
Rancho Santa Fe Review that you talk to the bystanders because they’re your eyes and ears out there.” She said it’s difficult to see everything that happens on the playground, where most of the face-to-face bullying takes place, so adults need to encourage kids not to tolerate bullying and to come forward when they witness it. It’s important she said, to reach out to the bystanders more and let them know it’s not tattling to report bullying behavior. “Let them know they can trust you to handle it,” she said. Marun said a large part of the workshop discussed how bullying has changed over the years. “A lot of times before, kids were just left to work things out on their own, and now we’re feeling that kids get pushed to the side and need to be tended to by adults,” she said. The types of destructive bullying have changed as well, and have escalated to include cyber-bullying, which is not face-to-face. “They talked about the Internet because it’s so easily accessible and easy to spread things,” she said. Girls, she said, may start rumors in school, “and all of a sudden it’s all over the Internet.” But the kind of traditional bullying that many adults remember, where kids have fist fights or shake down other kids for lunch money, still occurs with older children, said Marun. “Kids are still pressured and pushed around,” she said. Even in the younger grades, Marun said meanspirited activity occurs all too frequently, such as kids having to eat lunch alone, getting bumped into or pushed down, or having toys yanked from their hands and thrown aside. Because most of the bullying in the younger grades occurs on the playground, at recess or at lunch, the aides and supervisors play an important role and are being trained to watch for suspicious activity. “We pay attention to the loners… and if someone’s just wandering around by themselves,” Marun said. “It’s hard sometimes to pick out what’s going on in a group, but we try to make sure that everyone is included.” Pre-bullying At Marun’s K-3 school, she doesn’t see the hardline bullying behavior or any cyber-bullying because the kids are too young, she said, but she does see what she called pre-bullying. “I don’t really see cases
where kids are coming to me scared,” she said. “They’re more upset because they’re being excluded.” Marun said she sees some mild physical aggression in kindergarten, mostly from boys. “But in second and third grade it’s almost exclusively the girls, gossipy kind of stuff,” she said. At Solana Vista, the first time there is an offense, students get a warning. “At this age, if you just point out the whole dynamics … and they understand what’s going on, I rarely have repeated cases,” said Marun. “But if there’s a pattern, by the second time we’re usually calling parents.” The workshop discussed how bullying becomes more sophisticated as kids move into upper grades, particularly the middle school years, Marun said. “That’s when kids start getting a little more savvy for social relationships and dynamics, so they start understanding a little more the power that they might have over other people,” she said. Bullies, if left alone, grow into adult bullies and often end up in prison, “so it’s very important to intervene,” she said, with focus on the bully, the bully’s victims and observers. Marun plans to share what she learned at the SDCOE workshop with other counselors and educators at the other five Solana Beach schools. “The prevention part is the big key,” she said, noting that her school’s kindness program teaches kids to consider the other person’s side in disputes and to respect other children’s needs. Bullying, all educators agree, has become a very serious problem for schools, because it interferes with learning if kids don’t want to attend school or don’t feel safe. Some video from the SDCOE workshop showed children sitting at their desks in class, “stressing about going out to lunch and being bullied,” Marun said. “Their stomachs would just churn before they’d go to recess because they’d be all worried. That certainly would interfere with your paying attention in class.” Marun said educators are becoming more and more alarmed. “I think they’re pretty much on top of it and paying a lot of attention to it now, whereas they didn’t before,” she said.
The bully factor gains national attention BY MARSHA SUTTON Growing awareness of the seriousness of the problem of bullying by children extends across the country, even to the highest office. On March 10, President Barack Obama convened a gathering of about 150 educators, researchers, staff, parents and bully victims to shine a light on bullying and its consequences. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune,” Obama was quoted as saying. The purpose of the conference was to encourage schools and communities to cooperate in efforts to control bullying and take actions to stop it. Obama said it’s not a rite of passage. It’s not “part of growing up” or a harmless example of the “kids will be kids” adage. Nor does it “build character,” as some people say. According to an Associated Press story, White House officials estimate that one-third of America’s children, or about 13 million kids, have been bullied, leading to increasing dropout rates, discipline problems in school, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, self-destructive tendencies, violence and even death. Cyber-bullying, in particular, has increased at alarming rates and has fueled worries about the changing dimensions of bullying and its potential for far-reaching detrimental effects that go well beyond playground torment. Obama tied bullying to the over-arching concern for America’s academic preparedness for college, the workplace and international competitiveness. Kids can’t learn if they don’t feel safe at school, the White House asserts. A new Web site unveiled at the conference, www.stopbullying.gov, is managed by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, in partnership with the departments of Education and Justice. The extensive site offers tips, guidance and help for teachers, parents and kids. The San Diego Unified School District has made available on its Web site a lengthy 15page Education Week section called “Spotlight on Bullying.” In addition, Education Week online offers numerous articles on bullying at various grades, different types of bullying, prevention techniques and other informative reports. Bullying is defined by California’s Crime and Violence Prevention Center as words or actions that are “harassing, intimidating, tormenting, browbeating, humiliating, terroriz-
SURGEON continued from page 4 “wringing a towel.” Surgeons use screws and rods to straighten the spine. “If you don’t treat it, it keeps getting worse,” Mundis said, eventually causing fatal lung and heart ailments. The surgeons also removed a tumor pushing a child’s spine out of place, and treated patients with spinal infections. Otieno described one of his patients, a girl named Lillian, who was operated on during the surgical mission: “She is so happy and now she can look at people without fear of imagining people are seeing her as ‘bending.’ She can lead a life like other girls.” In addition to conducting operations, the American surgeons introduced minimally invasive surgical procedures to their Kenyan counterparts. Mundis per-
ing, oppressing and/or threatening.” Bullying, the center says, “has no social, financial or cultural boundaries,” and children often become bullies by watching adult behavior. An article in Education Week’s Feb. 23, 2011 issue features a study showing that bullies aren’t always the social outcasts people often think they are. After four years of surveying over 3,700 middle and high school students, University of California Davis assistant sociology professor Robert Faris found that “students in the middle of the social hierarchies at their schools, rather than the most popular or the most socially outcast, are more likely to be bullies.” Faris said in the report, “These kids view aggression as one tactic for gaining or maintaining their social status.” Other ways to climb the social ladder, he said, include being pretty, funny, athletic, rich and just being nice. Physical aggression is easy to spot, Faris said in the report, but more troubling, more common, and harder to detect is a more subtle form of aggression that includes manipulation, verbal remarks, gossip and social exclusion. It’s the need to gain power and status by putting others down, said one educator in the report. Faris concluded by noting that “old stereotypes of school bullies are dangerous in the modern world.” Another Education Week report on the subject revealed that adolescent girls are more likely than boys to have experienced cyberbullying, 25.1 percent compared to 16.6 percent. Girls also reported cyber-bullying others more than boys, 21.3 percent to 17.5 percent. The types of cyber-bullying were found to differ by gender: “Girls are more likely to spread rumors, while boys are more likely to post hurtful pictures or videos.” The 2010 report used data from a random sampling of 10- to 18-year-old students from one large school district in the south and was presented by the Cyberbullying Research Center [www.cyberbullying.us], which offers resources. Other Web sites with information on cyber-bullying include: the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use [www.cyberbully.org], Stop Cyberbullying [www.stopcyberbullying. org], and Wired Safety [www.wiredsafety.org].
formed an operation in which a small incision is made on the patient’s side to reach the spine and fuse two vertebrae, which he said was the first procedure of its kind in Africa. In spite of the trip’s successes, Mundis said his strongest memories include patients he was unable to treat because of the complexity of their cases, such as a patient who needed the removal of an entire vertebrae to straighten the spine. Mundis said such an operation could not have been safely conducted at the Nairobi hospital because of the lack of specialized equipment to monitor the patient during the operation. He was also concerned about the ability of the hospital’s intensive care unit to provide proper post-operative care. Those cases were compiled into a “left behind” file, and Mundis said he is contacting hospital officials in San Diego to see if one or more of those patients could
be transported to San Diego for surgery. The task of arranging for such treatment is daunting, he said, because complex spinal surgery and follow-up hospital care costs about $250,000. It was heart-breaking to see the faces of children he was not able to help, said Mundis. “The reality is without this help they’re going to die at an early age.” Mundis said he will likely take part in another surgical mission to Africa this fall. Those who want to contribute to future surgical missions can contact the San Diego Spine Foundation in Mundis’ office at 858-678-0610, or the Cheetah Gives Back Foundation at 858-909-1902 or 800455-1476 ext. 1902, or visit www.nuvacheetahgivesbackfoundation.org.