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Schools

DuPage Educators Take New Approach to Curb Bullying

The new manual will focus on improving student behavior. The county will test the plan in school districts in Hinsdale, Lisle and Medinah.

Changing students' bad behavior rather than just punishing them is the new focus of DuPage County schools' efforts to combat the growing issue of school-yard bullying.

On Friday, the DuPage County Regional Office of Education presented a new manual that defines bullying and creates guidelines for dealing with bullies and their targets. It also seeks to rebuke students who witness bullying but do nothing to stop it. The county will test the manual in school districts in Hinsdale, Lisle and Medinah.

Regional Superintendent Dr. Darlene Ruscitti said it is important to define bullying so every educator in the county is working from the same playbook. The manual defines bullying as a “coercive imbalance of power” that is purposeful and repeated. The end result of that definition creates fear in students and impacts their academic performance, she said.

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With advances in personal technology devices, Ruscitti said it is important to look beyond traditional physical bullying and also be aware of bullying by social exclusion and cyber bullying.

Dr. Bennett Leventhal, a psychiatrist specializing in bullying and a consultant to the task force that wrote the plan, said bullying is the most common form of youth violence. He said bullying is not so much a growing problem as it is a continuing problem because it is something that’s been around for millennia. He said there are direct and indirect types of bullying, but each type is damaging. He said a direct bullying is physical while indirect includes cyber bullying.

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Using results of a national survey of high school students, Levanthal said bullying, including racial and sexual-orientation harassment, is one of the top concerns of students.

“Bullying is real and it’s a real concern to our youth,” Leventhal said.

Leventhal told the educators that everyone can do something about bullying. He said if they see an incident of bullying they should intervene to stop it. He shared a story about a New York high school that lost two students to bullying. Both students were victims and committed suicide. A third student who was a victim of bullying attempted suicide, but did not succeed.

“These incidents were totally preventable. This is why we have to be vigilant,” he said.

Leventhal dispelled the notion that violent video games cause an increase in bullying. He said data shows that as the sale of violent video games increased, incidents of reported bullying actually decreased.

“Now I’m not going so far as to say violent video games cause a decrease in bullying, but there is no data supporting it as a contributor,” he said.

Ruscitti was joined by DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin during the morning presentation. Berlin said bullying is not only a “school problem,” but also a community problem. Berlin, the former deputy chief of the juvenile division, said there is enough anecdotal evidence linking school-yard bullying to criminal conduct.

“It is important that the state’s attorney’s office be proactive on bullying rather than reactive,” Berlin said.

Berlin said a pure punitive measure against bullying does not work. He said it is important to use intervention types of measures to halt bullying.

The new bullying manual does not throw out previous anti-bullying standards in the county. Ruscitti said the new manual builds upon those measures and incorporates social and emotional learning platforms already used in county schools.

Emphasizing social and emotional learning will strengthen younger students’ social skills, which will help them be better able to handle bullying situations in later years.

Ruscitti said the bullying manual is an active document.

“This is not something to just sit on the shelf. This is something that will be used and can be adapted to suit whatever the individual situation calls for. This is a fluid document and will require monitoring and updating,” Ruscitti said.

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