ON CAMPUS AT THE NEWPORT-MESA UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT:New programs address bullying behavior

Bullying — the intentional torment of others through verbal harassment, physical assault or manipulation — has become a national epidemic not only in our schools and on our playgrounds but in our homes, on our highways and in our workplaces nationwide.

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District’s Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative Project ASK is implementing two programs — Second Step in our preschool and kindergarten classrooms, and Life Skills for our older students — to address this destructive behavior.

Second Step is a classroom-based social skills program for preschool through junior-high students (4 to 14 years old). It is designed to reduce impulsive, high-risk and aggressive behaviors, and increase children’s social-emotional competence and other protective factors.

Group discussion, modeling, coaching and practice are used to increase students’ social competence, risk assessment, decision-making ability, self-regulation and positive goal-setting. The program’s lesson content varies by grade level and is organized into three skill-building units covering:

Life Skills Training (LST) is a program that seeks to influence major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation and early use of substances. Life Skills has distinct elementary (8 to 11 years old) and middle school (11 to 14 years old) curricula that are delivered in a series of classroom sessions over three years.

LST consists of three components that address critical domains found to promote substance use. Research has shown that students who develop skills in these three domains are far less likely to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors. Each component focuses on a different set of skills:

Bullying among children and teenagers has often been dismissed as a normal part of growing up. Little attention has been paid to the devastating effects of bullying or to the connection between bullying and other forms of violence. In recent years, however, students and adults nationwide have begun to make a commitment to put an end to bullying in their schools and communities.

Bullying can involve direct attacks such as hitting, threatening or intimidating, or damaging belongings, or more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to exclude someone.

The Journal of the American Medical Assn. reported that almost 30% of teens in the United States (or more than 5.7 million) are estimated to be involved in bullying as either a bully, a target of bullying or both. In a recent national survey of students in grades six to 10, 13% reported bullying others, 11% reported being the target of bullies and another 6% said they bullied others and were bullied themselves.

The journal also reported that while many people believe bullies act tough in order to hide feelings of insecurity and self-loathing; in fact, bullies tend to be confident, with high self-esteem.

Norway’s Dan Olweus, who authored one of the 11 SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health) Blueprints for Violence Prevention programs titled the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, said that bullying is often a warning sign that children and teens are heading for trouble and are at risk for serious violence.

Teens (particularly boys) who bully are more likely to engage in other antisocial/delinquent behavior (vandalism, shoplifting, truancy and drug use) into adulthood. They are four times more likely than nonbullies to be convicted of crimes by age 24, with 60% of bullies having at least one criminal conviction.

During this holiday season when we talk about caring, sharing, giving and loving to those close to us, let us also talk about respect, tolerance and acceptance of all people.

This world we can change it,

If we want to arrange it,

To know who needs help,

We need only just ASK.

For further information, call Project ASK (Advocates Supporting Kids) at (949) 515-6930, a Safe Schools/Healthy Student initiative funded by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Justice.

is the director of outreach and advocacy programs for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.