Discussion Focuses on Battling Bullying

Bullying can leave an adolescent struggling with the long-term effects well into adulthood.

Take, for instance, the story of a 24-year-old DuPage man, who is now in his fourth stint in rehab. What started out as marijuana use led to cocaine, and then heroin.

“How did he get so involved in drugs in DuPage County?” Darlene Ruscitti, superintendent of the DuPage County Regional Office of Education asked.

The man told Ruscitti, “He was being bullied in school and he didn’t feel very good about himself. And he used drugs to make him feel better. He said it helped him to dull his emotions.”

As students throughout the country continue to encounter instances of bullying behavior both in and outside of school, educators are grappling with ways to confront the problem for which they say there is no quick fix.

In a presentation hosted by The Humanist Group of the in Naperville Wednesday night, Ruscitti and consultant Mary Ellen Young discussed the efforts of the DuPage County Anti-Bullying Task Force to provide the tools for schools, students and parents to deal with the issue.

Bullying is the most common form of youth violence, said Young, who is co-founder of Helping Girls Navigate Adolescence.

According to the 2009 Indicators of School Crime and Safety report, 25 percent of the nation’s public schools reported bullying occurs daily or weekly. Thirty-two percent of students ages 12-18 reported being bullied.

“Although it’s common, it’s not normal. It’s not benign. It’s not harmless,” Young said.

The implications of bullying are serious. Health problems including depression and anxiety can develop. Students may begin to suffer academically.

“They’re not going to learn at the optimal level if they do not feel safe,” Ruscitti said.

In June 2010, the state legislature mandated that all schools address the problem of bullying. That same month the DuPage task force was created by the Regional Office of Education and the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office. Members include DuPage superintendents, school board members, principals, parents and attorneys from legal firms representing DuPage schools.

Since then the task force established a definition of bullying, which is “any type of conduct that may reflect a coercive imbalance of power, is purposeful and repeated and places an individual in reasonable fear of substantial detrimental effect to his or her person or property or to otherwise substantially interfere in participating in any activity.”

The task force also developed a model policy for schools to adopt and created manual for schools to implement bullying prevention programs.

“Until you really seriously address prevention in the schools, all you’re going to be dealing with is intervention and crises,” Young said.

The program integrates bullying prevention into the teaching of social and emotional learning skills, which is required by law.

“We connected it to a mandate that was already in place and schools have been implementing,” Ruscitti said. “We know—whether you’re the perpetrator, whether you’re the victim or whether a bystander—we knew that what would be important is we had to develop in our children these skills.”

Social and emotional learning is “a process for acquiring life skills” that includes  self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision making, social awareness and relationship skills.

“When it comes to bullying, if we really want to put a dent in bullying, we have got to teach our kids to be more emphatic,” Young said.

Three school districts in DuPage County—Glen Ellyn School District 41, Hinsdale Township High School District 86 and Medinah School District 11—have agreed to pilot the manual and report back, Ruscitti said.

In addition, a point person from each of the 42 DuPage school districts, as well as private schools, will create a professional learning community around the topic of bullying to share information about how the strategies are working in their communities.

Ruscitti said the DuPage Task Force is also encouraging individual schools to create their own task forces and bring in the community to address the issue in their own towns. And superintendents from throughout DuPage County have asked the Regional Office of Education to hold a countywide forum on bullying.

“It really is a community effort,” Ruscitti said. “And a community responsibility as well.”

For more information about the model bullying policy and manual, visit the DuPage Regional office of Education website.