Marshall students, staff take steps against bullying

Teachers and administrators at Marshall Middle School have taken proactive steps to combat bullying over the past two years.

An anti-bullying program was started at Marshall in August 2010, and according to Marshall social worker Lynn Fronk, has allowed students to feel free to safely communicate with administrators and report bullying and other incidents.

"They're not just reporting bullying," Fronk said. "They're reporting like, 'I'm concerned because I notice that so-and-so hasn't eaten all week at lunch and they normally do so I'm kind of concerned.'"

The program was started after Marshall assistant principal Cindy Terry and other faculty saw that bullying was being addressed in a punitively rather than preventative way.

Fronk said when school administration reviewed office referrals for students at the year's end, many of the school's suspensions involved bullying.

She said when the program started students approached administrators with stories of how bullying has gone unchecked and has negatively affected their school life.

"I think that's when we thought 'we have to do something, we have to listen to these stories, we have to hear these kids out,'" Fronk said. "That was our whole thing. If we could do enough education and enough intervention so that kids knew that we take it seriously, that we're going to respond to it, we could actually change the environment of the school," Fronk said.

The program aims to teach students to look out for each other and not be afraid to report bullying. To educate students in anti-bullying, teachers study from a workbook that covers the various types of bullying such as verbal, emotional, physical and cyber.

The workbook contains a variety of activities teachers can use in the classroom. The program features advisory classes once a week that teach students a different aspect of bullying each week.

The program also features a yearlong contest between classrooms that broadcasts a positive affirmation over the school's intercom each morning and allows students to call into the main office in the afternoon and repeat the daily message for a candy prize.

Jennifer Higareda, a social work intern at Marshall, assists Fronk with program activities such as devising the positive affirmations. Higareda, who is completing her first year with the program, said her work at Marshall has enabled her to see bullying from another perspective and it has better prepared her for her future career in social work.

"As an adult, when you see these kids come in and they're being bullied you really see how it affects them," said Higareda, who will receive her master's degree in social work this month.

"You see that this is all they can think about. It's great being able to show them things will be OK and give them the tools to go back out into the hallway and know how to handle a situation."

Marshall is holding a student-led anti-bullying assembly today to celebrate a successful conclusion of the program's second year.

Types of bullying:

• Verbal bullying — when words or names are used to hurt or make fun of people.

• Emotional bullying — when anything is used to harm someone emotionally.

• Physical bullying — when a person or a person's property is physically touched or harmed by someone else.

• Cyber bullying — when hateful or hurtful comments are sent through e-mail, chat rooms, Facebook or other online resources.