A New Year and a New Initiative...

Well, the new year is off to a great start and we have an additional focus for our efforts - bullying and cyber-bullying. A new law enacted last year requires schools to create both a policy against bullying and a plan to prevent it. Both were to be created, put in place, and filed with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education by the last day of 2010. We made the deadline with a few weeks to spare and our policy and plan are clear and direct. Bullying will not be tolerated! There is a very specific reporting process in place with the bulk of the responsibility falling on me as the building principal to receive reports, investigate complaints, and take appropriate action to stop acts of bullying should they occur in our school or in cyberspace. We are taking this new responsibility seriously. Now, it's not that we never responded to complaints of bullying before, however the new law gives us direction and leverage in addressing acts of bullying and holds us accountable for doing so. I believe it is an excellent step in helping to make our schools safer for all students.

In order to help ensure that all staff understand the new law and its requirements, we had a district-wide training session yesterday conducted by Ms. Meghan McCoy who is the Program Coordinator at the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC) at Bridgewater State University. Her presentation was dynamic and the research-based information she shared with us was truly enlightening (and a bit frightening for parents in the audience!). In addition, she provided everyone with some specific strategies to intervene should we suspect that bullying has taken place. Here are some important pieces of information I took away from the presentation:

• All conflict between individuals is not bullying. What sets bullying apart is that it involves conflict that is repetitive and always involves a power imbalance, very much like a domestic violence situation.



• Today the majority of bullying is done in cyberspace often on social networking sites such as Facebook or via texting or blogs.



• Due to the immediacy and the amazing reach of technology, a single incident of cyber- bullying is, by its very nature repetitive, and is therefore a reportable incident of bullying.



• The most important thing students who are victims of bullying can do is talk to someone...anyone, a parent, teacher, counselor, clergyman, or a friend. Talk to someone!
• Parents who become aware of any situation which might be bullying should contact the school immediately. We are all in this together and we will address the problem head-on as a team.

The presentation was so good that we are working to bring Ms. McCoy back to Chatham to do a similar presentation for our student body. The message is that important and I am convinced that our students will connect with her and that she will be able to successfully deliver that message to them. We are hoping to schedule an assembly sometime in the coming month. We are also planning to hold a forum for parents on the evening of our second semester open house which has been scheduled for February 9th. There will be a brief PowerPoint presentation and lots of resources available to help inform parents and to enlist them in our effort to stop bullying. We hope for a great turnout for both the forum and for the opportunity to meet second semester teachers.

Lastly, we will be working this spring to integrate anti-bullying education in our existing health curriculum 9-12 and to incorporate positive relationship building and conflict resolution strategies into our advisory program. We know that the culture of our small school is healthy and positive and it seems that we do not have a significant bullying problem, however bullying does exist at CHS, perhaps more so than we are aware, and that is why we are taking this new initiative so seriously. I cannot think of a better way to start the new year!